Job Search Ideas for the New Grad

Job search is probably the most stressful activity in senior year of college. Arguably, it is the most stressful endeavor in your entire college career. Job search feels similar to playing on slot machines in Vegas: you don’t know what you will get.

My goal is not to bicker about how uncertain the slot machine is. Through this article, I am hoping to leave you with some ideas as to how you could maximize your chances of getting the slot machine to work in your favor.

Resumes are great. They help people get a feel for who you are and what you can offer. The more tailored your resume is for a position, the better chances you have at getting a call back from them.

However, it is also important to consider that most of the time, your resume gets lost in the sea of applications online and your chances of getting a call back are slim.

2. LinkedIn Initiatives

LinkedIn is extremely powerful. There are a number of initiatives you can take to get a foot in the door.

3. Cold mailing/calling:

A cold call is more of touch and go, tread carefully. From my experience, I have had positive and negative results. A cold call I once made to a college alum and engineer did not go well. He expressed disappointment that I had called him and he hung up pretty pissed. In retrospect, I made the wrong decision of cold calling an engineer. I have had good results with a recruiter, although it did not materialize into an offer. For cold calling, prepare really well before the act and use this a last resort if all else: messaging on LinkedIn, cold email, using connections at the company, fails.

Cold mailing is safer and I would highly recommend that as an option apart from using LinkedIn and other job search tools. Most of the times you can find the recruiter’s email listed on LinkedIn or on one of their posts. The key to getting a response is to stand out of all the deluge that the recruiter receives. Craft your letter so that it would be highly relevant to the role and the organization that you are seeking.

A letter’s main content could be something like:

Hello X,

Hope you are doing well. I understand you work at ABC. I am really interested in working for your Mechanical Design group. I am currently a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering at XYZ. I was involved in the product development of fasteners for multi-material joining during my masters degree. Akin to the development process of *insert company name*’s products, this thesis involved the multiple stages involved in product development such a preliminary design, detailed design, prototyping and validation…….

This letter is from my perspective but you can craft one regardless of your field of interest. It is also a good idea to have a website for yourself that you can link in your email for the reader to get an idea of your skills and experience. Given that people do not spend too much time reading emails, it is good to keep the letter as crisp as possible while including all the good stuff.

4. Referrals

Referrals are a great way to score interviews and job offers. The job that I am in currently happened because my academic advisor put in a word to his friend and also took me to meet him personally. This may not be the case in all circumstances, however, even an online referral to apply to a company can increase the chances of at least getting a reply from the company.

I have received referrals for multiple companies, many of them ended up in a rejection, but the process was much more faster, which all of us would definitely appreciate.

That’s just some of the ideas I have but I am sure there are a lot out there that can be relevant as well. I would be happy to hear what ideas you have, so I can use them myself ;)

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