Everyone once in a while, I offer to help other people be awesome. I’m not qualified at “Being Awesome” by any authority, but people seem to like my brand of advice. So I continue to offer it. This is a post that was adapted from one of these exchanges.
The question was “What’s your advice for landing a really cool job that you enjoy right out of college? Not just getting a job that you take because you need to have a job and end up despising.”
Oh, man. Time and time again I see these college-minded sheep students go to these crap-tacular job fairs, all vying for the same entry-level QA and testing gigs in their white-collar, paisley-pattern ties. These kids were all destined to a life of Office Space-like professional routine. Good-enough jobs are abundant and easily found. Right now, thousands of people in your local market are casually throwing around their resumes to whomever will accept it. No thought is being put into who is reading your information or how it’s being presented. Anyone who tells me they can’t find work or are not qualified to find work (ESPECIALLY in our “difficult” economy) is really missing an opportunity.
{tl;dr} I’m not trying to sell snake oil here. Finding a job that is amazing to go to every day doesn’t just fall in your lap. Bottom line (for those too lazy busy to read), you won’t get something for nothing. You have to know what you’re going after, you have to be in the right place at the right time, and you have to know the right skills as well as the right people to get the job. If you’re missing any of these checkmarks, consider them points against you. You’ll need to make yourself stand out from the crowd and figure out what sort of awesome job you should be looking for. Trying out these suggestions will help you correct some of those issues and maybe you’ll find yourself in a few serendipitous situations. {/tl;dr}
Continue reading ‘Wanted: An Entry-level Job That Doesn’t Suck!’
