At Landing Internships and Your First Job, Jerome Wong offers valuable career readiness tips to college students about to enter the workplace. The subtitle, Why Qualifications Are Not Enough, reveals that hiring managers look for more than academic success and so-called “hard skills” when evaluating candidates.
Wong has spent many years on both sides of the hiring process. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Tufts University, has had a degree in technology, received another degree from Columbia Business School, and then entered the banking world and eventually started his own company, Real World ExpertsTM, to advise students in all professional preparation processes. In addition to being interviewed many times for jobs, Wong has frequently interviewed potential employees, participated in campus recruiting teams, and worked with the human resources departments of the companies he worked for to recruit the best available college talent. Today, through his company, Wong advises students on the entire job search process, including interview techniques and proper business etiquette. Now she shares all her experiences, thoughtful ideas, and practical strategies in her new book.
Landing Internships and Your First Job goes way beyond the usual job search books on interviewing techniques and how to write a resume. This book is intended specifically for students and explains how they can use their academic experience to translate it into the key components that employers want in their respective fields. As Wong says in the introduction:
“Unlike seasoned professionals who may point to their relevant work experience as qualifications for future success, students have the more challenging task of convincing potential employers that their academic and extracurricular experiences can translate into career success. They also have the added burden of convincing companies that they are genuinely interested and committed to the industry. “
Wong relieves students of much of that burden by showing how to value their experiences. But this book is about much more than how to improve your resume to make it look good to an employer or what to say in an interview. Wong talks about all the things that students should do long before they start looking for work. He instructs on how to determine which courses to take to establish a compelling academic profile, how to use your school’s professional services office to help you, and most importantly, how to tell your authentic story to convince the company to hire you.
Equally important, Wong asks readers to think about which career is best for them. Students must determine what their values are and how they will translate into the workplace. It’s not enough just wanting to earn a six-figure salary, and you certainly can’t tell potential employers that’s why you want to work for them. You also don’t want to take a job just for the money if it will put more stress on you than you can handle or if it doesn’t ethically align with your values.
One of the most important chapters in the book is about building your personal brand. Success in the job market begins with being personal success, and that doesn’t mean just academic achievement, but moral success and coming up with a personal definition of success that will align with your goals, personality, and ethics. You have to mark yourself to reflect who you are in every way. Wong helps students not only determine what their brands are, but also how to communicate those brands effectively to employers so that they “buy” the brand.
Wong also focuses on the importance of treating the professional preparation process like a sales process. While you are in class, you are in a sales situation because you have to cultivate relationships to receive recommendations from teachers. Summer internships should also be treated as long, thorough job interviews. Additionally, Wong gives interview tips and adds this surprising nugget of truth: “Hiring managers are often more impressed with the questions candidates ask them than the answers to their questions.”
There is much more invaluable information in this book: networking tips, attending trade shows, how to have the right attitude, how to be self-confident, and how to have a sales mindset to sell yourself. But perhaps more important is what Wong has to say about when and how often to prepare to find a job. Wong affirms the harsh truth by saying:
“Students often tell me that they are too busy with their courses to spend time on career preparation. Unfortunately, attending job fairs or interviews on campus is not necessarily enough to find a job; you will have to try a lot harder if you want to maximize your chances of landing a great first job or internship … People often say that looking for a job is a full-time job. For college students, it should at least be a part-time job, which means You should consistently set aside time each week for career readiness. Ideally, you should start thinking about career readiness efforts as a freshman, although at this stage your focus should only be on becoming familiar with the career services available on campus, explore their academic interests and think about establishing attractive academic credentials to potential employers “.
Hopefully, you are one of the smart ones ahead of the game and will read this book early in your college career, but if not, there is still a lot to help you differentiate yourself from all other job seekers. I wish someone had given me this book when I was in college. It will be the perfect gift for high school or college students, anyone about to enter the job market, or even someone who wants to prepare to find a better job.
