Our F&M: Franklin & Marshall College

It’s been a long ride, uh? Defining your next plans after graduation is a methodical process, but can lead to great roads! After taking exams, interviews, or any other steps required for a position or opportunity, it is important to thank all people involved so far. Gratitude is essential for your inner well being, and to attract people with great intentions as well.

Finally, feedback and outcomes of your interviews can take a while to come back to you, so it’s important to keep trying different opportunities and not let yourself down. Keeping a high energy state is beneficial because one should meet a boss or supervisor’s energy level. Always impress people with your enthusiasm!! Then, analyze your results. Did you get any offers or acceptances? If not, feel proud for the process and learning you just went through and repeat it with adaptations!

Continuing the series! 3 - Preparing for interviews/exams/(any other evaluation of your skills and abilities)

After contacting people on your field and getting to know their experiences and career path, you will be very likely to hear about opportunities, and even get referrals to them! So, after hearing about and applying to good opportunities on your field, what’s to be done? Preparing for whatever evaluation you have on your way :) The best for that is contact more people (I know, I know.., but it helps!) and ask for materials and outlines for a study plan, which will all going to prepare you fully since it came from the actual people from your field.

It’s been a week since our first post of this series, and it’s time for us to move on to the next steps! 2 - Networking

In my opinion, this is probably the most important towards find and securing a job (or achieving whatever other goal). That’s because at this point you’ve done 95% of what’s required to get this next step (all the years of schooling + all the professional and volunteering experiences), and now you are APPLYING to show such skills and abilities.  Thus, networking is essential to find how/when/whom to show your talents. An alumni might inform you the best position to get into a company and refer you to a recruiter, in the same way a trustee, mentor, or a completely unrelated person always has many contacts that can be very helpful. Now, how does one start networking? In my experience, participating in college events as much as possible together with informing the college staff and administration about your plans and ask for their input are the two simplest ways to start. Of course, Linkedin and online job related searches really help as well. It’s always a good strategy to reach out online (emailing is always safe), and try to schedule quick 20 min calls to introduce yourself and learn about your contacts background and current position.

After that, there are always opportunities for “cold emailing” as well. Find someone who you have no indirect or direct contact with, but you think can really help your plans in some way, and make the contact via a quick and direct email. This emails must be very very short, have a clear and catchy Subject, and be very clear in how your contact can help you, and why should they. It’s hard sometimes to talk about yourself in such a short space, but try your best and highlight what you think will be best seen by your contact. Again, a couple of emails exchanged and try to move to a quick call!

Since I have been preparing and taking many steps towards my plans after graduation, Carly Mankus (my amazing boss/colleague from the Admissions Office) and I thought it would be a great idea to post a guide/diary of my actions towards getting a job for after graduation. So, I hope this series can help current/upcoming seniors :) 1- Meeting with OSPGD (Office of Student Post-Graduate Development)

It’s essential to meet with some sort of professional advisor to help you trim down your options and define what is the best plan for you (based on your skills, experiences, preferences, and future plans). In my case, we agreed that pursuing a full time position in tech is a great goal and it makes sense long term since eventually I want to be an entrepreneur and will need some experience to  succeed. Then, once you have your goals defined it’s time to act on your resume (or any documents/portfolio you might need for you career). We discussed some points, format, and objective of my resume, and I was responsible to constantly change and report back until we agreed that it was polished and ready to be sent to various recruiters and applications.