By Tim Whalley, Dean of student affairs, University of Stirling.

I could fill a book with the things I wish I’d known when I left school – how to iron, how to put up a shelf, how valuable learning languages is. Though the biggest one is how everyone is in the same boat, and how no one really knows what they want to do when they leave school.

So, with this in mind, let me impart some of my age-old wisdom onto your young shoulders. Here are some of the most important life lessons I wish somebody had taught me before the final school bell rang.

1. Make your own decisions

When you open the exam results envelope don’t put pressure on yourself to make a decision straight away. Take time to think and plan. I wish I hadn’t been so influenced by what my peers were doing and what direction people thought I should take and actually took the time to listen to my own heart.

I was being pushed by teachers, friends and family to study medicine, but I knew I wanted to study more fundamental aspects of science than that. It took months of thinking to know exactly what it was that interested me most.

Whatever your exam results may be, you are turning the page of a new chapter – an exciting, and as yet unscripted story. Make sure you enjoy this period. While everything may seem a bit up in the air, it is likely you will look back on your school leaving as one of the best periods of your life, before the realities of everyday life and paying bills come into play.

2. Manage your money

On the topic of bills, the ability to manage money is one of the most valuable practical life skills you’ll ever need – yet when I left school, I knew way more about Shakespeare and Aristotle than how to budget money and pay household bills.

In school, I was blissfully unaware of how to financially navigate the real world – I had to work this out for myself. Interest rates, insurance and overdrafts were like a foreign language to me, and it seems I was not alone. According to a recent study, more than a third of people wish there had been lessons in school on how to budget, a further third would have appreciated classes on the importance of insurance.

It’s amazing the number of times negotiation is needed in our lives, from buying a car, negotiating our salary, or trying to get a better deal on your household bills. Many schools have debate teams, but negotiation is something you won’t find in any textbooks. It’s something we learn and become better at as life progresses. My advice would be don’t be afraid to ask for help or guidance and use resources at hand, such as career centres and money saving websites.

3. Make the most of your time

I wish that before I left school somebody had told me to stop worrying about what the future held and to make the most of the present time. One tip I would give to school leavers is to use summer holidays and spare time wisely. Research has shown that students who have a gap year achieve more highly at university than students who enter university straight after school and mature age students. So do something you’ve never done before – whether that’s volunteering, a work placement or travelling to a new continent.

Having worked in a number of different countries it is true, travel really does broaden the mind. Do something that will enrich your life and that will take you out of your comfort zone. Employers will always look favourably on the efforts taken by go-getters who have gone out and done work experience. Work experience or volunteering is a great way to network and exposes you to a range of core workplace activities, including teamwork, communication skills and how to use your initiative.

4. Don’t give up

If I could give my 17-year-old self any piece of advice over and over again it would be not to be scared of rejection. Life is full of rejections, be they personal (God knows, I’ve had a few), educational or professional.

Getting job rejections can be emotionally difficult and frustrating but it can also be a useful springboard to reassess your goals. There are many different pathways to get to the same destination. Missing out on grades, a course, or a job, doesn’t mean the dream is over. You can look at alternative pathways.

If you don’t have the necessary experience or the right grades, perhaps think about going through clearing, doing an internship or gaining experience by work shadowing. Don’t give up at the first hurdle and remain positive.

5. Never stop learning

When I left school I thought that was the end of homework. How wrong I was. Education doesn’t stop after school. As former US Secretary of War Newton Baker said: “The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow, is uneducated the day after.” Never stop learning, treat every day as another school day.

Source: theconversation.com

Know your weaknesses

A lot of school leavers find themselves in a catch-22 situation; they don’t have any experience because they have just left school, but can’t seem to get their foot in the door because they have no experience.

So you need to become your own sales person. Sit down and have a good think about what skills you’ve picked up and how they can be transferred to the workplace. That Saturday job you always moaned about can be transformed into a showcase of proven time management, responsibility, team work, and initiative skills.

Your CV

If your CV is a little light on content, don’t worry about it, as a CV is really just a list of skills and experience that are applicable to the position. Your skills and experience so far have mainly come from education, so this is what you need to highlight.

List your qualifications and expand on what you learnt from the classes. If you had to deal with coursework, talk about how that taught you time management skills and how to use your initiative to carry out research etc.

Did you work in groups for any of your classes? If so, that shows team-work and if you led the team, mention how you became a team leader.

If you took part in after-school clubs, this shows that you have commitment and dedication. And there is no harm in mentioning hobbies either. Employers like well-rounded individuals and even though a hobby is for pleasure, it still shows that you have the drive to do something other than watch TV.

Although it’s important to show you have experience that is applicable to the workplace, don’t stretch things too far. No-one expects a school leaver to have an 8-page CV and if you waffle too much, you could do more harm than good.

The cover letter

For a lot of employers, the cover letter determines whether a CV gets looked at or not. You need it to summarise why you want the job as well as why you should get the job.

Be honest that you’re a school leaver, but explain why this is the career you want. Did you take any courses that are applicable? If so, mention this. Is there something special about the company which makes you want to work there? Put that in too.

Unless you have some previous work experience, highlight how this is the career you want to dedicate your life to and this is the company you want to start with. Employers obviously like people with experience, but you’d be surprised at how many also like the idea of giving someone with the right attitude their first shot.

The interview

If you get called in for an interview, prepare as you would for an exam. Do your research on the company, the job and also the market. Companies like – and expect – candidates to have looked into what they do, but not everyone bothers, so it’s a good way to stand out and impress potential employers.

Always dress smartly for an interview, you don’t want to lose points with the employer just because you couldn’t be bothered to iron your shirt.

Interviews can be scary, especially if you have no experience of them, so do some mock interviews with your friends first. Think of the kind of questions you’ll be asked and prepare for them. That will give you more confidence and help tackle nerves.

If you find yourself feeling really nervous during the interview, breathe calmly and don’t worry about taking a few moments before you answer a question. You can explain to the interviewer that you are nervous – they won’t bite!

Extra work

It’s important to keep yourself busy while looking for a job. Not only will this stop you going stir-crazy, but a lot of things will enhance your CV.

Use social media to start networking. Become involved in group discussions – it will give you confidence and also prove you have a handle on the market you want to work in. Find out about any job fairs or seminars near you, as they are also an excellent way to network.

Look at your Facebook and Twitter pages from the perspective of an employer. If there is anything that shows you in a bad light, either delete it or remove the account altogether.

Be proactive. Send off your CV to companies that interest you, there may only be the chance for some unpaid work to start with, but it could turn out to be a permanent position. It also shows drive, which employers love.

Finally, stay in a positive frame of mind. You will, unfortunately, get rejections, but keep at it and don’t give up, as the job market can be difficult. If you get job rejections, ask for clarity so you can learn if you went wrong somewhere and fix it for the next time.

Source: www.totaljobs.com

So, you now have your matric diploma, or other qualification, and you feel like the world is at your feet.  You hit the road running with all the enthusiasm and joy of someone on the start of their adult journey.

You put your CV on the internet and visit some recruitment agencies – and then you wait for all the offers to come in. And you wait and you wait!  What happens then?

When you keep doing the same thing over and over again, can you really expect a different result?  If you’ve sent out your CV and are now just sitting and waiting – and carry on waiting – for job offers to come in, you will probably end up being very disappointed!
So, what should you be doing if you are not getting the results that you want?

Here are 10 Tips for first-time job seekers

1. Check your CV!
   Have you had your CV checked by someone in the corporate world? It’s not unusual for people to miss their own typing errors (you know the ones that spellcheck doesn’t pick up, like ‘there’ instead of ‘their’) so it’s essential to have a ‘proof reader’. Make sure your contact details are correct!

2. Target your applications
   Don’t just send your CV out to thousands of people and hope that one of them will get back to you. Target your applications. Do internet research to find out the best place for you to be sending your information to. Find out where other people in your group or circle have had success and try those resources.

3. Use your contacts!
   This is always quite difficult when you start out, but often it’s not what you know, but who you know in business.

4. Network
   Use your parents’ or relatives’ network.

5. References
   Ask your teacher/professor for personal character references.

6. Face-to-Face
   Try and meet the people who are going to be looking for jobs for you. It is much easier for a recruitment agent to remember someone they have met, and who has made an impression on them – rather than some nameless person on a CV. Remember that recruitment or personnel agencies get thousands of job applications a week, so you need to be the one who makes the effort – and the impression.

7. Follow up
   Don’t wait for people to get back to you: they are doing you a service; you must do the follow up.

8. Be prepared to start at the bottom of the ladder
   No matter what your qualification is: Remember to be working in a company, in ANY position, is better than not to be working at all. It’s about getting a foot in the door to gain experience.

9. Good work ethic
   A prospective employer will always look at what you’ve been doing since you qualified, so they would rather hire a person who qualified as an accountant last year, but has worked as a receptionist this year over someone who qualified last year and has not worked since.

10. Don’t give up!
    No matter what the negative people are saying, there is work out there.  You have to keep trying until you succeed. They say in sales that you have to knock on 20 doors before you make a sale.  These days it may be more like 30 doors before you make that sale – in this case, yourself.  So if you’re not successful at first, remind yourself that it’s ‘one down, 29 to go’. . .

Good luck with your job hunting!
 

About the author:
Bev Morrison is a development coach based in Johannesburg. She opened her coaching practice in 2008 after an 18-year corporate career.

‘Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.’ – Zig Ziglar

Pic:  Tim Gouw