When should a college student that will be entering his senior year in September realistically start looking for a post-graduation full-time job? Graduation is June 2017.
Start Fall semester/quarter. I know several friend’s daughters and sons, that waited until Winter/Spring to begin the job hunt and found slim pickings. Majority of entry level positions will be snatched up early on. Also look at companies that will offer an Internship your Senior year which would lead to a job after graduation. My older son will be graduating also June 2017 and he has already started beefing up his resume in anticipation of job hunting this Fall.
Happy Hunting
It depends highly on the type of work you are looking to find. If you know what you want to do (generally speaking) after graduation, then use this timeline:
August - Update your resume with your latest experience, and research your school’s on-campus recruiting policies and timelines
As soon as you get back to campus - Make an appointment with your career services folks to review and critique your resume; be prepared to fundamentally rewrite it!
September - OCR will start this month, so be prepared to start applying. Cover letters are easy to copy/paste… don’t do that. Take the time to write a cover letter uniquely for every company you apply to. It is cumbersome and painful, but it will help you to stand out.
If you are very lucky, you will secure a job before Thanksgiving. It is not overly optimistic to suggest that you can have a job lined up by January 1.
Most importantly, do NOT approach job applications like you approached college applications. College applications have quite a bit of objective review, and a well-packaged application can help get you over the hump. You can have reach schools, target schools, and safety schools such that you will be assured that you will get into at least some as long as you apply to three.
Job applications are completely different. Where top schools offer admission to 6-10% of students, top companies offer jobs to fewer than 1% of applicants (just saw that Google gave offers to 1 out of every 428 applicants). There is no such concept as a “safety” job that pays what you would expect to earn in business post-college. As a result, you can easily apply to 25 or more jobs and not even get an interview. Once you start applying, you should expect to continue applying until you accept a firm offer. This means that if a hiring manager says to you, “You’re a lock. I’m just drafting up the offer for you,” you should not assume that you will actually get that offer. Once you receive a firm offer, go through negotiations, get a final, firm offer, and accept it, only THEN should you drop out of contention elsewhere and stop applying.
Happy hunting!
You must make up a Linkedin profile with an appropriate photo before you job hunt. Start on it now.