During the last stop of my college tours, I always finish by saying, “In a couple of months, I will be wearing that blue robe and walking across the graduation stage.” On Monday, I had to change that sentence from “In a couple of months” to “In a couple of weeks.”
We are officially less than a month out from graduation – it's crunch time.
As a second semester college senior, I have spent a lot of time preparing for the inevitable next chapter. Between LinkedIn messaging and zoom calls, I have learned a thing or two about the job application process, and while I am by no means a professional, I would like to share some of those things with you.
#1 – Networking.
Network. Network. Network.
As someone graduating with a humanities degree, I am here to tell you that it is just as much WHO you know as it is WHAT you know. If you are going into a people-oriented industry, the key to securing a job or internship is by going through just that, people. And you should have no shame in your LinkedIn networking game. Taking the advice of my fantastic professors Gary Kayye and Livis Freeman, the LinkedIn messaging tool became my best friend this year, and I have seen firsthand that people are eager to help and connect. Through a simple, 150-character message, I have been able to connect with and learn from multiple high-achieving Tar Heel alums, who have all made a huge difference in my job application process, many of whom said they remembered doing this very same thing just years prior. So with that, send those LinkedIn messages and ask for the opportunity for a brief informational interview, you never know what you may take away from it.
Which leads me to #2 – Informational Interviews.
I had never heard of this term before this past year, and it is now something I can’t shut up about. For those of you, who like me, have no idea what I am talking about, an informational interview is a fancy way of Q+A session. When I message people on LinkedIn who work at agencies that I am interested in, I start by asking if they have any availability for a quick 15-30 minute informational interview. These meetings are normally on Zoom or over the phone, and they allow you the opportunity to ASK QUESTIONS. The professional is not interviewing you, you are interviewing them, and these are some of my favorite questions to ask:
What are your favorite and least favorite parts of your job?
What does it take to be successful at this agency/in this type of position?
How did you end up at this company?
What does a typical day look like for you?
Advice on establishing a healthy work life balance / advice on moving to a new city post grad?
Tips on applying to a position with this agency?
Asking these types of questions allows you to really sit back and listen to the expertise and experience of someone who has walked in your shoes and succeeded. I always take notes during this type of call and ALWAYS follow up with a thank you email. They are going out of their way to help you out, and there truly is no better way to learn about a job than by talking to someone who is living it every day. This is the key to finding places you want to work and to creating a really strong network. Informational interviews are largely how I determined what industry I wanted to work in - the people that helped me out during the process had more of an impact than they probably know.
#3 – Interviewing
As I have mentioned before, I am the type of person whose body tells me I am nervous long before my brain does. When I have an interview, I can feel the nerves all day, but I am here to tell you that I have found a cure that works for me. The last minutes before my zoom interview starts, I put a favorite song on my speaker, LOUD, and dance. It sounds weird, but it is the one thing that really gets me out of my head and gets me loose. When I interview, I want my personality to show, and by dancing it out right before I feel like myself.
To calm the nerves even more, my friend Holly and I always like to say that an interview is a vibe check. To get the interview, they already know you are qualified. They read through your resume, and probably hundreds of others and are taking time out of their busy days to talk to you for a reason. From that point, both parties are trying to see if it would be a good fit, if the vibes match. Reminding myself of this also helps take the pressure off a little. Your qualifications speak for themselves, an interview is there to see if you would fit well and be happy working with their team, and for this reason it is important to be yourself in the process.
And at the end of the day, the person on the other end of the interview is a human too. They were on the other end of the conversation once, and probably will be again one day. They know what that feels like. I was reminded of this during my first ever “big girl job” interview, when my roommate’s oven-baked pizza downstairs set off our fire alarm right as I was introducing myself. The alarm in my room started screeching and I nearly jumped out of my seat, my face bright red. And then I remembered that two women were watching this disaster unfold through their screen and I quickly apologized as profusely as I could for this hot mess. I was mortified, but both interviewers told me not to worry one bit. They made sure everything was okay and asked if I needed to go check on the situation, and reassured me that this didn’t change a thing. All this brings me to my last piece of advice:
#4 – Tell your roommates NOT to cook during your interviews, you never know what scene it will cause.
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