Staying Sane While Applying to Jobs in College
This post on staying sane while applying to jobs in college is a collab with Samantha of BarryChicBlog! She’s a college senior who blogs about fashion and lifestyle. Check out her blog for the post I did about where to find jobs and how to get your resume noticed!
Although December beckons for holiday movies, decoration, and lazy mornings with peppermint mocha’s, it’s also one of the busiest seasons for interviews. Being a senior in college, I’ve had my share of interviews over the years. Today, I am collaborating with the wonderful Samantha over at Samanthability.com. We wanted to work together to create the ultimate breakdown of everything you need to know when it comes to actually sitting down and snagging a great job! After you’re done reading this post, make sure to head over to her blog post to read the other tips you should keep in mind!
Be Prepared
Update Your Resume. Before you start applying to jobs, make sure your resume is up to date. Remember those volunteer hours that you did last semester? You definitely want to add that to your resume. Make sure that it’s the best that it can be before sending it off to potential employers. Check with your school to see if they offer resume help (most do!) or ask a trusted professor if they wouldn’t mind looking it over. You’d be surprised by the amount of support you can get if you just ask!
Make sure you have everything you need for an interview. It may seem like a long ways away, but you’d be surprised at how quickly some recruiters want to move the application process along. One time I applied for a job on a Monday and by Tuesday they were asking if I could come in for an interview that Thursday. Say what?! I was running around like a lunatic because suddenly I found that I had no padfolio, my resumes needed to be printed on Resume Paper, and my suit jacket wasn’t the same shade of black as my skirt. Talk about stress! Make sure ahead of time that you have everything in order so that if you were to go on the interview today, you’d be ready. This means having things like your interview outfit ready to go (that means clean too!), having professional copies of your resume made, having shoes that you can actually walk in, etc. etc.
Keep Track of Everything while Applying to Jobs in College
Looking for jobs might not seem like such a big feat to add on to your schedule, but I promise you it is. My recommendation is to keep track of two main things:
- What jobs you apply for
- Interview Itinerary
I had a large excel spreadsheet that went over categories like job title, attributes their looking for, applied (Y/N), progress, login passwords, etc. This made it easier so when I was applying for my twentieth job, I could be sure I hadn’t already applied for it.
When it rolled around for interviews I made sure that I always had my planner out when finding times. Sometimes recruiters ask if you’re available for a certain day. Even though your first impulse may be to say yes instantly, it wouldn’t be ideal to have to call back to reschedule because you didn’t check your planner. Also, when I was off looking at the campus of a company, they gave us an hour by hour itinerary and I ended up putting that into my calendar so that on my watch I knew what event we were going to do next… I’m a bit controlling like that. 🙂
Samantha is a college senior who writes about fashion and lifestyle at Barrychic.blog. She loves to stay active so that a quiet morning in bed (with coffee of course!) can be totally justified!
