Searching for a job can be a scary thing — especially when you’re fresh out of college and lack considerable experience in the professional world. Here a few tips from SoftwareAdvice.com for the young hopefuls trying to land that first job out of college. 

1. Clean up your social media accounts

To begin with what should be the most obvious, it’s important to make sure your online personality reflects a level of professionalism. Hiring managers will do their research on you before they meet you, and they certainly don’t want to see that you have poor grammar and inappropriate pictures polluting your page. So make sure you’re in control of your real first impression — your online impression.

2. Go after “foundational” roles

Much like it sounds, a “foundational” role lays the foundation for your career. It’s a job that will teach you what the professional world is all about and equip you with the skills you’ll need for every future job, as well. Tell a hiring manager that you are actively seeking this type of role, and they will be impressed with your career-mindedness. 

3. Practice answering common interview questions

There are certain questions you can expect to hear in any interview. For instance, a hiring manager will almost always ask why you want the job. You should be prepared with a solid answer of how you can contribute to the company and why you are a good fit for the role they’re hiring for. Before heading into your interview, take some time to look at common interview questions, and plan out the things you feel are important for the hiring manager to know about you. Then, construct clear, concise answers to highlight those traits. You’ll come off as a polished and composed young professional, which hiring managers like.

4. Develop an “Elevator Pitch”

1. Calling all college students- you undoubtedly have enough on your plate without having to worry about how your college experiences affect the probability of you getting a job. But… it’s true. So give these 12 College Experiences Your Resume Needs a shot. (It’s as simple as joining a club)! 

2. Not sure about your career path? Or maybe you’re looking for a change. Here are the 10 Most In Demand Jobs and Skill Sets for 2013. It’s pays to be informed! (Literally).

3. Sometimes all your social media strategy needs is a little link to set you on the right track. Check out these 9 Key Elements Missing From Your Social Media Strategy. You don’t need to be a business for these to apply- remember, you’re marketing yourself.

4. If your internship experience is going downhill fast, there’s no need to waste your time. Read about How To Quit Your Internship The Right Way and open up the doors to a better opportunity without making waves.

5. Bloggers, you might think you’re doing a fabulous job churning out those posts but clicking the publish button without going through the proper editing process is an shamefully easy thing to do. Make sure you content is as HQ as you think it is by going through The Ultimate Editing Checklist.
   

1. You’ve got the skills. Now use ‘em. Read 3 Ways I Made More Money With My Existing Skills to find out how Leah Manderson takes advantage of hers and how you can do the same.
   
2. Check out How To Land A Better Job Without Ever Looking For It and lure in those job opportunities.
3. And informational interview can lead to the birth of an opportunity, or a bad reputation. Make sure it’s the former but avoiding these 6 Mistakes Students Make During Informational Interviews.
4. A brief lull between blog posts is enough to make the best blogger loose their drive. Check out these tips to help you get back on track:  13 Ways I Get Back Into Blogging after a Vacation.
5. Are you incredible blog posts hiding behind poorly written titles? Here are 5 Ways To Create a Deliciously Irresistible Blog Post Title to make sure you get the readers you deserve!
   

1. Job interviews are strange phenomenons. You may leave an interview thinking you’ve scored big time. Your interviewer may think otherwise. Check out these 5 Mistakes Job Interviewers Secretly Hate to make sure you really do score.
2. Successful people are busy people! If you want a moment of their time, find out How To Get Successful People to Respond To Your Emails. An informational interview with the head honcho may be exactly what you need on your road to success.
3. Check out 13 Interview Tips That Will Help You Land The Job You Want. “Way too much job interview advice!” said no job seeker ever.
4. Is your Bachelors degree letting you down? Or maybe it’s just time for a sea change. Read How To Find Work Outside Your Major for skills that transcend career fields.
5. Preparing yourself for that first job is just as important as prepping for an interview. It never hurts to think ahead! Keep in mind these 5 Mistakes Not To Make At Your First Job. You’ll be doing yourself a favor!

1. If you’re like me, you’ve been making PowerPoint presentations since middle school. It gets old. But creating an engaging presentation is a skill worth developing, and one you’ll repeatedly find yourself in need of. So here’s How To Create a Captivating Presentation, Slideshare style. 
   
2. There are a great many things that put the free in Freelancing; free time, boss free, dress code free. If you’re lacking in the experience department, however, you might want to ensure you don’t end up salary free by reading How To Start Freelancing With No Experience.  It can be done!
3. The fourth part of our Me-Site Platform blog series is out! Find out if Wix is the platform for you: Top 5 Me-Site Platforms, Part 4: Wix.
4. Natural selection applies even to blog posts. The the catchy ones thrive and the others… do not. Here’s  How To Write Sharp, Snappy Blog Posts.
5. The Simple Resume Writing Hack That Will Transform Your Job Search. What ever could it be? (Hint: Quotes).

Welcome to Me-Site platform contender #4: the awe-inspiring, drool-inducing, website-making Wix!

Having covered the ups and downs of Flavors.me, About.me, and Re-vu, I’m sure those neurons must be firing — axons pumping, nerves singing, synapses… synapsing. If you’ve decided upon your “Me-Site” platform, that’s great! Happy Me-Site making to you, sir.

But it’s certainly worth sticking around to learn about more Me Site alternatives … just in case. If you’re still undecided, never fear, we’ve got two more Me-Site makers for your viewing pleasure. You never know… Wix might be the one for you!

Re.vu’s beautiful graphics, quantifiable achievements, and unique services stood out with us, though the brilliance was slightly dampened by our inability to make it our own. It was, never-the-less, quite a stunner. Here’s our little, handy-dandy review before we begin our next dissection:

Our options so far have been one-page wonders but with Wix, we’re shaking things up a bit. Instead of providing you with a single page, Wix offers its users an entire website to work with. And according to the site’s home page, more than 31 million people have decided to take advantage of their service. And why not? With easy customization, HTML 5 Technology, and no coding necessary, what’s not to like? Well, we’re hoping nothing but let’s find out!

Like all the other Me-Site platforms we’ve taken apart, the Wix registration is simple — we’re set up with an account in no time and ready to roll. The offers 10 categories ranging from Business & Services to Creative Arts to Personal. Each of these categories is further divided into subcategories, all to help you choose a template that best suits your needs. Since I’m a graphic designer, I naturally made a beeline for the Design tab and selected the Designer as well as Portfolio subcategories.

The options that appear are superb- there are pages and pages of beautiful, professionally designed website templates at your fingertips, ready to view or edit. If you (somehow) don’t like what you’re seeing under the categories you initially selected, you can explore other tabs via the navigation bar on the left of the screen. Don’t feel wedded to a category, simply because it applies to your career field. For our purposes, any and all of these templates can work Me-Site magic. Since we’re into great background photos, the photography-related templates may worth a look.

When a template strikes your fancy, be sure to click on the “View” button before you make any drastic moves! Do a bit of exploration — note the location of the navigation bar, how the pages transition, hover your mouse over elements to see effects, and click on all the pages to view the different layouts. Ultimately, be certain you’re fond of your chosen template because once you’ve begun to edit your Me-Site, template changes cannot be made. You’d have to start from scratch with a different option which is no bueno!

All set? Good! Let the editing begin. Clicking “edit this site” sends us off to where all the magic happens. You’ll be faced with your layout as it was in the preview, images, text and all. At the top of the screen is a toolbar where you can switch between the site’s pages, undo edits, preview your layout, save and publish.

The chief toolbar in the editing mode is on the left-hand side of the screen. It’s made of five buttons:

1. Pages, where you can edit page settings such as the title, incorporate keywords for SEO, and alter page transitions,
2. Design, where you can change background images, colors schemes, and font styles,
3. Add, where you can incorporate a number of elements such as text, images, image galleries, social media icons, and apps,
4. Settings, where you can optimize your site for sharing on social media sites and SEO
5. App Market, where Wix provides users with a number of applications that can add fantastic features like social media feeds, custom forms, QR codes, polls — the fun seems endless

In these five buttons is a world of power. As you begin to edit, you’ll find there is nothing you cannot alter. The customization options, even within a template, are almost limitless! And what’s more is that it’s all incredibly intuitive. Drag, drop, double-click, ta da!

To edit text or images that are already on the page, simply click on the element in question and a toolbar will appear, allowing you to edit or go into other settings. For certain elements, there’s even a “Change Style” option in which different pre-established and beautifully designed styles of say, navigations bars, are available to choose from.

If you wish to add more images, text boxes, galleries or other types of media, simply click the “Add” button on the left, select your element of choice, and click.

What is astounding is that you don’t really have to lift a single finger throughout the making of your site. It’s all there at your fingertips from social media icons to optimal font combos. Wix has done all the dirty work for you!

If you can’t figure something out, click the question mark button in the corner of your site or one of the menus, and you’ll find the answers to all your questions. For some questions, there are even comprehensive video tutorials to help you along the way. Talk about support!

Once you’ve completed your Me-Site, you’re ready to go public. Again, it’s easy as pie — with a click of the “Publish” button and a few seconds, you’re as good as gold.

Your debut comes with a bit of bad news, however, because right beneath the “CONGRATULATIONS!” message is an “UPGRADE” button, letting you know you can have Wix ads removed if you simply click on the button and sign up for an account with a monthly fee.

Sure enough, when you click through to your brand new Me-Site, that gorgeous page is surrounded by not-so-gorgeous advertisements endorsing Wix. Though Wix tries it’s best to keep these advertisements on the edges of your Me Site, they do some serious damage to the vibe. You get what you pay for, right? In this case, forking over $8.25/month on the yearly plan or $10.95/month on the month-by-month plan will ensure your vibe remains unblemished. It’s not an impossible price and after admiring the beauty of a Wix website, it is rather difficult to accept those advertising banners wrecking your awesome work.

Yet another, and perhaps more significant disappointing discovery was made when loading the site on my mobile phone. With HTML 5 technology and, by extension, responsive web design, I expected the site to adapt its appearance to suit my phone’s screen. But it didn’t. In fact, it looked quite horrendous! I found that the mobile version of my website must be made separately and from scratch, by going into My Accounts > Manage and Edit Site > Add Mobile Site. It’s a four-step process and it’s quite simple, though the editing process isn’t as smooth or as thorough as it is with the actual website.

The mobile version of the site is also not very impressive. Images appear pixelated, spacing between elements is awkward and it is rather poorly designed. Do you have to make a mobile version of your Me-Site? It’s up to you. In this day and age, though, you must assume that potential employers will try to look at your Me-Site on their phone, so choose wisely. But which one looks better? That’s anyone’s guess.

It seems that in order to truly experience to advantages of Wix (and there are many), you will have to lighten your wallet’s load a bit. But $8.25/month seems like a pretty good deal to me, even with the site’s limitations, especially the less-than-perfect mobile version (but between you and me, ladies and gentlemen, but I’ve bought drug store nail polish for more!)

To summarize, here, presented graphically, are the pros and cons of Wix as a Me Site platform:

So, if Wix sounds like the Me Site platform you’ve been waiting for, go for it!

CHECK OUT OUR EARLIER REVIEWS OF ME SITE PLATFORMS:

• Me Site Platform #1: Flavors.me
• Me Site Platform #2: About.me
• Me Site Platform #3: Re-vu

An intelligent, professional blog about topics and trends in your field will:

1. Showcase your skill set and expertise
2. Demonstrate your industry knowledge
3. Begin building your professional network by putting you in touch with key industry players
4. Differentiate yourself from the competition
5. Get past the gatekeepers (hiring managers, secretaries, HR departments)
6. Get on the radar screens of companies you want to work for

Mashable just published a story encouraging job seekers to start a blog to find a job by making themselves unique, appealing, talented.

So, how does a recent graduate get started?

1. Choose a narrow niche within your field, one where you have an interest and some knowledge. Don’t worry about how much you know. If you’re passionate about it and can develop good questions, you’ll learn as you go. But be ruthless in narrowing your topic. Don’t write about marketing; write about the best marketing companies or leaders in New England. Don’t write about fashion; write about the leading fashion designers in the Atlanta area. Don’t write about the environment; write about the the best water sustainability organizations and practices in Southern California. With a narrow niche, you’ll have a greater chance of being found in a Google search and you’ll be able to narrow the blog post topics down to a manageable area where you’ll be able to develop some expertise.
2. Choose a blog platform. WordPress is the most ubiquitous and when you do land your job the most likely platform you’ll be asked to use. Tumblr, however, is the fastest growing, the easiest to learn, and the most fun, flexible, and graphically pleasing. You can post to Tumblr from anywhere with anything (photos, Tweets, blog posts, video, etc.). There’s also Blogger.
3. Draft an editorial calendar. What topics will you write about? Make a list of the key issues and trends in the field. What are people talking about? Go to LinkedIn, look for related professional groups, join them and see what they’re talking about. Whom will you interview? Choose key industry players who will become your professional network, the people you will go back to for tips on job openings later (but never asking them directly for a job, instead asking them what they’re hearing about openings in the field). Start with the easiest interviews and move to the more difficult. Start writing two or three times a week, then you can settle in for once a week.
4. Go to flickr.com for copyright free photos. Click on “search” and type in your topic. When you get the results, go back to the top of the window and you’ll see “Advanced Search.” Click on that, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.” That way, you’ll be using photos that you don’t have to worry about breaking copyright laws by publishing.
5. Choose five to eight keywords or keyword phrases that you will use over and over and over again as the focus of your blog posts. You won’t use all of them every time, but these will be the words you use in your headlines, URLs, first paragraphs, subheads, etc. You want Google to find you for these keywords. Here’s a great blog post about how to choose your blog keywords. And here’s a chapter of a great book about Search Engine Optimization that is focused on how to choose your keywords.

That’s it. Go get started!

It will be daunting to start from scratch, and you might worry that you don’t have anything to say about an industry you’re only just joining as a newly minted college graduate with no professional work experience outside of, perhaps, a few internships.

That’s OK. You are not purporting to be an expert; you’re interviewing the experts and providing value by putting their thoughts out there for others in your field to see (and impressing people in your field with your ability to ask intelligent questions and assemble intelligent blog posts).

Contacts and networking are the name of the game in any serious career-launching job search. You can have the best grades, the best resume, the best personality and the best skill set, but if the people who matter — the people who make the hiring decisions — don’t know about you, it’s like a tree falling in the woods. They can’t hire you if they don’t know about you, and just sending out resumes to job postings is like throwing yourself into a black hole.

Stand out from the crowd with a blog!

So, get started!

PS Here’s how one recent graduate parlayed a new blog into her dream job.

PS Here’s a little secret that no one talks about when they tell you to start blogging: It’s a heck of a lot of fun, especially if you take my approach of interviewing key players in your field. You get to meet the biggest names in your industry, ideally in person. You get to go to their cool offices, and, if you’re good, they’ll tell you so, boosting your self confidence for the next interview. By the time you get to an actual job interview, you’ll be self assured and you’ll be able to drop names like you were an old pro!

(College graduates photo above is a Creative Commons-licensed photo by NazarethCollege)

In looking for the best “Me Site” platform, we’ve already reviewed the virtual look-alikes: Flavors.me and About.me. A third “Me Site” platform, Re.vu, offers a completely different experience and presentation, and is well worth your time to investigate.

Does it have the social media content? Yup. The short bio? Yup. The impressive background image? Yup. So what makes Re.vu different from Flavors and About? A whole lot, it turns out.

But let’s backtrack for just a moment. Since we reviewed About.me, they went and upped their game overnight. Say hello to About.me Premium, with which you can now create custom domain names, remove that bothersome navigation bar (me gusta!) and integrate Google Analytics for $4/month. That strikes us as very reasonable. There are, of course, still the pros and cons of the free About.me account we discussed before (see illustration below), but this Premium option removes some of our biggest complaints.

About.me might be worth another visit but not today, Zurg! Not today because of Re.vu, that’s why!

Re.vu isn’t just a profile page with a stunning background image and a few social media icons. It’s a service that allows you to share your resume (or your story, as the homepage states) in a way that’ll make everyone want to look at it. It’s chock-full of infographics, quantifiable achievements, and portfolio work designed to make you look like a billion bucks (that’s billion with a B). Even President Obama’s jumped on the bandwagon.

Like its predecessors, Re.vu has a sign-up process that wouldn’t challenge a three year old. Once you’ve joined up, Re.vu keeps it simple and gives you a helping hand from our old pal LinkedIn. Instead of filling out your entire work history and building your resume from scratch, your information can be imported via LinkedIn, easy as pie. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account, no worries, you can go ahead and fill in the data manually (although, I’m curious to know what’s keeping you from joining the biggest professional network in the world?).

With your information imported, you’ll have completed the first two tabs — Personal Data and Timeline — in one fell swoop. Well, most of it, anyway. Updating your biography can be a good idea, just to keep things fresh and relevant, and you can incorporate your social media links under the Personal Data tab. Re.vu offers 22 ready-made links but if you find these lacking, you can add as many custom links as you’d like!

Your Timeline, you may have guessed, is where you catalog your work history. LinkedIn has taken care of the tedious stuff but, as Re.vu oh-so-helpfully informs us, there are three types of entries you can include in your timeline: current/ongoing (for the stuff you’re working on nowadays), previous timeline (for your previous work experiences) and single date (for important events in your life). Current and past work experience is quite run-of-the-mill. Single date, not so much. It’s a wonderful addition to a resume that can help explain gaps in your work history and flesh you out for a potential employer. Try adding a few non-work-related stepping stones for a little extra oomph.

The real work begins once you’ve reached Re.vu’s infographics tab. This is where those glittering graphs and pie charts are formed, but in order to do so, you must assign everything- achievements, skills, pastimes and more, a numerical value, be it a whole number, fraction or percentage.

I know, sounds annoying, but Re.vu makes this daunting task seem easy. Instead of leaving us to fend for ourselves, like with every other tab, the infographics bit comes with helpful instructions, tips, and examples to guide you. Don’t think you have any quantifiable achievements? Think again. You don’t have to be a Nobel Laureate to have done something of value, even though our dear President has one in his achievements. It can be the number of countries you’ve visited, poems you’ve written or your followers on Twitter. Just let it simmer in your head — who knows what you’ll come up with!

As you begin to make your way through this section of Re.vu, it becomes apparent that this isn’t one of those under-ten-minute Me-Sites. While it may not be ideal, it’s difficult to give it a thumbs down since the result is so worth the effort!

Yet another thing that went a long way toward endearing me to Re.vu is that they allow users to integrate their own work into the site through the Portfolio and Work Example tabs. If you’ve got work in the form of images, slides, PDFs or Word docs — anything that you feel represents your work or skills — put ‘em up there! Images are, of course, always best. You don’t have to click them to view and they’re a great deal more attractive than an icon for a PDF will ever be (though Re.vu does what it can!).

The last tab is for your Education. LinkedIn will have imported this info as well but the site allows its users to upload your school’s logo and if you can, do it! Any opportunity to make your site more visual is an opportunity to seize. Click save, and you’re done. Hallelujah!

Well… maybe not just yet.

As my page loaded, I realized there was still work to be done. I wasn’t impressed by the results so I quickly went through the floating Design toolbar to see what I could do. The toolbar allows you to change the background image, theme and the arrangement of your graphics. Customization options? I’m afraid you’ll feel the sting of disappointment. Flavors and About.me are a comparative mecca of options.

Your background image for Re.vu must be chosen with the utmost care since most of the screen is occupied by your resume. I’m afraid you’ll also be forced to do your cropping outside of the site since there aren’t any alterations allowed once your image has been uploaded. Re.vu also only has 13 themes for its users to choose from; while they’re pretty suave, they’re all stubbornly fixed in terms of color, fonts… you name it. I imagine this is to deter the infographically-challenged from making a mess of their pages but woe is me! The limitations are many.

In consolation, Re.vu has page statistics available to check out page views as well as the number of views and downloads on your resume. You can also favorite other re.vu pages (though I’ve yet to discover where these favorites are recorded. Hmm….)

Ultimately, for its unique perspective and awesome infographics, Re.vu is unique and visually stunning. Could it be better? Probably. But in the mean time, it makes you look pretty cool anyway. I mean, just check me out!

1. You might be job-interview-phobic, but that doesn’t mean you should let ‘em see you sweat! Here are 5 Ways To Look Confident in an Interview (Even When You’re Freaking Out)
   
2. Afraid of appearing clueless at work? Don’t be. Or so say the experts! Check out The Career Fears You Must Get Over: Advice From 7 Executives for more tips. (You’ll breath easier!) 
3. Social media can easily overwhelm… if you let it. Find out How To Rock Social Media in 30 Minutes a Day and keep your head above the water (like a boss).
4. If your last internship ended up being nothing but a how-to for your boss’ coffee machine, don’t let it own your perspective on the experience. Here are 10 Steps To Handling a Negative Experience so you can ensure your next internship doesn’t let you down.
5. Your Me-Site goes a long way to representing yourself online. Don’t know how to start? Follow D2D’s very own Me-Site blog series to make sure you pick the right platform for you. Here’s the latest post: Top 5 Me-Site Makers, Part 2: About.me!