Entry-level resumes can be compelling and differentiating

Dear Sam: I am a college professor and often hear from alums that they struggled to find their first career position following graduation. Unfortunately, that reality has hit home, as my daughter graduated two years ago and is still unemployed.

My daughter has mentioned that either she won’t hear anything from her application or, if she does get an interview, she will hear nothing following that. I would have never suspected that employment would be out of her reach after she worked so hard in college. In my daughter’s case, she interned at a hospital, where she fell in love with the Marketing Department. I am unsure if she is only looking at entry-level marketing jobs in healthcare. Even though she has this foundational experience and a Bachelor’s degree, she is not getting anywhere in her job search. Any thoughts?

— Ellen

Dear Ellen: I am sorry to hear of your students’ and daughter’s struggle to secure their first professional engagement following graduation. This struggle is, unfortunately, all too common, and I have to point fingers at the institutions they are graduating from for not equipping their students with the personal branding knowledge to create effective job-searching tools.

You will not believe how many resumes I see from graduates who have spent time at their career services office and have been ‘guided’ in the development of their resume, only to be delivered outdated advice, an overused template, and a lack of strategic direction on how to conduct an effective job search. I will say there are exceptions to this, but unfortunately, more often than not, the support graduating students receive is lackluster at best and comes far too late in their journey as a student.

I say this from a tremendous amount of experience, not only attending job fairs and reviewing the resumes of new graduates, but also being invited to institutions by professors and Career Services Departments, to not only educate their students on personal branding, but also to provide professional development to the Career Services staff. Even though entry-level candidates possess limited experience, through the exploration of part-time jobs, internships, extracurricular activities, coursework, capstone projects, volunteer work, affiliations, and sometimes even personal passions and interests, they should be able to develop a ‘full’ one-page resume.

More often than not, in entry-level resumes, I see that the candidate believes the degree alone will differentiate their candidacy. This is not the case. I am sure there are times when an individual graduates from an Ivy League institution and secures their first position solely based on the caliber of the institution attended and the student’s academic performance, but for most individuals who are not in that situation, having a degree is not a key differentiator. Think about it; your daughter graduated on the same day or in the same month as thousands of others now hitting the market with that same piece of paper. How your daughter is different is through the activities she has engaged in, through the internship(s) she secured, through the project work she completed in her key courses, and I am sure, a multitude of other factors.

I would encourage your students and your daughter to review best practices-based presentations of entrylevel candidates, either on a website like my own or through recently published books where you know the samples selected represent what a personal brand should look like today. Entry-level candidates are some of my absolute favorite projects to work on simply because of the monumental impact a great personal brand can have on where the candidate starts their career. It’s not true that you have to have a job to get a job, so I am confident that once your daughter learns how to create a compelling picture of her candidacy, the phones will start ringing for the opportunities she seeks.

The position will be open until filled.