Six Steps to Landing Your First Job

1. Take a limited time off. Sleep, drive around, meet with old friends. Decompress before you face the next reality: Life.
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1. Take a limited time off. Sleep, drive around, meet with old friends. Decompress before you face the next reality: Life.

2. Start your job search. Revise a database and include everyone you have ever had contact with, that might include: friends (especially older ones), former bosses (if you have any work experience), coaches, sponsors, professors, neighbors, alumni in your field, parents' friends, doctors.

3. Compose an email designed to grab attention and make an impact (perfectly written, then edited and proofed by somebody else). List your skills -- both technical and interpersonal. Remind them of how your remember them (share an engaging memory or funny or moving anecdote), inform them that you have recently graduated along with your major/minor. Ask for their help in finding a job. Include your resume in two formats: In the body of the email and attached in either PDF or as a Word Document. End by saying you will call them.

4. Call them. Make 5 calls a day, every weekday. Write down what they promise or advise. If/when they do, follow their advice and call back in a week or two with your progress (or lack of it). This is the way to start building a relationship and can allow new leads and ideas to come into focus.
5. Keep calling and emailing until you get a positive response.

6. Peruse all media in the fields you might like to enter. Find relevant people in those fields of interest and try like crazy to make contact with them and see if they will hire you, give you leads, or allow you to work as an intern. Many interns are actually hired if they are cheerfully fulfilling their go-fer requests, however demeaning, as well as learning the business by osmosis. Don't overlook reporters, or writers of books or blogs in your field, as they are experts for good reason. They know everything and everyone.

Note: This advice works. It has landed jobs for those courageous souls willing to risk rejection, be ignored and/or made to feel foolish. It works if you work it. College has not necessarily taught you the skills of perseverance and self-promotion, but you have to learn them now. That is, if you want a job.

Make your luck happen!

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