Job growth means opportunity growth for you… if you’re ready
If you are graduating from college soon, today is a great day. No, not just because you finally managed to match your socks, you perfected the fine art of cooking oatmeal, or your midterm has been postponed a week (which are all fine reasons to celebrate, by the way). Today is a great day because job growth is up.
That’s right. The Labor Department reported today that the U.S. job market increased by 166,000 jobs in October- that’s nearly twice the growth projected by economists. Babyboomers are retiring from the workforce at ever increasing rates, and new jobs are being created. And the situation will only get better: statisticians predict a huge job surplus in the U.S. in the next ten years- that is, more jobs than people to fill them. What does this mean for upcoming college grads? They will have more job opportunities than almost any other class before them.
So, all those horror stories about working for four years to get a Marketing degree only to end up stocking shelves at the local Dollar General will hopefully be a thing of the past. In the past, college grads have had to enter a marketplace packed with competitors for a single job. They’ve had to lie, cheat, and steal to get their foot in the door. Now, however, recruiters will be lying, cheating, and stealing to get your attention.
What’s the worst thing you could do right now? Reject all uses of modern technology, take up residence in a cave for the winter, adopt a monastic lifestyle in the mountains of Timbuktu, or otherwise take yourself off the radar.
What’s the best thing you could do right now? Put yourself out there for the recruiters to see. I can’t resist giving lists of five, and so here I provide a list of five suggestions to help you get noticed and take advantage of this unprecedented season of job plentitude: 
1. Polish your resume.
It’s been accumulating various jobs and internships, skills and extracurricular experiences, while you’ve been in school. But like so many things, a resume can always be improved and refined. Formatting can be tweaked to enhance your best points and minimize glaring white space. Phrasing can be honed to pull recruiters’ eyeballs straight to your strengths.
Find a resume expert or career counselor (every university has one), and have them recommend some improvements to your resume. They will be nitpicky. But, more importantly, they will look at your resume with recruiter’s eyes. They will be able sight things that seem trivial to you but will make a big difference in getting your resume noticed.
2. Post your resume.
So you’ve put together a high-performance resume, ready to tear through the clutter and have companies kicking down your door. Now they’ve got to see it. What’s the easiest way to get it in front of thousands of recruiters? Post it.
Of course, online job sites like Monster and CareerBuilder allow you to post your resume where employers can see them. However, with the ability to show your resume to thousands of recruiters also comes thousands of applicants, all of them flooding one recruiter with mountains of resumes. Your resume may be good. But your odds of being seen, just statistically speaking, are bad.
Therefore, posting on more restricted sites, like your college career website, greatly improves your chances of getting noticed. Outside of school sites, you can often find club or association websites that provide the same exclusivity. These sites provide many benefits to job seekers- this is one of them.
3. Attend information sessions.
Companies come to colleges all the time to educate students on the opportunities that they offer. They also let recruiters survey the hiring pool. They bring you into a conference room, usually with food and drinks, sit you down with handfuls of glossy company pamphlets, and then go through a Powerpoint presentation on why their company is the best ever and what kinds of jobs they offer. They then usually open the floor for Q&A, which is an awesome opportunity for students to open a dialogue with recruiters.
After Q&A, recruiters will hang around and talk. If students are interested, they can hang out and talk with recruiters one-on-one, gaining valuable contacts and making a first impression.
Compare this personal interaction with just throwing your resume into some black hole on a company’s website. Recruiters will see your face and personality and will have a much greater chance of remembering you when your resume arrives. On the other hand, the resume submitted solely online, without any other personal communication, may be discovered by some future civilization to benefit their understanding of primitive human culture. I’d rather take the first. 
4. Tap into your network.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Your greatest resource in your job search is your family, friends, and acquaintances. Maybe you don’t know anyone in the field that you want to get into. But there is a good chance that someone you know does know someone in your desired field. And if, by some remote turn of fate, they don’t, the odds are even higher that they know someone who knows someone in your desired field.
What is the difference between just handing out your resume to strangers and working through your friends and family? Simple. Your friends and family know you. They’re already on your side, in your cheering section. Unless you’ve ticked them off, they want to help you out and see you succeed.
Do you have to "hit them up" for jobs? Nope. It’s as easy as mentioning to them that you are looking for work after college, telling them a little about your goals and dreams, and then letting them get involved. 
5. Buy a suit.
Get ready to sit in front of lots of interviewers and look snazzy. Your dress doesn’t have to say you are a billionaire playboy. But it should convey to the recruiter that you will easily transition into their organization.
So ditch the ancient corduroy jacket with the patches on the elbows. Humor only counts for so much. Showing that you have a clue is much more worthwhile. Get yourself an affordable, conservative suit. Shave. Get a haircut. Brush your teeth. And get ready to shine.
The future is bright, my friends. Make the right moves and you could easily have your pick of jobs. Are you getting ready to graduate? What are you doing for your job search? If you’re planning on stocking shelves at Dollar General, I apologize…
About the author
Marcus Varner earned his BA in English from Brigham Young University with a Creative Writing emphasis. He is currently in his second year at BYU’s lauded MBA program studying Marketing. He blogs, writes fiction and screenplays, loves movies, and can’t resist playing superheroes with his kids.
Career advice and information from JobGoRound. Reviews of the best professional resume writing services and resume distribution services.
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Tags: advice, career, job search, jobs
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