For all of you recent grads or soon-to-be grads, you know that today’s career landscape is highly intimidating. How do you navigate a job search with ease, and ultimately success? We talked with our friend Hannah Morgan, founder and CEO of CareerSherpa.net to get some tips on making the task a little bit easier.
NextStepU: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your career.
Hannah Morgan: I’ve dedicated my career to finding diverse ways of helping job seekers. I used to work in Human Resources, and eventually ended up working for a national outplacement firm. At that job, I trained job seekers. That’s what I love doing — helping job seekers understand how to be successful. Currently, I’m the owner of CareerSherpa.net. I also work at the Simon School of Business, advising part-time students. My book, The Infographic Resumé, is coming out in August.
NSU: How can students who are still in school best prepare themselves for career success?
HM: One of the things I regularly advocate to students is to get involved in campus activities. Whether it’s Greek life, student government, or whatever — they need to be involved in activities that give them the opportunity to work in leadership roles and understand how organizations function. It’s the closest they can get to having a job without actually working. Students should also be thinking about getting work experience or an internship. It can sometimes take effort to find an internship or summer job, but they need real-life work experience. Companies and employers value real-life work experience over college education.
NSU: What are some of the best resources out there for those who are looking for work?
HM: Depending on where they are geographically, job seekers should be looking for a networking group or a job club to become affiliated with, especially if they haven’t job searched before. When you get together with a bunch of job seekers, you learn how interviews work. You get to hear about experiences other people have had. Every city has these networking groups. It’s a great way to sponge in a lot of information in a short amount of time.
NSU: If you could only give one piece of advice to a job seeker, what would it be?
HM: Make sure a company knows how hiring you would benefit them. A company doesn’t care about where you went to school, or what degrees you have. They care about what value you will bring to their company, department, and team. When interacting with a company, make sure you position yourself in a way that somebody would eagerly respond to. Talk about your experience in terms that would benefit the company.
> Want to get more advice from Hannah Morgan? If you’re in the Rochester, N.Y. area, you can partake in one of her personalized career preparatory classes at the NextStepU Center in Victor, N.Y. Find out more at NextStepUCenters.com.
