Entry Level Work

Quite often, a graduate of a local college or trade school will call me looking for their first job. Typically, I explain that most employers come to fee paid recruiters looking for people with some level of work history in their desired field of work. As a former Director of Career Services, I know that most institutions maintain records of employers who have hired their graduates in the past, usually for about five years or so. There is no reason why a past graduate should not approach the proper person at the school they graduate from and ask to see a copy of that list. Naturally, they can not guarantee that everyone on that list will be interested in hiring but they are places who are familiar with the background of typical graduates of that particular school. To me, that is eliminating the first part of the cold call because the candidate will likely not need to go into great detail talking about the program they were part of as the employer should have a general idea. From personal experience, only a small percentage of graduates actually take advantage of the resources their Career Services office has available to them!