Information Related to "What Bosses Want"
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Once they graduate, most college students know they will soon need to start earning money to live and to pay back their student loans if they have any. But how can a young person obtain a good job? Many institutions offer job placement services or arrange for on-campus or community job fairs to help their students find employment. But with potential employers looking at hundreds if not thousands of applicants to fill job openings, it's easy for your resume to get lost in the stack.
What can you do to stand out and be noticed? How soon should you start thinking about this? Is the last semester before graduation sufficient time for you to brush up on a few tricks and techniques? Actually, the time to start thinking about a job is long before graduation.
Of course, choosing to get a college education or learn a skill at a trade school in the first place is a good start.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site points out direct correlations between your education level and both earnings and employment. The median weekly income for a high school graduate a few years ago was $554 per week. In contrast, the average for someone with a bachelor's degree was $900 per week—62.5 percent higher.
In addition, the average unemployment rate at that time for those with a bachelor's degree was 3.3 percent while it was 5.5 percent (which is 66.7 percent higher) for those with only a high school diploma.
To help you find and hold a good job, we asked two presidents of companies and a human resources director for their most important criteria in hiring employees. Obviously, the more you can know in advance what bosses want, the better prepared you can be to meet those needs, and the higher your chances of being hired.
The three business leaders with whom we spoke all agreed that the job interview itself is very important—whether it's a short opportunity at a job fair or at the office of the potential employer. If you don't make a good impression with the interview, you probably won't be hired. Companies want to hire the right people the first time. Having to let someone go and then hire someone else is time-consuming, frustrating and costly.
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