5 Effective Tips to Get the Job You Want Without Experience

You're reading 5 Effective Tips to Get the Job You Want Without Experience, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

You might think that because you don’t have any experience in a field, the jobs there are out of reach. You’ll be glad to hear that’s not necessarily the case. As plenty of fresh graduates discover every year, there are ways around the no experience barrier. You just have to learn how to play your cards right (and learn what cards to play, of course). Here we’re going to cover some of the best ways you can still get that job you really want despite your lack of experience. Taken together they will make all the difference.

Get an endorsement

Experience is a way that companies know that you actually know what you’re doing. But that’s not the only thing that matters. As the saying go, ‘hire attitude and train skill’ and that’s a rule that many companies follow. But how can they see you have the right attitude? Well, one great way to do exactly that is for you to get an endorsement from somebody that’s well respected. Now, there are a lot of ways you can go with this. If you know somebody that’s well respected in the industry then obviously they would make a great choice. Ask them to write you a letter to open up the door. If that’s not possible then look for somebody further afield. You can get somebody like a professor to help you. Otherwise, get somebody famous to do so. Just getting a recommendation from somebody that everybody knows might well be enough for a company to give you an interview – even if it’s just to meet you. From there, your personality can do the rest.

Use your network

You may think that the way people get jobs is by sending out resumes and applying through official channels. And some people do get jobs that way. But it isn’t many. According to one survey, only 15% of people get their job through these channels. The rest? It’s all down to your network. So use it! Make people aware you’re looking for a job. And when I say ‘make them aware’ I don’t mean ‘put it on Facebook’. I mean, reach out to people on an individual basis and ask them if they might know any leads or anybody. Don’t be afraid to reach out to people you haven’t spoken to in a while. What’s the worst they can do? Say ‘no’?

Apply up and down the ladder

If you want to be a manager at a IT company, say, but you don’t have any experience, then why not start out a little lower down? Perhaps that manager needs an assistant? Or perhaps there are some internships that you can start at. Yes, those positions are much lower down, but once you’ve got your foot in the door of the company and of the industry it suddenly becomes a lot easier to apply somewhere else. After all, now you do have experience. It doesn’t matter if your manager yelled at you to ‘write my essay for me please’ or if you had to do the photocopying. The next place you’ll apply at won’t know that. All they’ll see is your experience. And that will get you an interview – which is where you really make your personality shine.

Your resume and your cover letter

Even though a lot of jobs are landed through your network, people will still ask to see your resume. So you have to make sure yours is ready. A well-written resume might not get you the job, but a poorly written one will make sure you don’t get it. What do I mean with a poorly written resume? I mean one where the spelling and grammar aren’t perfect. I mean one where things aren’t aligned properly. I mean one where you use commas in one place and then periods in another. Do these sound like nitpicky things? Well they are. There can be no doubt about it. The problem is, when people have a job they often get dozens (if not hundreds) of applications for that job. And as they need to narrow down the field, they’ll use whatever criteria they can. A poorly written resume is such a criteria. After all, their reasoning will go, if you aren’t careful enough to write an error free resume, then how can you ever be careful enough to not make mistake while you work for us?

Connect

You should always be looking to make new connections. You never know what they’re good for. A big part of being lucky is the people you know. So make sure you know a lot of people. Also, be aware of how you network. People can see straight through a phony. So don’t just network with people because you want to climb up the ranks over their backs. Also connect with people to see if you can help them. People remember who helped them. And down the line that can pay serious dividends. Because the truth is, when you’ve got this great job, then you’ll find that it’s something else you’ll want next. And that will require more connections and people.

Last words

Experience will come with time. So don’t despair. Just start trying. And don’t be afraid of people that say ‘no’. A lot of people will do that in your life. But they don’t really matter. The only people that will ultimately matter when you’re hunting for a job is those who say ‘yes’. So focus on them. A good strategy to use if you’re afraid of failure is set out a goal to get this many rejections in the next six months. If that’s your goal, if you set out to get this many rejections every week, then you know you have to push hard to send enough applications out there. And when you’re sending out that many applications, it’s almost inevitable that some of them will come back positively. That’s a good strategy for getting the job you want. That’s a good strategy to get anything you want.5

You've read 5 Effective Tips to Get the Job You Want Without Experience, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

Source: pickthebrain.com