How to Grad & Beyond with Betul

When you are graduating, you might find yourself panic-applying to jobs since you have limited time. However, it is better to make targeted applications than to apply to any job you see remotely fits you. How do you achieve a more strategic job application technique?

One answer is job market analysis, similar to a data analysis project but one anyone can do with a spreadsheet. Here is one way to go about it (assuming you have a rough idea about which general path you are interested in):

Step 1: Collect 10 job descriptions for each job title you are interested in. Try at least 3 different job titles.

Step 2: Extract all keywords that relate to skills and experience in each job posting, as well as how many applications each gets. Put this information on an Excel sheet along with your own skills.

Step 3: Analyze which keywords come up the most often for each title or job family and compare them against your skills. You can do this on an Excel sheet. If you want to do further analysis (e.g. statistical significance), you can try using Python or R.

Step 4: Focus your application on the top-matching job. If the top choice gets significantly more applications, you can apply to top two best-matching ones in parallel.

Step 5: Revisit the analysis if the top-matching one doesn’t yield results. You can start applying to the second-best match (or third if you applied to two in the first round).

How does this method help? First, it focuses your applications while not limiting you at the same time. This reduces your anxiety and allows you to enjoy your graduation. Second, it increases your chances of finding a good match, since it systematically aligns your skills with job descriptions. Third, it allows you to gain some independent data analysis skills and experience as well as job market insights. This can be helpful if you are interested in data analysis as a career path.

This approach doesn’t eliminate uncertainty. However, it makes your job application process intentional instead of reactive. Verdict: Worth trying.