Firstly, to all the new grad connections out there, congratulations!!! November marks the start of your new career life to come! Final exams are either done or nearly done, and most of you will soon be applying for your first graduate job. For each job you apply for, you will be planning to submit a professional cover letter teamed with an immaculate resume tailored to the specific selection job criteria. But, have you checked if your digital profile and telecommunications are job ready?
To assess your suitability for a job, potential employers are likely to Google you, review your social media profiles and hopefully call you. For this reason, it’s critical that you consider what each of these things is communicating to potential employers and the impact that they may have on the securing of your “perfect graduate” position.
Here are just a few helpful tips to build your job ready professional graduate profile.
Clean up all your profiles on social media
Start with your profile pictures to ensure they portray you as professional-looking. Then, ensure you have privacy settings turned on. Apart from potential employers, you don’t want future patients, consumers, clients, customers, colleagues or management accessing your personal information.
Use a professional-looking email address
Using any combination of your first and last name and initials typically work best. If your email address is something like epic_fail94@hotmail.com — it happens more often than you’d think — then it’s time to create a “job-ready” email address.
Discover what comes up when you Google your name
Check both images and content for anything that you wouldn’t want a potential employer seeing, e.g. if you’ve were tagged at your university games grand final drinking shots from three years ago, then consider taking the required steps to have the image removed or hidden from public view.
Check your Voicemail
The first rule is message bank is a must on your mobile phone, preferably voicemail message bank rather than voice-to-text. As a recruiter, when you spend a lot of time contacting people via phone, ‘voice to text’ message banks are rather frustrating. The recording often cuts out halfway through the message, and you’re left wondering if the message was transcribed correctly.
Record a friendly-sounding voice message. It’s always nice to hear a voice at the end of the line, even if it is just you politely asking the caller to leave a message. Make the message concise, polite and professional. ‘Hello, you’ve reached Clare Jones, Occupational Therapist. Unfortunately, I’m unable to take your call. Please leave a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.’
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like any advice or assistance preparing for your next job in Australia, New Zealand or the UK. Contact us at info@medirecruit.com
