How to Grad & Beyond with Betul

A big part of the job application process for students who are looking to apply for jobs for the first time is to build confidence in their existing skills. With no prior experience in the workplace, it might seem as if you have nothing to put down on your resume or talk about in interviews. After all, your experience is in in an environment distinct to the one you are applying for.

However, this is where you need to be confident because you have what you need. The first point to keep in mind is that hiring managers know that they are hiring someone with no prior workplace experience and will keep that in mind when reviewing. Your task is to present what you have in a language they will understand easily. In fact, your school experience is very well translatable to industry/work language. For example, if you have conducted experiments, you have done “data analysis” and made “data-driven decisions”, speaking in industry language. If you have done conference presentations, you have developed some “public speaking” and “persuasive communication” skills. If you have written literature reviews, you actually have learnt how to “organize and manage knowledge”.

In other words, you actually built much of the groundwork and have more to offer than you think. You just need to know how to express it in the correct way. Go ahead and read relevant job descriptions and try to understand the industry equivalent of your skills. Then you will know what to do.