College students and new graduates often feel they have nothing to include on a resume when conducting job search and for using with job applications. College students’ work experience is often seemingly unrelated to their job targets, and aside from that, the only information left to include is education. However, while this may seem like the case, it simply isn’t so!

Transferable Skills

One method of approaching a college student or new graduate resume is to focus on transferable skills. These skills are applicable to different situations. The ability to communicate well, for example, is a skill that is useful in any industry or position. Other transferable skills may include the ability to work well with numbers, sales skills, or an ability to solve problems by looking at the big picture. These are only a few examples.

How do you list transferable skills? There are a number of ways to include transferable skills in your resume, job application, and cover letter. The following are some tips for various sections of the resume.

The Summary or Profile

Objective statements are out. Profiles are in. Open with a brief introductory paragraph describing your most “sellable” points. Briefly list transferable skills here, or present them in a keyword summary list. This is exactly as it sounds: a list of keywords. Use those that show your transferable skills.

Education

Depending on your college major, you likely had to write papers, complete projects, or both. What were the outcomes of these? Did you conduct comprehensive research on a subject? Design an engineering plan? Were these published or put into use in the “real world”? Use as much of your educational experience to your advantage. You can also include a summary of coursework, which often demonstrates transferable skills that are used in the educational setting and in the world of business.

Employment History

Many college students have a work history unrelated to their targeted field. If this is true for you, take heart. You can include many transferable skills on your college or new graduate resume. At the most basic, you likely gained professional skills such as dependability, working with others, collaborating on projects, communicating with clients or customers, and much more. Your work history may not be as unrelated as it first seems.

Additional Information

Any volunteer work or memberships may lead to transferable skills. Just as your employment history helps you learn transferable skills, so too does volunteer work. It also demonstrates a commitment to helping others. If you’ve fulfilled any roles in a professional organization, this too can show transferable (and sometimes directly related) skills.

When you take the time to thoroughly review your experience, education, and other related activities, you will discover a number of transferable skills. Use these to your advantage! Your resume, college application, job application, or cover letter will be much stronger for it.

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If you’ve just graduated from college or high school and want to accumulate job experience, hit your computer and find an internship online. An internship is a pre-professional, usually unpaid, job that provides students, recent graduates, and people hoping to change careers with experience in a particular career field. For students, internships can also offer college credit. If you’re thinking of transitioning into a new career field, find an internship as a way to try out a new job without making a permanent commitment.

If you’re in college, you visit your college’s Career Services office, or ask if they have a program helping students find an internship. If your college arranges to find an internship for students, they may have a web page where you can check out internships online. These internships are geared specifically toward students from your college, so you may find a perfect fit on just one visit to the site.

There are also websites designed to act as search engines just to help you find an internship. One of those, MonsterTrak.com, is not only an exhaustive job listing database, it also offers an internship database – all you need to do is enter “internship” in the search field. If you’re a current student or a college graduate, call your school’s career counseling office to find out if your college is partnered with MonsterTrak – if they are, they can provide you with a password. Also try sites that let you find an internship – Internweb.com, one of many such sites, has a search feature that lets you to specify location, industry, job function, and even the time of year you’d like to do your internship.

If you’re a recent college graduate looking for work experience or even an older adult hoping to change careers, seriously consider an internship to get the work experience you need – or just to find out if you really want to work in that field at all. A surprising number of industries, from computer tech and banking to the restaurant business and law, offer internships for work experience and even college credit. They offer a chance for those new to a particular field to gain experience while working under mentors who know the business inside and out. Find an internship the same way you would hunt for a job – just specify that you’re looking for an internship online, rather than a permanent position.

In fact you have to write a resume that captures the attention of the hiring manager within the first couple of seconds otherwise your resume will be tossed. Resume writing allows you a creative freedom that many people don’t bother using when they create resumes for their job search. You can’t be completely off-the-wall with your resume, you can still e craft a resume that is as catchy as that new commercial and maintain your professional image.

Gather together your information and make sure that you have a copy of the job listing. The copy of the job listing will help you with this. You can read over it for keywords, or to see where the employer places the emphasis in the listing, so that you know what aspects of your skills and training they are interested in hearing about. The resume doesn’t have to give your life story, it simply has to intrigue the hiring manager enough that you get called in for an interview. Now this doesn’t mean to leave them hanging. On the contrary, you need to be sure that you provide all of the requested information, as well as a full list of your employment history and educational background.

There is a delicate balance between providing a professional looking resume and building a creative resume. Keep that professionalism in mind while you write, you can take the creativity to whatever extent possible, while still maintaining integrity in your resume writing. Many people feel like they are simply recording a documented history of their experience, you are really creating history in your resume. Your resume is the one place where you can list your job experiences the way that YOU want, to give you the best chance at landing the job.

Nothing I have written above means or insinuates that you should lie. In Fact…NEVER lie on a resume; it will come back to haunt you. Being creative in language and phrasing etc. is a far cry from telling lies. For example, instead of saying “Assistant Manager”, you could say something along the lines of “Assistant Manager of Human Resources and Employee Relations.”   This gives a much clearer idea of what you actually did at your job than the first example.

Know What You’re Looking For

If you haven’t yet identified your job target, now is the time to do so! Take advantage of your school’s career services and job placement opportunities. These services exist for one reason: to help you in your career. Most career services offices offer a variety of assessment tools to help you determine your best career option. For some college students, this may mean a career outside of your major. For other students, this may mean identifying a specific career within the larger field of study.

Do Your Research

Finding your ideal job takes effort. It’s not enough to simply post your resume, job application, and cover letter on the Internet and wait for employers to come calling. If you want to find the best job, you need to engage all your resources. Research the types of companies you want to work for and find out as much about them as possible. Use your network of friends and associates and a variety of job-search tools, including the Internet, classifieds, state and government postings, job fairs, cold calling, and placement agencies and recruiters (although be wary of any agencies or recruiters that charge a fee).

“In terms of finances, we are facing difficult times, but one of the best investments someone can make in economic hard times is an investment in themselves through education,” said Terrence Thomas, Chief Marketing Officer for eLearners.com, which connects prospective students with online learning providers. “A college education gives people the competitive edge in a tight job market and helps those with a job to keep moving forward and up the career ladder. The eLearners.com Debt-Free College Guide puts the vast offerings of financial aid in one convenient location.”

The Debt-Free College Guide lists hundreds of lesser known financial aid programs designed to make an online college education financially accessible. Visitors can search for financial assistance programs by state, with tailored results customized to their search. It also has information on tax deductions and credits so students can save money on future tax returns.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the Debt-Free College Guide is the list of loan forgiveness programs, which is the most comprehensive list of loan forgiveness and repayment programs on the Internet. Loan forgiveness programs are generally designed to encourage students to pursue educational goals that will lead to employment in specific need-based occupations, such as working for volunteer organizations, federal and state governments, teaching or practicing medicine. In exchange for service in these fields, part or all of student loan debt can be forgiven, be it from a traditional institution or from one of many online colleges.

“Searching for financial aid can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating,” continued Thomas. “We recognized this and created the Debt-Free College Guide to make sure everyone realizes a college education can be within reach.”

The Debt-Free College Guide is part of eLearners.com’s Student Loans and Financial Aid Center. The center also offers a loan buying guide, in collaboration with The Greentree Gazette, where visitors can compare more than 300 student loans by loan vendor, type, up-front fees and interest rates. eLearners.com has also introduced such innovations as the eLearners Advisor, an assessment that through a series of targeted questions ranging from technology access and skills, to personal motivation and learning styles, helps prospective elearners determine if online learning is right for them.

For more information on financial aid options and going to school online visit www.elearners.com.

About eLearners.com®
The eLearners.com web site is one of several high visibility, high-quality prospecting tools offered by EducationDynamics, LLC. Since 1999, eLearners.com has been successfully connecting learners to online education, including online degree and certificate programs, specialized career training, and a variety of online courses. For prospective students, eLearners® provides a powerful search engine for users to find thousands of online program offerings, as well as educational evaluation tools and financial aid resources. For colleges and universities, the eLearners.com web site offers a low-cost, performance-based method to provide national exposure and increase enrollments in their programs. For more information on eLearners.com, visit http://www.elearners.com/.

• Get organized. Take some time to review your conversations, look through literature that you picked up, and make notes for each company, recruiter and opportunity. If you are missing contact information for someone you met, do some internet research to find it.
• Apply online. Many people feel that a recruiter may be brushing them off by asking the candidate to “go to the website” but they are not! Hiring companies are subject to many regulations regarding tracking job applicants, and to be considered a candidate, you need to be recorded in their system. Get that online application submitted!
• Send a thank-you note. Personal preference varies on whether email or hand written is better. Email is quicker, but it’s pretty cool (and unusual) to get a hand written note. Thank the recruiter for their time and try to mention something specific to your conversation that will help them remember you. Emphasize your interest in the company and position. Based on your conversation at the Job Fair, ask about follow up, and if appropriate, ask for an interview!
• Stay in touch. Again, use your judgment based on the information that you learned from the recruiter. Do they have an immediate need? Will the process take several weeks? Follow up by email at the appropriate interval to stay top of mind as a motivated, proactive candidate.

The average cost of a distance business masters in the human resources major area, according to the survey, which included 38 regionally accredited universities, is $18,400.

GetEducated’s list of the Top 15 Best Buys in Distance Learning Masters Degrees is archived online at http://www.geteducated.com/rankings/best_hr.asp.

Among the most expensive buys for consumers seeking a business school degree through distance learning: The University of Phoenix ($27,450); Drexel University ($37,575); Devry University ($28,700); and Golden Gate University ($40,800).

In a separate study of nationally accredited distance degrees, GetEducated’s analysts found that online degrees accredited by the Distance Education & Training Council (DETC) cost consistently less than their regionally accredited counterparts. Average cost for a DETC accredited HR master’s degree: $9,320.

Free Guide to Business Schools Online
Consumers searching for accredited online business schools can explore all their online B-School options by downloading a free copy of the clearinghouse’s 2008 guidebook to online universities, GetEducated.com’s Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools, Business, Management and Online MBAs, http://www.geteducated.com/guidebooks/bdlgs_bm.asp.

About GetEducated.com:
Founded in 1989, GetEducated.com, LLC is the safest place in cyberspace to shop for an online degree. In a nationwide effort to help consumers get educated about quality online education the clearinghouse publishes independent ratings and rankings of online universities. The clearinghouse operates the Diploma Mill Police, (SM) a free online degree accreditation verification service designed to help protect online learners from educational fraud.

At ISM you can choose the all-inclusive Spa Management course that covers all areas of spa management, including finance, public relations, client services, marketing, and more. At the end of the course you will be fully qualified to fill any spa management position available.

You can also take individual courses, such as conflict management, human resources, customer service, and others. It’s up to you how you want to spend your summer months, but spending it advancing your career goals with ISM in the comfort of your own home makes it easier than ever.

Graber notes that with today’s competitive employment market, you should always be prepared to initiate a job search. “Having an up to date resume and some supporting documents such as articles you may have published or periodicals in which you were quoted, will make a profound impression.”

Graber suggests that you prepare a few “iResumes” that can be downloaded via a USB flash drive or transmitted via your PDA. “Ideally you should have both Word and PDF formats,” he said. “You might have more than one iResume at the ready . . . one that is more industry-focused in addition to a more skill-centered version to choose from depending on the circumstance.”

Graber advises using only a PDF format for sending articles, awards or trade papers you are featured in to preserve their visual format which will maximize their impact when opened.

“You may have to email yourself these files from another source to have them in the email history of your portable device,” Graber notes, “so be sure to highlight which iResume or article is which in the subject line so you can find it quickly. And take care that these emails don’t get archived off the device as new mail comes in.”

“These career moments can happen quickly,” Graber noted, “but don’t forget to follow up with your new contact. Be certain you get a business card or have that individual give you their information via their electronic device and check to see that it comes through accurately.”

About the company: WallStJobs.com, the premier recruiting source exclusively for financial service professionals, is a member of the Jobosaurus family of uniquely specialized recruiting sites.

After noticing that students lacked a central resource for advertising internship information, and agencies lacked a central channel to connect with students, YouIntern.com’s founders decided to fill this gap with a website that encourages and supports rewarding internship experiences for both students and employers.

“The marketplace of information lacks any substantive content for interns,” said Dan Chaparian, one of YouIntern’s founders. “YouIntern.com was born to give interns the inside track on positions they are considering. We then invite employers to submit their internship opportunities so that every stakeholder feels involved in the process.”

Along with internship reviews and openings, YouIntern.com features “expert advice” from advertising professionals to help guide students toward their career goals. The founders also maintain a blog with stories from the field and from their experience in advertising. Everything builds on YouIntern’s philosophy of “freedom from coffee and copies” that liberates students from the monotony of many of today’s internships.

“YouIntern.com is the only place where students can read the scoop about an internship before deciding to apply. That’s why we link employers and students,” said Anand Chopra-McGowan, another founder. “Advertising is one of the hottest industries for students, and we’re inviting employers to post their open internships right next to these students.”

Internships are necessary for students who wish to build a competitive resume, and with services charging thousands of dollars for internship placement, competition and demand is higher than ever. Business Week recently reported that the National Association of Colleges and Employers noted that 62% of new hires have internship experience, and YouIntern.com’s goal is to ensure that every stakeholder in the internship process has fair and equal access to information.

YouIntern.com has plans to become the definitive platform for honest, open information and dialogue in the form of internship reviews, and open internship postings. Current reviews and postings include leading marketing and advertising agencies like Arnold, TBWA/Chiat/Day, Burson-Marseteller, Hill Holliday, MMB, BBH, GSD&M, Mullen, Modernista! and more. Cities covered include Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many more, with internships in summar, fall and spring semesters.