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Getting that first job

9 short articles that help you be successful

Having experienced the difficulties of the job search myself a few years ago and now knowing a bit about the hiring part as well (I hired 18 people in the last 3 months), I thought I would write the following series of articles to help you in getting that first job opportunity.

The economy is tough in many countries and if you are just about to graduate, getting that first job is an extremely important step.

Why is this first job important? Well, not only because it will pay for some of your bills, but even more so because it will allow you to gain valuable work experience in a professional environment. Advanced positions always require experience, so getting it now makes it possible to move to better positions later.

Let's start with the rules of the game.

Thanks to globalization, we are all playing in a great game together, which is slightly similar to Monopoly, Chess or Risk.

As a beginner in these games, you either have another player read the rules for you, or you can simply do it yourself, which should not take more than an hour.

However, for this new game, the rules are vastly more complex (there is a reason you can study business or economics as a full-time occupation) and it might be difficult to find someone who will explain all rules for you – people are busy. The scale is different as well. Normal games take a few hours to finish – this game takes days, weeks, months or years, sometimes decades.

And while the winners and losers are easily visible in most board games, the lack of transparency, feedback and advice makes it more difficult to learn quickly.

Six rules that will help you play - and win:

Firstly, this is your game and you play alone.

Sure, there may be other people that are willing to help, such as your parents, friends and former professors, but ultimately it is your responsibility to play, to make decisions and to establish a strategy that makes you happy.

This is both scary and refreshing, as it gives you the ultimate freedom to shape your own path. Be proud of yourself, and learn how to play well – your new skills will be valuable for you, again and again.

Secondly, this game is incredibly flexible in terms of moves and actions.

You could sleep the whole day or spent eight hours writing applications, you could take up job in a golf club just to meet new people or you could stay home watching whatever seems popular right now (Note: If you do what most other people are doing, then you will become like them over time).

You can choose to approach people directly or you can hope that they discover you while you are sitting on your couch. Try to explore what works and what does not, and become better over time.

Thirdly, this game is neither fair nor supervised.

There might be hundreds of jobs that pay USD 100.000 per year for a young graduate who barely passed his studies, but that does not mean that everybody knows about them. Sometimes lack of knowledge precludes people from taking a great step forward, at other times it might be a lack of qualifications or sellable skills.

This means that you might be an excellent graduate with good grades and still cannot find a job.

Academic experience will be of very little help if you have not acquired the skills to be an independent thinker and doer or understand the rules of this game. Economies shift and countries constantly reorganize themselves for better economic performance. So can you – whatever you studied. If you live in a place that is negatively influenced by the economy and the economic, political and sociological forces at work, then it is time to look further. Humans are natural explorers, and if your chances are better elsewhere, then it might be time to move on. Go boldly and look for opportunities, not risk. You can always return.

The fourth rule is simple: You have value.

As a founder I know that there is always something that needs to be done, and I am proud to work with a great team that looks at the challenges and actively starts to solve them. It's similar to your experience when you finish your birthday party - you are just happy to have help when work needs to be done, and somehow very few people remain to help.

Please note that this is not a matter of experience or intellect, but to a large degree a matter of attitude. Your willingness to work and learn makes you valuable, your willingness to tackle new challenges is always positive. And if you just graduated university you will already have a set of skills and knowledge that can be used or adapted to solve similar problems currently faced by many companies.

Even if you have comparatively little experience, it will only take you a few weeks to become an expert on a specific task. This will happen once you know more than the others around you, take ownership of the task and complete it to a professional standard (which is a topic we will cover in the next article). Do not think that you are of lesser value because you had bad experiences during your current job search. The right person in the right place makes all the difference in the world, and if you understand your value, you will find an opportunity to contribute.

Rule five: You are your own company, and you need to learn how to sell.

In this game, you own a company that is currently staffed with one bright person. Make sure that this person does something useful and can learn and grow into being a professional – this person is your product.

But even with a great product, marketing and sales are absolutely crucial to your success. If your product is nothing special (yet), then smart positioning will open doors and will give you opportunities to grow quickly. This requires a clear analysis of the market’s demands, about the qualities clients want to see and about your sales strategy.

Unless you are someone who offers an outstanding service that has great brand recognition (would you have hired Steve Jobs if you could? Why?), nobody will actually come looking for you.

You need to put yourself out there and make it easy to be found, and then actively pursue opportunities in a professional way. Assuming that you read this article on theStudentRanking, you are already working on that, which certainly is smart.

But it’s not enough to be present on one channel: Look for other opportunities to be found, try to demonstrate your skills in a professional environment (ideally in front of future clients/employers) and invest time, money and effort into improving your skills. If you know nothing about sales, then read a few good sales books at a library (for free!) and create your own process.

How will you contact employers? How will you make it easy to be found? How will you make yourself unique and valuable to each of them? How will you actively pursue the opportunity? Sales is hard work and a great sale can take weeks, months and sometimes years before it comes to fruition.

Rule six: Most markets suffer from extreme inefficiencies – demand and supply rarely balance out and opportunities are often hidden or a bit outside of your comfort zone.

It is your job to look at the supply part: Great companies are always looking for new team members that might help them in becoming better, but these companies are not always in your neighborhood.

Are you willing to move? A yes here will increase the supply side and open new markets for you, especially if you already speak the languages required. Almost no employer will pay for your language courses (unless you are a soccer player), so are you willing to invest time and effort upfront to improve your chances?

If you have time and a bit of money available, take a course and get certified, then demonstrate your skills during the interviews. The more effort you put in, the greater your rewards will be.

On the other hand, your clients will have a similar problem. They would like to hire outstanding candidates, but have problems finding multilingual 23 year old PhD’s with 5 years of work experience that are willing to work for an average salary.

Employers need to sell themselves and their brand as well to you, and they often invest a lot of time, cash and effort into being present on many channels to do so. Still, they might not always get that many applications - especially smaller companies with lesser known brands face this problem – and they are grateful to get to know you.

Approach them actively and help them to find the local optimium – you.

This is not just a matter of skill, but also a matter of luck: We received some great applications from very talented and experienced people during the last few days for a new position, but at that point we already completed the hiring process (and spent our budget) and our focus moved from hiring to getting things done again. So do not worry too much – luck plays a role, but if you put enough effort and love into it, the numbers will become higher and luck moves to your side of the table.

5 questions that will make you successful

This covers some of the ground rules for the job search economics game. In the next article we will discuss how you can prepare yourself professionally for that search and answer the five key questions every graduate should have answered to be successful when it comes to the job market.

Next entry: 5 Questions smart candidates will have prepared