The Post-College Survival Guide

You took the walk with your cap and gown. You have that diploma in your hand. You're ready to tackle the world. But where the heck do you start? What are you forgetting to do? Once you're out of college, you have a lot of ground to cover to get things moving. From managing student loans to finding a job, here's what you need to do.

Finishing up college is an amazing feeling, but after that sense of relief fades away, it's straight back to the grind of moving forward with your life. It might seem as simple as finding a job, but you're going to run into a lot of roadblocks along the way. You need to get that resume in order, deal with student loans, whip those finances into shape, and much more.

N.B Visit www.campusflava.com for other updates

Get a Job You Actually Want

When you're fresh out of college, finding the job you want is pretty tough, and chances are that you'll work a few odd jobs before you land something something in the career path you actually want. Either way, the first step is to get that resume in order so you can start the process.

Step One: Whip Your Resume Into Shape

Your resume is one of the toughest things to put together when you're out of college because you likely don't have that much relevant experience to put on it. That means you need to tailor your resume a bit more than someone with a lot of experience.

Thankfully, this isn't as hard as it seems. To bulk up your resume a bit, 99U suggests that you include your personal or school projects when you're looking for that first job:

Don’t limit yourself to the confines of a traditional resume. Recognize that under “Skills” you can list everything from Photoshop to silk-screening, that studio time can be just as important as past employment, and that unpaid side projects show dedication, initiative, and responsibility. If the majority of your experience is personal, studio, or classroom work, add more of a description than you normally would, explaining the kind of timeline you were working with and why you chose the subject matter.

Reader Intending_Acceleration also shares this advice for what exactly is worth including:

I don't expect you to have much working experience fresh out of school, but if you want a leg up over others, you should have been doing some sort of work—say, running your own student computer repair service, or working for the school or one of the departments in some capacity. University/college staff/faculty make for good references, too. List your areas of study. List your academic achievements. List your strong skills. Just because you used Photoshop to make some funny meme images doesn't mean you get to list it on your resume, and I will be pissed if I count on you to have working knowledge of Photoshop. List a few interests/hobbies to help conversation along.

When you're out of school, you need to pack your resume with everything potentially relevant that you can. Projects are great for this, but so are internships, accomplishments, and volunteer service. In the case of a creative job, you can add a little more impact with a creative resume, but for most jobs really boils down to keeping your resume in line with your target audience. For example, if you're writing up a resume for something like a graphic design company or a public relations firm, it's a good idea to think outside the box a little. If you're applying for something like an accountant position, it's best to keep it simple to get past the 6-second resume scan.

While you're doing all this, it's important to keep yourself busy too. As The New York Times points out, you should find a way to continue developing your skills, even if that means working as a waiter while you hunt for the perfect career. Those blank spots on your resume are far more damaging than irrelevant experience.

The truth is that you can clean up your resume in a ton of different ways to improve your chances to get a job, and no "right" way exists for every position. You'll need to think about where you're applying for a job, what they want from you in the position, and then tailor your resume to fit those expectations. If you're having trouble, don't forget that your school's career services office is a good starting point for getting help with your resume, figuring out where to apply, and connecting with other alumni. That said, if you need a little help just getting it all in order on your own, we've got you covered.

Step Two: Prepare Yourself for Your First Interviews

Let's be a little blunt here: you're probably going to go on a lot of interviews when you first start looking for that career, and you're going to mess up a little. That's okay, it happens to everyone, but you can do a few things to prep yourself to increase your chances of getting things right.

For your first set of interviews, you need to concentrate on the basics. That means preparing responses to common interview questions like "Tell me about yourself," "Why do you want to work for us," or "Tell me about a problem you've solved in the past." For the most part, you just need to answer honestly with any experience you have. For example, a good response to "Tell me about a problem you've solved in the past" might include a solution you've come up with a student project, or even a problem you solved at a part-time job that made the company more efficient.

If you're struggling, Redditor elorenz7 suggests recording a practice interview to boost your confidence:

You may fear that your pauses are too long, but that's rarely a concern. If you're prepping for an interview, record yourself and listen. You'll notice that those pauses aren't really as long as you think.

As we mentioned above, no employer is going to expect you to have a ton of experience straight out of college. They're still going to try and figure out how you'll respond to common situations in the interview. In most cases you can apply your experiences in school or from part-time jobs to most common questions like:

• "Tell me about a challenge you faced with a coworker."
• "Tell me about your greatest weakness."
• "Do you have any questions for us?"
• "Why should I hire you?"
• "Have you ever been fired?"
• "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

Again, your school's career services resource center is an excellent place to start. Most centers will guide you through mock interviews, and help you come up with solid responses to the most common questions. Of course, if you need some more advice, we have plenty of tips for everything from reading body language to following up on interviews.

Step Three: Get Your Mind Ready for Your Career

You nailed the resume, you passed the rounds of interviews, and now you're on your way to your first job. Now what? It's time to get through those first few stressful months at your new career.

Your first few days on the job are all about familiarizing yourself with your new career. This means it's important to ask questions about what's expected of you, accept that you're going to make mistakes, and try your best to fit into the role you've been hired for. The best you can really do here is prepare yourself for a lot of hard work, potentially long hours, and a lot mistakes.

Getting organized and accepting your newbie status is a good place to start, as is knowing what is expected of you the first day. Be on time, ready to work, and be ready to make some mistakes along the way. You'll also want to ask a few questions about wardrobe, equipment, and skills to make sure you're on the same page as your employer. If you're switching from pulling all-nighters cramming for tests to suddenly getting up at six in the morning every day it's also a good idea to reboot your sleep schedule so you're prepared for your new hours.

Learn a Few of Those Skills You've Been Putting Off

When you're in college it's pretty easy to put off learning a basic set of skills. Perhaps you never bothered to cook anything more complicated than frozen ravioli, or you always made sure to bring your laundry to your parents house instead of doing it yourself. With that in mind, here a few life skills that are easy to catch up on and often neglected when in school.

• Find a new place to live: Once you finish up with school you're probably going to look for a new place to live. That might mean a cross-country move for a job, or hunting down a cheap place to live to save money. Regardless of how you're handling it, ask the right questions and you'll find the perfect place to live. Once you're settled in, you can customize your home in all sorts of ways without pissing off the landlord.
• Keep your house clean and organized: If your college years were anything like mine, you ended up with a ton of junk just laying around. Thankfully, decluttering is easy and can keep your house clean in 15 minutes or less. Even laundry is easier with the right tools at your disposal.
• Learn how to cook a few solid meals: We get it, your college years were spent perfecting the art of reheating frozen pizza and spicing up ramen noodles. That's okay, but if you want to move on a bit and get a few more meals under your belt it's easy to do. We've shown you a bunch of meals everyone should be able to make, how to eat healthy when you hate cooking, the kitchen skills everyone should know, and plenty more. Case in point, it's a good time to drop the mini-pizza addiction and start cooking like a pro.
• Grab cheap tickets to anywhere: You just graduated college, and after four (or more) years of being stuck in the same place it's a good time to take a break and travel a bit. Just because you're low on cash doesn't mean you can't take a vacation. In fact, with a little bit of extra work you can take a vacation to just about anywhere you want.

---

Post-college life is a huge change, and it's not an easy one. Easing the transition means getting everything organized so you don't have to worry about it. It's a joyful and stressful situation to find yourself in, but the above tips will make the transition a bit smoother.