Hopefully your school has an internal (students and recruiters only) website devoted to resume submission and interview signups.  If they don’t, then get in touch with your school’s career resource office, and they almost certainly should have something that allows you to do what I discuss below.

The main intent of such a website is to allow students to search through jobs posted by companies.  It’s very much like a Monster.com specifically for students at your school.  At U of M, the College of Engineering has a very nice setup called HireME (Hire Michigan Engineers).  Companies post their job descriptions, and you can search for them by major, geographic location, start date, full time, internship, co-op, etc.  You can also post your information and resume to be searched for by companies as well.

When you find a job you are interested in, there is usually the opportunity to submit your resume to the posting.  Companies receive them, review them, and hopefully will contact you to set up an interview.  On some websites (such as HireME), this is all very streamlined – you submit your resume, the company approves or declines you for an interview, and then you are given the opportunity to sign up for an interview time.

So now you are probably wondering about how to best use such websites to your advantage. First, make sure you keep your resume and personal information up to date.  If you improved your GPA between semesters, update it!  If you moved or changed your contact information, update that too!  Each time you change your resume, upload a fresh copy to the website.  Those are just some of the basic things you can do to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward.

The next thing to discuss is how to search for opportunities.  I know you’re smart and can probably figure out the navigation, so I won’t try to counsel you on that.  In this area, I would strongly recommend that you not limit yourself geographically, especially for internships and co-ops.  I say this mainly for the reason that if you really make a good impression on a large company and have a small geographic request, they can hopefully try to accommodate it.  If they can’t help you, then it is no skin off your back – you just hopefully gained an offer that you can use to negotiate a better salary with another company.

Next, I wouldn’t worry about applying to too many companies.  It takes less 5 minutes to apply to a single company, not an hour.  This is one of the few times where I would tell you to apply, even if you are unsure about the opportunity or company.  After all, you can always tell them no later, and if they say no to you, it’s not a big deal.

Finally, don’t get discouraged when companies decline to offer you an interview based on your resume submission.  One of my friends, Jeff had a 4.0 GPA, multiple internship experiences, etc, and he still got rejected some of the time.  Some companies are just weird about who they select to interview.

Back to Company Information Sessions ...or... continue on to External Job Posting Websites

Thanks again for your interest in College-Career-Builder.com

E-Mail us with your comments! coachbob@college-career-builder.com