Planning for Life After College | What the Job?

Life after college can be a scary prospect for many people. The reason is that college begins to feel comfortable, so putting off planning for life after college is easy, especially when homework, exams, and other obligations begin piling up. For this reason, I must stress the importance of starting your college job search as soon as possible.

Of course, this is assuming that your plans after college include working. There are other options, such as traveling after college, moving back home after college, volunteering after college, joining the military after college or getting into grad school if you aren't ready for your college job search. These are also valid options, but I will focus on the college job search due to the scope of this blog. In any case, the key to being able to utilize your time to its fullest will be to plan early, and plan thoroughly. Regardless of the path you choose to take, you need to be on top of your future plans.

For a college job search, I suggest laying out a schedule for yourself as much as a year before you plan to start at your new job. That means that you should probably be starting now. This schedule should be as detailed as possible, working through when you will have decided what path you want to take, when your resume should be finished, when you will apply for jobs, and a goal for when you will secure an offer. The key here is to be as realistic is possible. Consider things like what time of year companies hire college grads, how heavy your workload is going to be, and what other students in your shoes have experienced. Give yourself hard deadlines, so that you stay on track. Obviously you will likely deviate from the schedule due to factors beyond your control, but at least you will be able to determine whether you are ahead or behind. I would encourage you to leave several months before graduation empty in case your college job search is not successful and you can't find a job after college. Here is an example of what your schedule should probably look like:

This shows an example of how to schedule your college job search strategy for life after college. It should include specific dates to have tasks done, but should leave substantial flexibility for factors that are beyond your control. For this reason, it is important that your college job search start as early as possible.