Megan Riksen (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Work Like a Laker podcast. I'm Megan Riksen and today my co-host is Grace Pushman. Hi Grace. Hi Megan. So today we are talking about some of the top tips we have for you all to help you maximize your job search in 2021. And we have four tips today. We're going to keep it really simple, get you in and out of here. And all of them are possible to do virtually. So we want to make sure that we're giving you some strategies to navigate the world as it is right now in this moment. So, before we get started, I did want to start with just laying a little bit of groundwork. We're not going to be covering some of the very first steps to a job search today. So the first step that I really think of in terms of a job search is what we would call quote unquote me-search, which is kind of a, you know, kitschy way to say, doing the research about yourself. What do you know about who you are? What are your values? What are your goals? What are your passions, et cetera, all of those things that are really foundational to a job search, because how are you going to know what you really want and what you're going to really be good at until you've explored those things and can, and can say that and can articulate it not only to yourself in your own mind, but can articulate it to someone else. So that's definitely the first step. And you know, the other would be getting your documents in order, which is something we work with students and alums on all the time in the career center, cover letters, resume writing, all of that good stuff. So of course those are the foundational things that we definitely want you to be working on, but we're, we're gonna, we're gonna cover some, some other practical tips today. So with that little piece of business, out of the way, Grace, would you like to kick us off with our first tip?

Grace Pushman (02:14):

Yes. So our first tip from the career center is to use the career guides that we have created as an office. So the career guides can be found through the career center website, which we will link, but it's gvsu.edu/careers on our website. You'll see a tab. So Students, and from there you can click Resources. And on our resources page, we have career guides which are for each undergrad major and they have just a sampling of information that can be really useful, such as examples of places that other people with that major have interned at or places where students have gotten a job once they graduated. And so let's say for example, you are a criminal justice major criminal justice is one of those majors where there's a lot you can do with that. You know, there's not just clear cut pathway. If you're a nurse, if you're a nursing major, chances are you're going to be a nurse when you graduate. Um but most of our majors don't work that way. So let's say you're criminal justice major, and maybe you're still not quite sure what you want to do with that degree. You can go on to this career guide. You can scroll through, find criminal justice as a major click the box on our career guides. And it will take you to the criminal justice page, which we'll have a small sample of organizations that past students with that major have interned at. And then it will also have a sample of places where students have gotten a job once they graduate. And we try to collect information specifically of places where students have gotten jobs without further education. We have a couple on there where we'll put like an asterix where maybe they needed, you know, maybe they got a law degree or something like that. But for the most part, we tried to choose a selection to show you what you could do when you graduate with the degree that you have with your bachelor's degree. So these can be really helpful just to give you a jumping off point of what could I even be, what organizations should I be, even be looking into? What are some of the job titles that I can hold? Because again, a lot of our majors are very flexible and there's a lot you can do with them. So it's really great to be able to check out these career guides and maybe make a list for yourself of the top five, that jump out to you, the top five job titles or the top five organizations. And that's a really good place to start when you're thinking about even where to look for a job or what to look for.

Megan Riksen (04:29):

Right? Exactly. I, I love those guides and I love that we've pulled real people examples, right? So it's not just a bland list that you're going to Google and find what can I do with a criminal justice major? No, it's what actual criminal justice grads from Grand Valley have done, which is really valuable yes. With, so

Grace Pushman (04:51):

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah. I was just gonna say with organizations like local organizations or organizations and on the East side of the state ones that you can actually point to and say, Oh, this is one that I could work at, you know, instead of more vague description. So yeah, I just wanted to add to that because it is great. I think that it's a Grand Valley resource that we've created.

Megan Riksen (05:11):

Absolutely. That's great. So that leads us really well to our second tip, which is once you know, the names of some of those companies, organizations, governmental agencies, whatever it is that you might be interested in working for, then you can start to dig into them a little bit more. So then the war, you know, the world, the internet is your oyster. The world is your oyster because you can, you can find so much information now online. Linkedin is a really great resource for that. So you can actually find companies and organizations on LinkedIn. They will have an actual page on LinkedIn where it shows you a ton of great information from the basics of what they sell or what they do to actually showing you these alums from your school work here. And you can actually start to find more alums who are working at an organization that you might be considering. And that's so helpful because then you're seeing job titles. You can see how they got from point a to point B, you know, how they got to their current position. That's all really, really valuable information that can keep you moving forward. Google also works well for doing that, that company and organization research. You might be reading reviews. You might be seeing what sort of news has been generated around that organization lately. And you can get a sense for, is this a place where I actually might want to work? And then my recommendation is always to create a list of those companies that you can keep coming back to because then maybe you are using LinkedIn to reach out to some alums who work there. So you can get some additional details, maybe in your research. You're finding companies that you've literally never heard of. So often we have, you know, many of oftentimes the larger companies in mind are places where we, you know, have a family member that works. And those are the organizations and companies that we know. But I have found in this job doing this job as a career advisor, that there are so many hidden gems companies nobody's heard of, but that are doing really, really well and have some excellent positions and opportunities. So I'm using LinkedIn using Google and then using other people alums, especially to really find those places that might be the best fit for you. And I'll put a call out for our January podcast episode which was called how to network when you have no network where we go into really a lot of detail of how you actually go about reaching out to some of those alums, some of the strategies for that.

Grace Pushman (07:49):

Yeah, those are all so great for gathering information. And actually tip three is another place where you can gather more information on different companies and that's handshake. So Handshake is the tool that grand Valley uses to connect students to employers. It's also the tool that we use for students to make appointments with their career advisors. So if you haven't been on Handshake, please do familiarize yourself with it. It's really nice. Because you just use your Grand Valley logins to get in. So it's like one less password you have to create and memorize. But Handshake is great because there's so many tools on there that I think at first glance, people don't realize. I think when you log in, you say, okay, I can make an appointment with my advisor. Oh, and I see there's a jobs tab. And I think that's what a lot of people focus on first, which the job tab is great. When you click it, it'll pull up a list of jobs for you to look at. And it does try to choose ones that will be most relevant to you. So if you have filled out your profile on handshake, you have your major in there. That should be automatically in there, but like all of that stuff, it will help to determine it will help your feed to be more specific to what you're looking for. So think of like Netflix, like the more you use Netflix, the better your feed is of recommended TV shows and movies. That's how handshake works as well. So the more info you have in there, the more you use handshake, the better your feed will be. And so that's one aspect is that jobs tab where you can just kind of scroll through and see who's hiring, you could also use filters on there. Like you can filter by internship, location, keywords, things like that. But one piece that I think is less intuitive that I don't know that everyone knows about first glance is when you click the jobs tab, there's a second tab that pops up. Well, there's a few, but there's one that says employers. And if you click that, you can search for employers through handshake. So let's say through your research of going to the career guides and then maybe using Google and LinkedIn, and you found an organization that you really like, and you want to check out more about, you can go to handshake, go to the jobs tab, then employers tab, and you can look up that employer and you can see a lot of great information such as reviews from other students who have worked there. You can look at information about what the interview process is like. You can see if they have any current job postings on handshake. And I think another neat feature again, that is not necessarily the first thing people notice when they're on handshake, is that it will also show you other students who have worked at that organization. And then you can message the students through handshake and ask them what their experience was like. I think this can be especially helpful when you're not sure about an organization's, like, let's say maybe you were on indeed looking for jobs and you see a position that maybe looks too good to be true. Or maybe it's a company you've never heard of before. And you're not sure if it's legit. I think one way to check in there are a lot of ways to check, but one way to check is to go on handshake, go to that employers tab, look for it, to see if it's there. That doesn't guarantee it's not a scam, but we do try to vet our employers on handshake. And so there's a better chance it's legit. And then plus you can look to see if there are reviews. Maybe you could reach out to a student who's worked there just to double check if it's legitimate. So I think it can also be very helpful. And I will say if you're worried about job scams, we do have a podcast about that that you can check out as well. So that one we've already recorded and it is published. So you can learn more about jobs games, but handshake is a, is a really neat tool. Oh, you can also favorite employers on Handshake or five. I don't know if it's favorite or follow Megan, do you remember what they call it?

Megan Riksen (11:20):

Goodness. I feel like there's a favorite and follow feature. And now I'm forgetting, which is attached to which.

Grace Pushman (11:26):

Something like that where you could get updated if they post jobs and everything. And then also one small other tip I wanted to say about handshake is that you do want to probably check your settings and your on your handshake profile to make sure that you're getting notifications from Handshake. So they will say send emails. They also, I think send text messages and some other creative ways to get ahold of you to let you know when there are job openings that you might be interested in. So if you are in an active job search, I would double check to make sure you're getting notifications from handshake and also to make sure that your profile is visible to the community so that other students can reach out to you. And employers can reach out to you too. So definitely be utilizing Handshake for your job search process.

Megan Riksen (12:10):

Absolutely. Yeah, there, there is a lot in there. I know.

Grace Pushman (12:14):

I feel like there's a ton I miss, but there's just, there's a, there's a lot. And you can meet with one of us to learn more too, if you wanted, if you had questions about handshake or wanted more knowledge about it.

Megan Riksen (12:25):

Definitely. but it's it really is a great resource. Like LinkedIn is wonderful, but handshake, I feel like you can even, it's an even more tailored experience a little bit because it's so many of our employer partners who are on there who are already interacting with grand Valley, who know grand Valley students who know our programs, those sorts of things. So it's a, yeah, it's a great, great spot to go. So our next tip, you, you might be thinking, okay, this is a lot of information I'm supposed to be doing all this research on all these different sites and somehow keeping it all together. So tip number four is get organized. It's a huge part of a job search because if you don't, you're gonna find yourself spinning your wheels and finding great information, and then not knowing where you put that finding a great job, not remembering to apply for it, finding a great alum to reach out to, and just never getting around to it because you didn't write it down. So my, my thought my advice would be have an Excel sheet or a Google sheet. Some sort of, you know, probably a digital format is going to work best where you can have different tabs. So maybe one of the tabs is yep. Here's the jobs I'm going to apply for. Right? Here's, here's the things that are top of my list. Maybe the second is kind of what I was talking about in tip number two, here's the companies and organizations that I'm really excited about. These are my top 30 companies where I know I want to work. And so I'm going to get really organized and make sure I'm doing my due diligence to look them up on LinkedIn, to Google them, to see what I can find about them in handshake, and then to do the necessary networking, to hopefully make some connections at each of those organizations. Maybe you have a tab where then you start keeping track. Here's all my contacts, all the people that I want to keep in the loop on my job search, you know, you might have a conversation with someone in February, they don't have any opportunities at their organization. Two months later, you might still be looking for something. And you reached back out to that person, not to just say like, Hey, any jobs there? Can you hook me up, but to just kind of check back in and you never know right. Where those, where those kind of conversations can go. Maybe another of your tabs is key words. I find that you know, specific key words are related to the types of jobs you're looking for are really helpful in a job search when you're using search engines and things like that. When you're, you know, reading through people's profiles, having those keywords to use is, is really beneficial. But yeah, overall getting, getting super organized so that you have a system for how you're going to follow up with people. So you have a system for when you're going to check the websites of the organizations that you're the most interested in, so that you don't feel like you're kind of just meandering around, but you feel like you're really tackling this job search proper process with purpose.

Grace Pushman (15:24):

Yes. Yes. And I think another great thing about creating, getting organized like that and having a list for example, of the organizations you're most interested in is that it can be a reminder to, as well to check their websites for jobs postings. Because I think often people are looking at LinkedIn, indeed handshake, but not all places post to those sites. Some places just will have the opening on their website. And so if you're not checking that you're not, you're not going to know about it. So I think, you know, Megan's suggestion of making a list of your top employers. That's wonderful. And then you want to be checking their websites for those job postings, maybe on a weekly or biweekly or bimonthly basis to see if they have anything that comes up. So we will move on to tip number five, which is a bonus step that we added in last minute here. And it is to attend virtual career events. And I say virtual, because right now most things are virtual, but hopefully someday in the near future, we will have in-person as well. But just the 10 career events and you can find out what's coming up through handshake again. So there's next to the jobs tab is a tab that says events and you will see a list of events that are coming up and you can see some that are put on by employers. And if you're interested at all in that employer, even if it's just a passing interest it's worth going, because this is a great way to get your foot in the door, to network, to learn some great information about that company. Um and then also you can see events that are put on by grand Valley where often we will have multiple employers come to something. So for example, we have a career for every semester where we have 100 to 200 employers who come and who are hiring across all majors. And so not only is it a way for you to network and find a job, but it's also a way for you to explore job opportunities and what's actually out there right now. So I think it's a great place to, I think it's something that not everyone takes advantage of. I will say my first real job was through a career fair. I don't know if you ever went to one as a student, I was a Grand Valley student. I went to the Out of State teacher fair and that's where I got my first job. So I'm a, I'm a huge proponent of them. And I think that you know, there are a lot that you could take advantage of, especially now that they're virtual. Because it's easier to go to more, I think, because you can do it from home.

Megan Riksen (17:39):

It is, and you get like individualized conversations right away with organizations without needing to wait in a line and you get, you know, sometimes 10 minutes with someone which is like gold to have that built in networking that you just had to show up for. So, yeah. Great. So I, I think we covered our four plus one tips today. And hopefully it gave you some food for thought. Maybe you have a couple additional things on your to-do list when you think about your job search and, and hopefully we have listeners who are at all stages of the job search, right. Whether you're in that me-search stage or you're just figuring out what your values are and what you're excited to do in the future or that you're graduating this semester and you're ready to really start acting on all of these. So we hope you enjoyed the tips today. Thank you so much for listening and we hope you tune into a future episode soon.