If you are in college, the biggest question that will come to your mind after graduating is how ready you are for kick-starting your career. Building a professional reputation is a continuous process and extends even after you have joined somewhere. You will find that it helps a lot while you are looking for promotion or trying to switch companies.
The interesting thing is that while there is a lot of ways you can harm your employability; it takes a lot to enhance your employability. The job market is volatile and immensely competitive. There is no space for mistakes and complacency. If you are not tough to establish your authority over your dominion, someone else will take your place.
Here I have mentioned 7 steps through which you can improve your employability to a great extent:
- Study hard to get good grades
Studying hard never harmed anyone and you can expect to get good grades, which will help you in increasing the face value of your resume. Suppose you go for an interview and there is another candidate who has fared equally, then the interviewer will check what advantages are there in the resume. If you have higher grades than the other candidate, it will increase your chances of getting the job.
Getting good grades also helps you to be in a better disposition among your classmates and get the professors impressed. This might help to get referrals from them when you are looking for jobs or even they might introduce you to someone who can give reference to the company you have applied for a job.
- Improve your communication skills
Communication in professional term not only means face-to-face conversations but also e-mails and phone calls. Professional communication is totally different from the casual conversation that you have with your friends. If you do not know how to reply to a job interview call or apply through email for a job opening professionally, it may affect your candidature.
It is very important to understand the different types of communication in the corporate world. For that, you can join various courses that will help you to learn effective professional communication. Most colleges provide such opportunities in their campus. Watch out for such courses in the future and apply for it.
- Do part-time jobs
Part-time jobs are wonderful opportunities that can provide you with a window to see a glimpse of the corporate world. The best thing about part-time jobs is that along with work experience you can also get to earn money. If the company likes your work attitude and your passion for learning, the might even hire you the next time they go to your college for campus placements.
You can find about part-time jobs anywhere, from your college notice board to job sites. Since you are doing it for the experience, try doing a job where you can learn instead of looking at the money; so you can mention it in your resume. Also, this will let you have a taste of how professional interviews are.
- Start creating your resume
You do not know when you may have to pull out the resume for an unexpected job interview. So getting your resume ready early on is a good thing. It will also help you to avoid making some common mistakes in resume that fresh graduates usually make. You can update the resume with all relevant experiences and skills that you obtain.
If you have never written a resume before and is wondering where to start, do not worry! There a lot of websites on the internet where you can learn how to write resumes. A number of resume writing services are also present which will provide you with professional resumes.
- Learn new languages
Try joining a language course in your college (if it is available), otherwise you can learn online too nowadays. Being fluent in more than one language is always a positive thing when it comes to employability. Suppose, you work for a multinational company having offices in various countries, you might get a chance to lead a team for a project that requires you to collaborate with a team from another office in a country. It also expands your career prospects to other fields where knowing more than one language is preferred.
- Maintain a clean online profile
Nowadays recruiters find it easier to check out if a candidate is a good match with their company’s culture by looking at your online profiles. So it is important to maintain a clean profile to increase your employability. Do not post negative updates like getting drunk, racist comments and vulgar pictures.
- Start networking
A good network will always be helpful for you in the future when you are looking for a job opportunity. You can join online groups of professions that you are interested in and get insights about the job industry through the question and answer forum that most online groups have. You can also network through social media sites and get industry related news and job advertisements.
Bottom Line
If you start with these little things step by step, you will find yourself gaining a lot in the future. Enhancing your employability all depends on you and how much effort you are putting to improve your skills and knowledge.
Author Bio
Hasib is a knowledge junkie and an SEO writer in the job portal – Naukri.com, and often writes on topics related to career and education. When he is not involved in writing, he is contemplating his next journey to the hills or to the new restaurant he came across. Follow him @ twitter, Google+, LinkedIn
