While personal safety during social distancing and COVID is the first priority, it is also time to be present in the current situation, it is also essential to create and plan the future.
Below will give a few ideas. However, full resume and career coaching is available and includes full career assessments, Tatori coaching, innovative resume building, networking, and more.
Now is the time to shift your resume and job market strategy for a changing COVID-19 world.
Unless you are applying to an Amazon warehouse, grocery store delivery or something similar, today may not be the right moment to apply for a new job. However, in the coming weeks, opportunity will abound and those that are ready will land jobs quickly. But only to those who are ready, polished, and first in line.
With unemployment rates sky rocketing due to COVID-19 pandemic, now is the time for young adults to think and prepare differently. While this level of a pandemic has never affected the United States before, we can learn from historical past around how to navigate the change in a new and emerging job market to come.
The challenge is simple.
Many people have been laid off. People with experience and education will be applying for every job available.
Your job is to be ahead of the curve. Grow yourself. Grow your knowledge. Network. Be ready to apply. Be ready to take advantage.
Top employers look for a combination of prior education and experience. Young adults are still working on their education and don't have much experience. Or, school just isn't your gig, but you want to work!
So, it's a catch 22. You can't get a job because you don't have experience and you can't get experience because you don't have a job. Or, in some cases, you have experience but ended the last job poorly so you can't use the reference.
Having watched young people in this paradox for years, it seems like they will set their career and potential incomes back 3 to 8 years in a place of being stuck if they can't find the grit to overcome this challenge.
To overcome this catch 22, you can't just do the old school thing of, "browsing job boards, using a black and white resume, and respond to online job applications." This will only lead to being frustrated with your job and being underpaid.
For those with the right strategy, passion, and willingness to do the work, you can break into nearly any job industry that doesn't require a license. Be warned; it will take twice the work. If you want a better career and to be paid what you want, then you must perform better than others.
Job coaches can help you find the right strategies, connections, and action plans. But here are a few ideas to get you started:
1. Clean up your social media and do it now. This is simple. Most employers are doing social media checks and some are hiring third party companies to do deep searches including the dark web. Do you really need that picture on your social media?
2. Do free work. That's right. Find a company that you really want to work for and ask to work for free. In exchange, you want to be able to use them as a job reference, experience builder, etc.
Excuse me? You’re too good to offer your time and expertise with no pay? Get over yourself.
Nearly every college major requires internships in order to graduate. It's not just a right of passage, it's a way to break into the industry of your choice. Create the right opportunity for yourself and you'll create a resume building experience that will ultimately lead to a real paycheck.
3. Add to your resume "other experiences" like volunteer work for a non-profit but you focus on your passion. For example, if your passion Digital Marketing and you also like working with animals, perhaps volunteering at the local zoo but asking if you can also work on the Digital and Social Media for the zoo to get more experience and to build your resume becomes a win/win. Adding international voluntarism and language experience in the same way as above, only makes your resume stand out more.
4. Be the person you would hire. It's simple. Most young employees don't take work seriously at all. They wake up just in time to get out the door. Barely show up on time. Are more focused on lunch breaks and leaving at 4:55 p.m. instead of after 5 p.m. They don't ask for feedback. They don't ask questions about what they can do to better the company. They focus on the company gossip and then wonder why they never get pay raises.
Imagine being the owner or CEO of the company. Who would you want to hire. Be that person.
5. Build a unique resume. Watch the youtube video above. It's less than 17 minutes long. What else are you doing right now? Seriously, many young adults today have the attention span of three minutes. And yet, in a job, you will be expected to work for 8 plus hours straight per day.
6. Master interviewing skills. Nearly every time I coach a young adult about job searches, they pretty much reject the idea of practicing different types of interviews. The reason is simple. No one wants to do something they are bad at. And, once we start to practice job interviewing, it is obvious that they are not good at it and that's why they want to avoid it at all cost. People who give TED Talks practice. So you should you.
If you want to interview well, you must practice. You must have a coach. Olympians have coaches and so should you.
Bottom line, if you can't get past the job interview with a good impression, you won't get the job.
In the end of COVID-19, the early bird will get the worm. The person who works now, will get the job.
Randy Oakley