There is a moment in everyone's life when you are not a student anymore and it is time to look for a job. This applies to all graduate students, it does not matter if you finished your bachelor, master or phd. After graduating, you can be lucky and get a job right away or you might need to search by yourself and deal with a long and hard process until you find your first and ideal job. 

Here are some not so well known tips that I learned through the process of job searching. 

1 - Comparing your career values to the company’s values and culture

Not having a match between my career values and the company’s ones can lead to a lot of frustration during the job and you will most likely end up being unsatisfied or quitting that job.

Having a clear idea of the different career values and which ones are the most and the least important for you is a great first step. Not only identifying them but taking some time to understand the reason behind it. For example, challenging work is a very important value for me, being stretched to achieve work tasks and having a problem- solving approach has to be a part of my job. Contrary, status is less important in the sense that I do not have the need to impress or gain respect of friends or family by the level of my work. So if I was looking for a job I would look for a company that values challenging myself more than one that cares about status. 

2 - Set long - term and short - term goals

Setting goals is always a good way for analyzing your growth and improvement during a period of time, but also a great way of choosing your next step based on those goals. For instance, if your goal is to get a lot of knowledge and learn as much as you can in a short period of time, then you should look for a job that includes training and maybe, for a smaller company, where you can have close contact with the other employees or a job that includes a lot of different tasks. However, if you have a more long term goal and you want to take your time to grow inside a company; Then a great idea would be to look for a job in a big company where you will learn with time and experience instead of by training and where there are always opportunities to grow in the hierarchy.

3 - Have a professional presence online

Nowadays internet presence is becoming more and more relevant. When recruiters search for you on the internet you should make sure that you are ranked well on google so they do not have to search too much. Additionally, make sure that you provide recruiters, employers and contacts with a strong, positive and professional impression of you as a candidate that would bring interest to them. This does not include only LinkedIn but also Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Pinterest. Make sure that your more personal or less professional profiles are private. 

The minimum you should have is a LinkedIn profile, this way recruiters can already get a lot of information such as where and what you study, your work experience, participation in voluntary programmes, etc.

I wish you the best of luck in your job searching process! Please reach out to me for any further information, I am happy to help.