Will Work For Food!

Firstly, congratulations to all of the graduates this 2012th year after Christ's birth!

Im sure its exciting to some graduates, but for some graduates it's terrifying.

Enter the Real World! 
Student Loans!

If your parents kick you out : a place to live!

Food!

Fuel!

Clothes to keep up with the Jones's! (whoever they are)

& Etc. Etc. Etc.

When I graduated college, I searched for a job for two weeks, and the next thing I knew, I was living in a hotel for 28 days a month in Womelsdorf, PA. I was just happy to have a job in the field I studied. Within those two weeks of my unemployment, I was on the road like I had two full time jobs. Below, I just want to give you a few tips if you're in the market for a job. It's a tough search now-a-days, so don't expect to find a job on the first day of your search. Let us begin!

1. Plan Plan Plan
My mistake in my job search was not planning before I graduated college. Some people are fortunate enough to have a job waiting on them before they even enter college. Its all about connections now-a-days. Its less about your GPA and your work experience and more about knowing someone who can get your foot in the door. If you don't have that connection, you can expect to grind a little bit harder to make your dream job a reality. Internships are also a great means of getting your foot in the door of a business. In most instances, you will work for free in your internship, but if you show your employer a great work ethic, you can expect a job waiting on you after you receive your diploma. If you've had your eye on a specific company, give their human resource department a call and inquire about paid or unpaid internships.

2. Internet and In-the-streets!
You have plenty of websites that employers post job openings on. You have your www.monster.com, you have your www.careerbuilder.com, you have your www.job.com! My favorite was www.indeed.com. Indeed.com takes almost every job search engine on the internet and combines it into one. Just type in your job description and location and your bombarded with results. If you limit yourself to just internet job searches, you can expect to wait even longer for a job. Sometimes a job position has already been filled by the time you find it on the internet. Your best bet is to call the employer directly to see if the job position is still open. If they say it is, I would take the opportunity to get dressed up and make an appearance to their office to drop off your resume personally. This may seem like a waste of gas when you can just email it, but an employer will take note of the effort you show. An employer usually receives thousands of emails and faxes everyday with resumes. To stand apart from the competition get off your butt and make yourself known. Also, visit the GA Dept of Labor (or whichever state you live in), and speak with people who can point you in the direction of some good opportunities. I've never been this desperate, but I've seen people who just open the phone book and visit every company that looked interesting in the white pages dropping off their resumes to their addresses. You never know what you may come up with. Last thing! Get off your butt early! Don't wake up at noon, play xbox until 3, watch Jerry Springer until 5 and then start job hunting. You need to be up at 7 a.m. at the latest with phone in hand catching a human resource department rep as soon as he or she sits down to start his or her day.

3. Merry-Go-Rounds
Its time to go to the fair and not the junky one in front of Food Depot in Conyers, but a job fair. This is the best opportunity to meet several employers and show your face.
One summer when I lived with my dad in Atlanta. I looked in the AJC (another good way to find a job), and I saw that there was a job fair with corporations like Racetrac, and Waffle House, and other big names. My hopes was to work for RaceTrac because there was one right up the street from my dad's apartment. I showed up to this big convention center in Atlanta in khakis and a collared shirt, and I saw a long line of businessmen and women in their finest business suits with briefcases and such, and I didn't even have a resume. What I thought was a job fair for summer jobs, was a job fair for corporate positions. I still made my way through the line, and spoke with the RaceTrac booth and explained to them my confusion, and they called that local branch and got me a job (even though I quit after a week or so, because my step-dad got me a job with his company). The moral of the story is do research about the job fair before you arrive, dress your sharpest, and have plenty of resumes readily available.

4. Don't Get Discouraged
When I first left college in Pensacola and arrived back home to GA, I felt like I was the only one looking for a job. I applied to jobs online and just stared at my yahoo account waiting on a reply from an employer. The replies never came. Its easy to hang your head and just apply to the McDonalds up the road. There is nothing wrong with McDonalds, but if God has called you to something greater, than you need to put forth effort in order for God to provide that blessing! I like to call it planting seeds. In those two weeks after college while I was looking for a job, I planted so many seeds that after I already started my job traveling to Pennsylvania, I was still receiving calls for a month or so after. Getting a job can be a long process, but you have to be patient and persistent! If you want a job really bad, you need to stay on that employer everyday until they get so tired of you that they have to give you the job. Maybe you're fresh out of college and the job you want requires so much experience. You have to learn to work what you learned in college to your advantage. Tell the interviewer that I don't have the experience in a workplace, but here are examples of me gaining that experience through a college project or internship. Maybe you've been laid off of a job, and when you go apply for a new job, you're told that you have too much experience or that you're over-qualified. In that case, just give your potential employer a sob story saying how you've reached the bottom and that you just want to work your way up the ladder again.

Just stay focused and dedicated and prayed up! Don't settle for spam when you have steak around the corner! Hit me up on twitter or facebook, if you need more tips!

Signing Out,

Fatdreek