The New Graduate Paradox: 3 Tips for Landing a Job Without Relevant Work Experience

You need skills to get a job. But how do you gain skills without a job? 

It’s a paradox that has tortured college gradates since the beginning of time (or at least the beginning of higher education).

New graduates get so much advice about their future—from inspirational commencement speeches to anecdotes from well-intentioned family members and friends. But this advice always seems to leap to the abstract and distant future, skipping right over graduates’ very pressing and immediate concerns: How do I get a job? How do I know if it’s the right job? What happens if it isn’t? And is the rest of my career dependent on the very next step I make or is there room for experimentation? 

The majority of graduates aren’t entering the working world with tangible job training. Students with liberal arts degrees, in particular, might be equipped with a wealth of knowledge, and the ability to think through complex problems and offer logical solutions, but it can be hard for them to demonstrate how all of this is relevant to, say, an account executive role in corporate America. Even those students who gained practical training while in college, like accounting or business majors, will run into job listings that seem to require skills that can only be obtained through relevant work experience.

The good news is employers know everyone has to start somewhere. They don’t expect graduates to be fully-developed specialists when they first enter the workplace. But with so many newbies flooding the employment market, the burden lies with you, new graduate, to make yourself stand out as the obvious hire for a position.

And from my years as a recruiter working with both the country’s top employers and jobseekers at every level, that’s where I can share some practical advice that graduates aren’t getting about landing a job now and setting themselves up for ongoing success.

1. Think about past skills—not past jobs. Hiring managers know that if you’re just graduating college, your resume is a mix of part-time jobs, internships and coursework. When reviewing your resume, they’re looking for signs that you developed skills that are relevant to their open role, and achieved success in the activities you took part in. It’s your job to help them get there. They might not understand why your serving job, bartending position, or marketing internship set you up for success in their junior account executive role. Make that narrative clear through show-not-tell examples that communicate your ability to “solve problems on the spot”, “juggle multiple tasks simultaneously,” “manage a team”, and “consistently break restaurant-wide sales goals.” All of these skills are highly relevant to many positions, across companies and industries.

1. Showcase big accomplishments. It’s worthwhile to highlight the day-to-day tasks you did in internships and part-time jobs ("answered phones," “built databases, ran food to tables”), but in order to stand out, showcase the skills, milestones and accomplishments that resulted from doing those tasks, and be specific ("back end research at internship led to account wins,” “hit all-time high sales record,” "raised X amount for Y charity").

1. You don’t have to land the perfect job on your first try. Many graduates are worried about “choosing the wrong job.” There’s no such thing. And many times even the jobs that you were pretty so sure were “right” end up being totally different than you’d imagined, so don’t sweat it. You might come to find, for instance, that working with fashion designers isn’t nearly as glamorous as you’d always envisioned—or that your law firm might actually require you to turn your soul (or at least your personal life) in at the door. Your first job(s) will help you build the skills you’ll need in the next ones, as well as identify things you do and don’t like about your job. This applies to culture too. As you move through your career, you’ll get a better sense of the type of environment and people you’re willing to surround yourself with for 40+ hours/week. All of this ultimately helps you refine your career path and build valuable skills that will help you move up the ladder into jobs (or fields) you like better.

Now go forth, Class of 2016, and get hired!