4 Career Moves You Need to Make Right Now
Be graduation-ready with these four tips, and start your career off right.
It's one thing to get ready for college, but have you thought about what you're going to do after you've graduated? At schools like Centennial College, the focus is on giving you the skills you need to succeed in the career you want. It's up to you to take those tools and turn them into a career, and to do that, you'll want to hit the ground running. Here's what you can do the second you start school to get your career going.
1. Work on your resumé
If you haven't started writing a resumé, now's the time to create one, even if you're not planning on working while in school. If you're not sure how to get your resumé ready, most Centennial College programs include a career portion that talks about it, and if not, we have Career Centre resources that you can use.Here's a quick tip to help: if you're worried about the fact that you're not finished school, just list your education with an "anticipated graduation date" when you think you'll be finished.
2. Manage your online presence
The people who will hire you will probably look at your social media, so you need to make sure it's workplace friendly. This might mean cleaning up your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram! Also, if you don't have a LinkedIn profile already, create one, and keep it up to date.
Meanwhile, if you're in a program where you're producing work that you can show off (and really, that's most of Centennial College's programs), it's worth setting up a personal website. There's plenty of free web hosts out there, and making something simple and clean to display your resumé, profile, and pictures, videos or text of the work you've done in school can make you look better to employers. Plus, you can put the link on your resumé.
3. Research the jobs that are out there, and think outside the box
Even if you're not actively job-hunting, take the time to investigate what sorts of job opportunities your career can get you before you graduate. More importantly, you should research some less common job types and locations. Maybe you'll find something you weren't expecting.
You could go into business for yourself, and if you've got skills or ideas you think people want, start your own business and become self-employed. It's something Centennial supports, with programs like ACCEL.
Outside of just figuring out what kinds of jobs you can get, you should also take some time to figure out what you need to do to make your career happen when school's done. There are plenty of tools available to you, but you need to know what actions to take. With that in mind...
4. Make good use of your college's resources
A good college will have resources in place to help you get your career rolling. Centennial College's Career Services department can start preparing you for the job hunt right away. When it comes to creating or editing your resumé, we offer workshops and critiques. Speaking of workshops, they can teach you the ins and outs of the job hunt, how to ace interviews, and even offer practice interview sessions.
At the same time, the college itself holds several industry job fairs throughout the year (you can check here for when they happen), as well as special networking events, letting you work on getting into the industry. The resources are all there, and making use of them before you graduate will help you enter the job market ready to get hired, and start the next phase of your life.
The sooner you start thinking about your career after graduation, the better. Take advantage of these four tips to ensure you're career ready as soon as possible.