Hiring a career coach to help you find your first job is a good strategy if you want to save time and avoid unnecessary stress.
Finding a first job is difficult for many young graduates who do not know how to organize their first job search.
In this article, I present some useful strategies and the main advantages of taking advantage of a coach’s expertise.
1 – Define your career plan
The first piece of advice is to define your career plan, i.e. the path you want to take to find a job that will allow you to use your knowledge, skills, and inner qualities.
If you don’t have a clear vision of what differentiates you from other candidates, you will waste time searching for and finding jobs that are not right for you.
You will probably stay with the company for a year or more and feel like you wasted your time.
Instead of sending your resume to every company that has job openings, take the time to understand what you like to do and identify what you know or could do better than other people.
A career coach will work with you to help you become aware of your passions and career aspirations and to define a career goal that makes sense to you.
This will allow you to understand your strengths and areas for improvement in order to find a fulfilling job.
In short, knowing yourself better will allow you to find a position that is consistent with what is really important to you.
2 – Overcome your lack of professional experience
You have minimal professional experience and this is perfectly normal as you are preparing to enter the workforce.
However, this does not mean that you do not have life experience. It is precisely this life experience that you will need to value when creating your resume and cover letter.
Think about everything you have learned during your studies, your internships, and all your extraprofessional activities.
These experiences have undoubtedly allowed you to develop technical and human skills that can be applied to your professional life.
To reduce your lack of knowledge of the job market or the sector of activity that interests you, you can be proactive by learning all you can.
You can subscribe to newsletters from sites that broadcast news about the job or field you are interested in.
You can also contact people on LinkedIn who work in the role you’re interested in and ask them questions to understand if the job matches your desires and skills.
Ideally, try to meet with these people, but if this is not possible, you can schedule remote conversations. The most important thing is to get as much information as possible about the job market that is relevant to you.
This will allow you to get out of your head and confront reality.
Another option is to read specialized magazines in the field you are interested in because they will give you an even more accurate view of the evolution of the field.
You can also follow the news of the companies that interest you directly on LinkedIn.
Finally, you can contact human resources managers to ask them questions about the job in order to get practical advice for improving the effectiveness of your applications.
3 – Make the most of your resume and cover letter
Your resume and cover letter should show that you have the potential to help the company you would like to join succeed.
If you don’t know how to write them, I invite you to read my article on how to write a resume and how to write a cover letter.
It is a good practice to prepare a personalized resume and cover letter for each job offer because this way you will increase your probability of being contacted for an interview.
But if you don’t want to do that, at least prepare a resume for each role you are interested in and a personalized cover letter for each position.
As the title of the resume, insert the one that is mentioned in the offer and highlight the 3 technical/human skills that make you the right applicant for the position.
Then, explain how you acquired them in the rest of your resume. Remember that any life experience, even the one that seems insignificant to you, can be useful to show that you are already competent.
These are the skills that will make recruiters curious about you.
If you need help with your resume and cover letter, you can take advantage of our custom resume and cover letter writing service.
4 – Become confident enough to succeed in your job interviews
Job interviews can be intimidating, but you can learn to feel comfortable during them.
If you have a clear understanding of your strengths and the company’s needs, you’ll be well on the way to success.
But most of the time that won’t be enough.
Why?
Because what will make the difference between you and the other applicants is interview practice and mental preparation for interviews.
Your ability to convince the recruiter depends on confidence and self-esteem.
To be confident, you need to prepare your presentation several times a day and you need to visualize yourself performing to the best of your abilities.
To develop self-esteem, you must treat yourself with kindness and love.
If you don’t have enough self-respect, the recruiter will think you are not the ideal candidate.
A career interview coach can help you prepare and succeed in your job interviews.
To finish with the tips, I invite you to read the article on how to organize your job search, in which I share other complementary tips to succeed in your work search.
Conclusion on the benefits of hiring a career coach
In this article, I shared some strategies you can apply to find your first job.
To take advantage of the skills of a career coach write to us now using our contact form or call us by phone or on WhatsApp at + 33 6 69 46 03 79.
Are you ready to take action?
Here are the rates for our coaching packages for individual clients:
- one month coaching package
- 3-month coaching package
- 6-month coaching package
- 1-year coaching package
Read this article in other languages
Français : Coach pour trouver un premier emploi
Italiano: Coach per trovare un primo impiego