In this episode of Careers & Coffee, Liz and Dan discuss communicating with employers, and give some advice on cleaning up social profiles when looking for a job fresh out of high school or college.

LinkedIn tips

Finding your first job out of college

All right. Good morning, Liz. We're back. Cruising coffee

episode number seven.

Good morning, Dan. How's it going?

Good. I'm on my third cup of coffee, I think this morning. So

you're rearing to go then

Yeah. Yeah. Feeling good right now feeling good for sure. Well,

let's dive right in. Today, with, we're in middle of May

right now, high school graduations coming up college

graduations. We want to touch on what high school and college

graduates can expect as they enter the workforce, and

especially in regards to communication styles. So, Liz,

what advice would you have for recent high school and college

graduates?

Yeah, so I'll probably focus more on college grads, as you're

entering the workforce, you know, hopefully you've interned

or you kind of got a sense of what kind of role that you're

looking for. But if you're still in the job search as a recent

grad, which quite possibly you could be with COVID. And

everything, I think one thing to keep in mind is communication.

So through the hiring process, it's painful for everyone,

right, it's painful for job seekers, because they apply and

send their resume off into the ether, hoping someone will

respond back and may or may not find some communication back

from the place that they've applied to for some time. And

then it's hard for hiring managers to who may reach out to

a candidate trying to get a screening call set up and not

get, we're not getting anywhere with. So if you've put your

email address as your primary kind of contact info on your

resume, make sure you're monitoring, I mean, it's just

simple, like, make sure you're monitoring your email. And I

just think about sometimes, you know, when we're communicating

now, we use a lot of different methods, whether it's like

Facebook Messenger chat, you know, Instagram or whatever it

is that we're we're communicating with people. But

hiring managers may have not caught up to that style, that,

that kind of like in style way of communicating. And so you

just have to respect the fact that they're sitting at a

computer all day, and they're trying to blast off as many

emails as they can to kind of keep the communication flow

going. So I would say email is probably going to be your

primary method of getting contact from recruiter. And so

make sure you know, if you don't see it, coming into your inbox,

checking your spam filter, making sure you're adding but

company, like like if it was the Gazette, you would add at the

Gazette to your authorized list, you know, in your contacts, and

your email provider, just just simple stuff like that, just to

make sure you don't miss those opportunities as they're coming

your way.

Sure. And so, what would you say if email is going to be probably

the primary way of communicating? What would you

say would be a good response time from a candidate to an

employer?

Like for a candidate to reach out to an employer?

Well, if they if they do get emails from a potential

employer, for, say, an interview? How long do you

think, you know, how often should a candidate be checking

their email,

I would say you need to check it every day. And maybe multiple

times a day, if you're if you're truly on the job search, because

the sooner you apply your reply to that email from that

recruiter, the more encouraged they're going to feel that

you're still interested in that role. And the more likely that

they're going to add you to that shortlist for a manager to

review. It just there's just a flow that that that applications

need to go through. And I'm talking more at like, you know,

kind of a long term career type job. If it's a, if it's like, if

we're looking for seasonal work, and it's a summer job, maybe the

phone is a better fit, right, like so maybe making sure your

phone numbers clear. So if you're going to be working for a

retail place a small business, that business owner may want to

reach out to you by phone to do a phone screen, so maybe make

sure your phone numbers prominent, just kind of depends

on what kind of work that you're looking for. But if it's really

kind of that career path type job, I would suggest, you know,

make sure your LinkedIn is up to date and your email and all that

stuff. I mean, these are all things that your college

recruiter, your college career center is gonna have to coach

you through. Um, but just just trying to keep that top of mind.

Yeah, good stuff. Let's switch gears just a bit here. You

mentioned LinkedIn. And I'd like to get your input on what are

some things that maybe a recruiter might be looking for

in a LinkedIn profile or other you know, social media, either

to advance a candidate forward or maybe move a candidate back.

Again, this is gonna be more for that career type pass. So it may

not be like a manufacturing role or something like that it might

be more of a kind of an office type role. Simple things you

could do. And we have resources on quarter careers for this just

basically how to get your LinkedIn profile set up for

success. And there's a lot of little tweaks that you can do.

And it's changing all the time, you know, like, what is best

practice for LinkedIn. And so YouTube is really good fit to

say, hey, like, if you just googled in YouTube, how to set

up my LinkedIn profile as a recent college grad, I'm sure

there's gonna be like 10 videos that show you what you should be

doing. But simple things like making sure you're, you've

claimed your URL, so that your URL in LinkedIn isn't just a

string of numbers, but actually has your name, have some kind of

story about your career path and your profile. And that's, that's

kind of easy to see some examples of that we have a will

link in the show notes to our blog post about this, but you

can see some examples of what a storyline is. And it could just

be like telling you the story about what your career path is

what you're trying to reach, that can help recruiters

understand what you're looking for and matching you to best

fit.

Add one thing I would add to that is maybe a professional

picture. So especially on LinkedIn, which is you know,

viewed as more of a professional social network where you might

be communicating with, you know, potential employers or

colleagues having a professional picture. Rather than, you know,

maybe the one of you and your friends out on a Friday night or

something might be a good idea, especially for LinkedIn.

Yeah, and if you can't afford to have a professional picture

taken, you can just create a simple backdrop for yourself.

Put your put your phone on a stand of some kind and set a

timer and just take, you know, do candid camera for until you

get a good shot and put that up there. But yeah, that's

definitely something that shouldn't be part of it.

Yeah, I've actually used a tool in the past, it's called removed

at bg. So you could almost just take a selfie, and it removes

the background behind you. Which might also be, you know, kind of

a quick way to get a decent photo of yourself taken and

yeah, even have a background. Right. So just a white

background.

Yeah, that's a great tip. And I think even Instagram has a new

filter like that, too. So so there's a lot of resources out

there for you to get everything looking up to snuff, it's never

been easier to, to manage our our online profiles. Okay, so,

Dan, what would you recommend for someone to do with their

social profiles before they apply for a job?

turning the tables asking me question. I think just cleaning

it up and looking back, especially as you you know,

maybe you are a recent college grad, and you don't, you might

not remember what you posted, you know, senior year of high

school, or something. And maybe it's not even anything too bad,

or something that you don't view as bad, but somebody that

potentially may be hiring you for a job might look at it. And

so that's kind of weird. So I would just look back and make

sure things are PC. Especially on LinkedIn, you know,

obviously, you know, Instagram, Facebook, there's, there's

different things you can do with your settings to make it you

know, if you do have some, you know, anything in there that you

may not want other people to see, you know, you can change

your profile settings to make sure you know, maybe only your

friends can can see your profile, but I would definitely

just go through everything, make sure you look professional, and

don't have anything. Maybe too outlandish on there.

So, yeah, those are good tips. I mean, you know, setting your

privacy settings courses important on any social profile.

But knowing knowing that you you probably I mean, at this rate,

you've probably lived most of your life online. So that's not

the case for me, thank God. But that that is something to think

about. So that's a good tip, Dan to like, really kind of look at

your history, and maybe there's some things you just you don't

even need those posts anymore.

Yeah, and I guess I would also add to that, I think it's okay

to show a part of your life right. I mean, you know, like I,

I play golf, and I paddleboard and do things like if you go

through my Instagram, you're probably gonna see photos of

that. And I think you know, stuff like stuff showing what

you're interested in. I think that that's good for an employer

to see to kind of see like, Okay, this is somebody that you

know, is interested in these things or Maybe he has attended

these conferences or, you know, has has these passions so when I

when I, when we say PC, we don't, I think we're just

meaning more of like, anything that might look a little strange

to a potential hiring employer.

Okay. All right. So what are we talking about today, we're gonna

have some resources in the show notes about LinkedIn. So there's

various steps that you can take to upgrade your profile on

LinkedIn to make it really stand out your recruiter. And then the

other thing is just making sure your communication that you're

open to the communication methods you've provided in your

resume, and making sure that you're monitoring those. And you

can probably do something like If This Then That to kind of

highlight those things and notification, notification, no,

no. Notify yourself of when an important email comes in. If

you're not used to, you know, continuously checking your

personal email. If that's not part of your daily practice,

maybe you can set yourself up for success with some some tools

and digital tools.

Yeah, good advice. Okay,

get it. Get it out there guys. There's plenty of jobs and if

you are interested in getting some help on like, Hey, I'm not

sure. Just shoot us an email, contact us contact at quarter

careers. COMM be happy to help you out.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thanks, Liz. That'll do for

today. Cheers. Cheers person, Bobby. We'll see you next time.