Although the economy has gotten more difficult, there are still plenty of jobs for college graduates out there. You just have to keep on your toes, keep a healthy and positive outlook, and work as hard as you can to get them. Graduate jobs don’t grow on trees anymore. There was a time where anyone with a graduate degree in anything could get a job easily. Those times are gone. Nowadays, particularly if you have a liberal arts major, you really have to hustle for the jobs. After all, with more people going to schools and the economy not doing very well, there is intense competition for the graduate jobs that exist.
The first graduate job that I got was not very impressive. Basically, I was working part-time as a tutor. It was at one of those large tutor mills with offices all over the country. I was teaching SAT test prep to high school kids and not making a lot of money. I knew that, with a college education, I could do more. It was just a matter of getting everything in order.
First of all, I tweaked my resume. I can’t overestimate the importance of doing this to get good graduate jobs. After all, there are a lot of people who can do the job. What separates the contenders from the has-beens is having a slick, professional presentation, and this starts with your resume. After that, I signed up for some job search engines. Job search sites are wonderful. Instead of sending your resume out to a dozen employers, you can make it accessible to hundreds of them. This is the perfect way to open up new opportunities for graduate work.
It took a while until I found a graduate job that I really liked. Some of the graduate jobs that I worked for after the tutoring center were not much better, but I knew I was moving in the right direction. Eventually, I found the perfect job. I got work in a newspaper, doing local reporting. It did not pay well, and it wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be, but I knew it could take me there. Within a few years using my talent with the English language, I could be a real reporter in a national periodical. Since then, I have really begun going places. I refused to give up in my search for graduate jobs, and I finally found some good opportunities.