Tips on Finding a Job After Graduation – Executive Search.

To All the Recent College Grads – What is Your Plan???

This blog is not your prototypical New Grads – “congratulations and seize the day” mumbo jumbo. This is a call to action for all recent college grads to say – “Congratulations and My Condolences” school is over and now it’s time to join the working world. What is your plan?

During this time, every year, I speak with a lot of recent grads or students who are in the middle of finals and a majority of our conversation is focused around building a plan for their job search – so here are some tips on how to get started:

• Define where you want to go in your career. If you are speaking with me, you are looking to get your career started in sales and business development. The role you take right out of school will not define you, but the role should help you to begin building the necessary skill sets to get you where you need to go. If you are money motivated, you like a high energy/high activity culture, and you like your compensation directly linked to you success in the work place – you want sales. Just to make one thing clear – if you do not want to cold call into businesses – you do not want a career in sales – period.
• Define what kind of sales role you want. Do you want to be inside or outside? Do you want to be autonomous or do you thrive in a team based environment? Do you want to be in a big corporate culture or do you want to be in a flexible, small, start up environment?
• Answering the above questions will help you define what industry verticals will be a good fit for you.
  • If you want to be on the inside, in a team based environment, working the phones and conducting web demos – you are going to focus on technology sales. Software, hardware, interactive services. The titles you should be looking at are Business Development Representative, Lead Generation, or Account/Sales Executive/Executive Search. These roles are going to allow you to make a high volume of calls, speak with a wide variety of key decision makers, qualify potential clients and sometimes close your own deals. Even if you are not closing deals, you will be part of a team that is going to show you how it is done and when you have proven yourself – you will earn a promotion.
  • If you want to be outside, knocking on doors, autonomous, self starter – you are looking to get into B2B sales or Medical. B2B sales could be advertising, office equipment/consumables, or services. Medical would be pharma, medical device/consumables, capital equipment. These roles will give you an opportunity to manage a territory, conduct face to face appointments, and build strong interactive relationships.

Of course, take the above descriptions with a grain of salt – these are general descriptions but don’t use them as rules, use them as guidelines. Once you define what interests you – get out there and start hunting interviews. Talk to everyone, go out to company’s offices and meet – see what the culture is like, do you like the office space, etc. After all, you are going to be spending 40+ hours/week there – you have to make sure it smells ok to you.

If you are a recent college graduate and you would like to start taking a look at what sales opportunities could be available to you – visit us at www.treelineinc.com and Join Our Network Executive Search. If you are already in sales and you know a recent college grad – send this blog to them and tell them to get a job.