5 Helpful Tips for the Career Seeker

Applying for a new position is a full time job in and of itself, and what if you don’t actually know what you want in the first place? We asked a few of our favorite Girl Bosses what advice they would give to someone seeking a new job or potential career change. Their tips will be helpful to any of you career seekers out there, whether you need to dust off your resume or fuel your passion!

Career Seeker, Career Tips

1. Make Your Job Application Stand Out to Your Employer

If you’re applying for a creative position, having a professional, yet well-designed resume will always stand out. Don’t use generic templates or boring black and white documents, they’ll get lost in the shuffle. Explore sites like Etsy or Creative Market where you can download bold resume templates. Another fun tip would be to match your design to the brand colors and style of the company you’re applying to. It will immediately stand out and they’ll recognize the effort! I also recommend writing a personalized cover letter to accompany your resume. Tell the employer about yourself, your experience and why you think you’d be the perfect fit for the job. Use the style of writing you’d use to send an email to a friend or close colleague. Let your personality shine and you’ll sure to get noticed instead of blending into the pack. – Ashley Malone of Ashley & Malone, Photo by Annawithlove Photography

Career Seeker, Career Tips

2. Work with an expert

Whether it’s helping you look for a new job,​ ​return to the workplace,​ ​advance within your current role, pick the brain of an industry insider, or just figure out what you want to do,​ Career Contessa‘s career counseling service, Hire a Mentor,​ ​offers advice seekers the opportunity to work one-on-one with pre-vetted career mentors.

You’ll get their knowledge and valuable advice at affordable prices and without the long-term commitments of traditional career coaching packages. Each session includes 50-minutes of tailored career advice that will leave you with actionable next steps to achieve your goals. – Lauren McGoodwin of Career Contessa

3. Get friendly with LinkedIn

With over 300 million users, LinkedIn can act as the hub for all of your professional activity, including job history, professional recommendations, endorsements, work examples, a portfolio of your published writing, status updates, and “clickable” content, such as links to your website or social media profiles. LinkedIn is also a great place to find and connect to others in your target industry, company, etc.

While your resume is a static document sent out on a targeted basis to recruiters or companies you want to be considered for, your LinkedIn profile is searchable and makes you “findable” by anyone (including recruiters!) looking to hire someone with your skills or background. – Lauren McGoodwin of Career Contessa

Career Seeker, Career Tips

4. If you are not hearing “no” you aren’t talking to enough people

To truly be an entrepreneur and create a successful business and attract clients, we have to be comfortable with a fair amount of rejection. Meaning, don’t be afraid of the NO! The more people you talk to and network with, the more people will know about you and your unique talents. And nothing is as strong as a personal referral. However in the course of all this networking, coffee appointments, capabilities presentations, you are going to hear some NO’s. It’s OK! If you don’t hear any NO’s it means you’re not risk taking or trying to stretch the boundaries of who you could be working with. That might be easy at first, but to truly grow and then sustain a business over the long haul, we have to be a little uncomfortable sometimes! Take a look at your strengths and what truly makes you / your company different out there. You may not be the right fit for everyone, and that is really OK! It took me a long time to get ok with turning away work that was not the right fit. So sometimes we may even be saying No.. THANK YOU. (never forget the Thank You!) – Cara Kleinhaut of Caravents

5. Making Money Will Mean Blazing Your Own Trail.

If all you do is worry about everyone else, it takes away from you. It takes the same effort to stress over what everyone else you see on social media and elsewhere is doing as it does to be positive about what successes YOU have accomplished. Being good to others and focusing on your own growth will bring you the money. Doing the opposite will not only deplete you emotionally, but will affect you financially too. – Leila Lewis, weddingPR, of Be Inspired PR

What career advice can we help with next? Tell us in the comments!

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