If you’re wrapping up your senior year of college — or are about to graduate from school — congratulations on your achievements.
After pulling all-nighters to study for final exams, completing term papers and essays, and perhaps stressing about how you’re going to repay your college loans, you may be itching for a break, or at least a little bit of down time.
Once you’ve graduated, take a week or so to relax if you really need to, but then it’s time to get ultra serious about landing your first job.
Why so serious?
It’s a seriously challenging environment for all job hunters. But it’s especially tough right now for recent college grads and for African-Americans.
The Labor Department reports that employers added just 69,000 jobs in May 2012 and the unemployment rate in May actually ticked up to 8.2 percent, signaling that hiring is slowing. Plus, unemployment remains significantly higher for blacks, at 13.6 percent.
Still, none of this means you should despair over your job search.
If you’re an African-American college graduate, here are four job-hunting tips to help you stand out from the crowd and get started in the career you want and deserve.
Tip #1: Clean Up Your Social Media Profile
African-Americans tend to over-index on social media — meaning a lot of us are spending plenty of time on sites like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.
But having raunchy online photos or videos — like your partying exploits during Spring break –- can take you out of the running for a job position in no time flat.
Even the messages you post on social platforms — particularly about sensitive subjects like race or politics – can hurt you, since more than 9 out of 10 employers (91 percent) scour social networks to screen job applicants, according to a Reppler study.
What’s more, 69 percent of employers have rejected a job candidate based on something found on a social networking site.
To avoid this fate, check out this advice for 6 tips to purge your social media profile.
Tip #2: Consider Sharpening That Resume (in Sensitive Ways)
You’ve heard the traditional resume-writing advice before: Check your grammar, read everything over at least three times, use spell check, and so forth. Those things are practical advice all job-hunters should heed.
But what about specialized resume-preparing advice that African-American graduates should know?
For starters if you have a very ethnic sounding name, you may want to use initials or a middle name, if it’s more mainstream. It’s certainly not fair, and such a suggestion is likely to cause many people to bristle at the very notion of de-emphasizing their given names.
But some career experts say doing so can help you make it past certain corporate gatekeepers.
“I was just talking to another colleague and friend about this, and we both agreed that a very ethnic name, unfortunately, could be a disadvantage in the job market,” says Charles O. Wilkins, an African-American human resources veteran of more than 30 years.
Wilkins is President of Performance Plus Human Resources Management Consultants in East Brunswick, NJ.
“I’m not putting down ethnic names,” Wilkins adds. “But that kind of name will not help them at all. It will just identify them as being black.”
You could be “the brightest, most assertive and conscientious person there is,” Wilkins notes. But even at more progressive organizations, “some staffing and hiring managers will look for any clue that will allow them to discard a resume” – based on preconceived notions about race or other ideas.
“They receive so many resumes and if a hiring manager is looking for a way to eliminate a resume to get down to what they might feel are the ‘most qualified,’ that ethnic name can hurt you,” Wilkins says.
Tip #3: Polish Your Look
When you score an in-person interview, make sure you look the part. You should dress appropriately for the industry and corporate culture you plan to enter. But you needn’t blend in to the point where you are a wallflower or you abandon all sense of personal style.
For the interview itself, “Don’t overdo the jewelry. Females should wear jewelry that is understated,” Wilkins suggests.
And what about those with natural hair or ethnic hairstyles?
Wilkins thinks whatever way you wear your hair is fine, as long as it’s clean and neat.
“If it’s neat, I don’t think it would be rejected by employers,” he says. “Honestly, very long dreadlocks might be a turnoff to certain managers. But dreadlocks that are either not too long or that are just neatly pulled back in a ponytail would probably be OK.”
For men or women, though Wilkins adds: “We all know black people who have very beautiful braids and dreadlocks. So I definitely would not recommend someone cutting off their hair or trying to go bald for a job interview.”
Tip #4: Use Relevant Job-Search Sites
You’ve certainly heard of the major job-search sites, such as Monster.com and Career.com. They’re good for job-seekers of all backgrounds and races.
But African-American college grads on the prowl for a new job should also leverage minority or black-oriented job and career sites. A few good starting points are BlackCareerZone.com, DiversityInc.com, and UrbanLeagueJobsNetwork.com, all of which offer online career tools, including the option to create email alerts for jobs that match your search criteria.
Don’t forget as well to focus on industry-specific or specialized career websites.
For instance, are you a communications graduate or is your goal to become a professional writer or journalist? A good site to tap is JournalismJobs.com.
Or perhaps you’d like to work full-time or part-time for yourself as a freelancer in some way? Then be sure to check out Freelancer.com, the world’s largest outsourcing and crowd-sourcing marketplace, with 3 million members and over $120 million worth of work completed on the site.
Even if you don’t plan to freelance forever, Freelancer.com offers those looking for work a good way to tap into businesses and work-for-hire projects across a broad range of industries.