Finding Employment
How to prepare for and apply to jobs.
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TL;DR
- Before applying for a job, prepare a resume, a template cover letter, and rehearse five work experiences to share during an interview
- Increase your chances of discovering job opportunities by networking with personal connections and people you’re interested in learning from
- You can find and manage job opportunities online and leverage career centers for professional guidance
- Finding a job can be a frustrating process; however, every missed opportunity better prepares you for the job you do land
There is no right or wrong way to get a job. Nevertheless, several universal tools and strategies can increase your chances of success. It all starts with preparation.
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Job Finding Prerequisites
Before even applying for a job, you should prepare a resume, cover letter, and rehearsed interview responses.
Resume
A resume is a document designed to highlight your educational background, skills, and work experience as it relates to the job you are applying for. Your resume should summarize your professional accomplishments and differentiate you from other candidates. Writing a resume may seem intimidating, especially for those early in their careers. Luckily, a number of online resources can make the process easier.
For example, Harvard University’s Office of Career Services created a guideline for resume creation. In it, they describe key components of an effective resume and provide a template to download and repurpose. Harvard’s resume template segments candidate information into five sections: contact information, educational background, professional experience, leadership and activities, and skills and interests.
Early in your career, you should summarize your experience in a one-page resume. You don’t know how many resumes a recruiter or hiring manager has to read, but you can assume they will prioritize concise and clearly formatted documents. As your experience develops, however, your resume can grow beyond this standard size to further detail relevant responsibilities held across multiple jobs.
Writing an effective resume is a balancing act between being concise enough so that the recipient chooses to read it and detailed enough to adequately explain your qualifications. When writing your resume, it helps to evaluate your draft as a recruiter would. Let’s look at an example:
- Thomas E. Brady, Jr. included his contact information (redacted) at the top of his resume. Remember to include your email and phone number.
- Tom clearly outlined his resume with minimal formatting.
- Tom’s education section specifies academic achievements, the degree he earned, his year of graduation, and his GPA.
- Tom succinctly highlights his professional experience with different action verbs like exposed, programmed, and researched.
- Adding quantitative figures could clarify the results of his work. For example, a stronger third bullet could read, “Programmed inventory control and reporting systems for 100 institutional clients.”
- Tom wisely highlights his recent experience with more detail, summarizing earlier, less relevant experience with fewer bullets.
- Tom could benefit from differentiating his “Additional” section between leadership activities and skills and interests.
Would you invite Tom Brady to interview?
While you can use the Harvard template for any job application, resumes sometimes vary by industry and job type. To view additional templates and examples for specific career paths, visit the CareerOneStop website. Microsoft Word also provides many free, customizable resume designs as downloadable templates. If you’re unsure which to use, choose the easiest template to read at a glance.
For help writing your resume, refer to career centers, employing the services of a freelance writer through Fiverr, or using an online builder like Rezi.ai. When in doubt, look online for inspiration, and don’t be afraid to ask people you trust for feedback.
Cover Letter
Repurpose the content of your resume to write a cover letter, a complementary document used to explain how your background makes you uniquely qualified to succeed in the job you are applying for. Although most employers don’t require cover letters for job applications, they can help differentiate your submission by emphasizing how your experience will translate to on-the-job success.
Harvard’s Office of Career Services provides tips and resources for creating a cover letter. Their recommended format groups cover letter content into three paragraphs. The first paragraph introduces why you’re writing and how you heard about the position. The second paragraph explains why you are interested in the employer and role, and the third paragraph summarizes the content above.
Because you need to adjust a cover letter for every job application, some candidates elect to save themselves time and only submit their resume. However, even a basic cover letter can elevate your application in comparison to other candidates. To make this easier, consider creating a standard template you can adjust depending on the role. An example is below:
Grammar is especially important when creating job application materials. Employers quickly sort through the applications they receive, and the easiest way to reduce a pool of applicants is to remove those with resumes and cover letters containing typos, regardless of their content. Online editing tools like Grammarly can double-check punctuation and sentence structure.
Submit your resume and cover letter in whatever file format an employer recommends. If a recommended file type isn’t provided, submit Word and PDF versions of both documents. Doing so ensures the intended formatting of your materials appears as desired regardless of how the recipient opens the file. It also reduces the risk that edits are made as these documents exchange hands.
Interview Responses
With a resume and cover letter prepared, refer to your written experience to practice verbal responses to potential interview questions. Every interview is unique; however, employers across industries generally use the same format:
- Interviewer intro and job description
- Applicant intro and reason for applying
- 3+ questions determined by interviewer
- Applicant opportunity to ask questions
- Note: Suggested questions to ask an employer are outlined in Defining a Good Job
- Interviewer overview of next steps
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Good interviewing skills are universal
While you can’t predict exactly what questions an interviewer will ask, you can expect them to ask for a summary of your background and reasons for applying. Therefore, practice summarizing your resume in one minute or less. Focus on your educational background, work experience, and why the job is intriguing and a good fit for you. If you’ve already written a cover letter, use it as a reference to guide your introduction.
The remaining interview questions are unpredictable. While there are common interview questions you should be aware of and prepare for, you can’t control what an interviewer will ask. You can, however, control which experiences you choose to highlight and repurpose them for different questions.
One effective means of preparation is the STAR method, a structured approach for responding to behavioral interview questions by describing the situation, task, action, and result of a noteworthy work experience.
Start by explaining the organization's situation when you became involved, focusing on the problems yet to be solved. Next, describe the task you had to accomplish to address these problems and your subsequent actions. Lastly, describe the results of your involvement. What did you accomplish, and how did this help the organization reach its goals?
Be specific when using this method. Whenever able, include quantitative measures of success. If, for example, you use the STAR method to explain your experience working in a fast-paced environment as a barista, include the number of drinks you made every hour or the number of customers you served daily. Doing so shows you paid attention to performance and were aware of your impact.
Consider rehearsing five different situations to highlight your experience. Using Tom Brady as an example, he could convert the first bullet point of his experience – assistant to senior sales broker – into a canned interview response using STAR:
Situation: During my time as a summer intern at Merrill Lynch, I served as the assistant to the senior sales broker on the equities team.
Task: One of my key responsibilities assigned by this broker was ensuring they were adequately informed on market news and relevant press releases before client calls.
Action: To help them with this goal, I summarized key findings from the Wall Street Journal into ten bullet points distributed every morning.
Result: Not only did this exercise develop my understanding of the market and Merrill’s role in it, but the head of sales also found my research so helpful that they asked me to send the same bullets every morning to the entire sales team.
This hypothetical example could be repurposed for several potential interview questions related to his experience with research, responsibilities, working with management, teamwork, etc. Also, if he were asked a generic interview question about strengths or interests, this anecdote could expand on an otherwise simple answer.
A handful of prepared interview responses can’t be used for all interview questions, but they can be used for most. For questions that can’t be answered using a pre-rehearsed example, take your time to formulate an honest response. You can always ask the interviewer to repeat any question or, if all else fails, offer to follow up over email when you arrive at an answer. A good interview should be conversational, and conversations aren’t perfect.
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Practice interviewing for free on MyInterviewSimulator.com.
Where to Find Job Opportunities
