Most students go to college to learn skills and gain experiences, which make them competitive candidates when applying a full-time job with millions of competitors.Allen Major, Multimedia Lab Director of the Department of Journalism, shares his secrets of recruiting student employees and helps students studying communication majors to prepare for jobs.
When is the right time to start preparing?You can do internships every year; the more you try you figure out what you really like to do; probably not in freshman year. You should do internships as early as junior year. Works must have done before writing a resume? Practical experiences: classes have been taking, internships head up to that point. IDS is a good one to put.
Should I put everything that I have done?Tailor your resume for what job you are looking for. You can have multiple resumes for different jobs. For example: for a PR job, put your PR internship; and for sales job, put your sales experience.
I personally would like to see key words.You should be prepared to expand them later in the interview.
How to write an attractive cover letter?Personal experience ties to the job prevent it to be sound similar to other letters.
Does GPA matter?People get 4.0 aren’t the best workers. I was not a good student, but I was a good worker. Employers are looking for practical skills and work examples. Ds are not the case.
You really want to know what this company does. Don’t talk profits with a nonprofits company. Interviewers want to see that you did your homework.
What are they looking for on a journalism student?The more skills you are the more valuable you have. Be a writer who can shoot video and design webpages, be a broadcaster who can produce, make graphics and write.
Special thanks to:
Allen Major
Multimedia Lab Director, Department of Journalism
acmajor@indiana.edu