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Todays corporate job market presents serious challenges for recent college grads. In part, thats because the job market is difficult for everyone. But its also because entry-level job seekers don’t have as much experience and must work harder to show why their skill set and background makes them a good fit for a role. I recently reached out to Katie Smith, who offers career guidance for young professionals on her site Get a Corporate Job. She encourages students to take the following steps to land their first full-time positionand others to come. 1. UNDERSTAND THE JOBS LISTED First, begin with a deep dive into the jobs that interest you. You may have a major in English or Psychology, but of course these subject areas do not correlate with job descriptions like ‘customer success manager’ or ‘product manager,’ says Smith. The key, Smith says, is to understand what the job is before applying for it. To do this, you’ll need to talk to people who can tell you about the roleideally people in your network who may be in that industry or may have held that specific job title. After all, you cant sell yourself into a role you dont understand. Unless you fully understand what that position requires, you wont be able to customize your résumé or prepare for an interview. Once you know the nature of the job, you can think about how it links with your education and experience. 2. FOCUS ON A FEW APPS Second, be selective. Though it’s tempting to send out your résumé far and wide, Smith suggests that you apply for no more than three jobs at any one time. Recent grads often think they should apply for everything in sight,” she says. “So, they send the same résumé to everyone and then wonder why they are not getting the job. Her advice is to take a more focused approach. By limiting the number of jobs you apply for, you can spend more time on each application, and make clear why you have what it takes to succeed in the role. 3. CUSTOMIZE EACH RÉSUMÉ It’s important to customize every résumé you send out, says Smith. So, if you have chosen to respond to three postings with three different job titles, craft three separate résumés. “A ‘digital marketing specialist and a brand marketing specialist might sound similar, but they are not the same job,” says Smith. Each résumé should show how well-suited you are for the role you are applying for. (For more on crafting job-specific résumés, check out my latest book, The Job Seekers Script, which has a chapter on constructing A Winning Résumé.) 4. STRUCTURE YOUR RÉSUMÉ EFFECTIVELY Before sending off your customized résumé, give some thought to its format. Put your contact information at the very top. Then comes the Summary Statement describing your fit for the job. It might read: With my two summer internships and a broad array of courses in data management, I have the experience and education that will enable me to succeed in this new role. The important thing is to align this statement with the job you are applying for. Instead of creating a Work History section, have an “Experience” section. Smith says to include both paying and nonpaying work that is relevant for the job. If youve set up a database for a local basketball league, thats relevant for a job in data management. Serving as a lifeguard for two summers is probably beside the point, however. Put your most recent work first. Then comes the “Education” section where you include your degrees and certifications and relevant academic accomplishments. Highlight courses important to the job you are applying for. Your résumé should be one page. 5. DON’T BE AFRAID TO GET CREATIVE As a recent grad youll want to position yourself in a way that makes you stand out. When submitting your application or showing up for the interview, do a little more than others do,” says Smith. This could take the form of a PowerPoint presentation or a video that demonstrates your special qualities. For example, if you are applying for a sales job, the video could illustrate how you would pitch a product to a client. Or it might introduce you to the hiring staff. I even created a website for every job I applied for,” says Smith. “I titled these websites with the name of the company: company@hireskatie.com. These websites showed that I would go the extra distance for them. I got job offers as a result.” As a graduating student, you may not have the track record of someone who has been building a career for decades. But these strategies will help you land that first entry-level job and put you on the road to career success.
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E-Commerce
One of the more unique takes on the POV trend on TikTok: POV: You bought a 100-year-old skyscraper . . . For those unlikely to ever own a skyscraper themselves, TikToks Skyscraper Guy offers a behind-the-scenes look at what that experience entailsthink hidden rooms not listed on blueprints, a bottomless pit in the basement, a Prohibition-era speakeasy, and a mysterious safe with no known combination. The video, posted last week, has already racked up more than 2.4 million views. Step 1. How does one acquire a skyscraper, one commenter asked. My idea of an impulse buy is a cupcake, another added. @theskyscraperguy Impulsively bought a 100-year-old skyscraper and now Im finding stuff like THIS original sound – The Skyscraper Guy Sleuths in the comments quickly identified the skyscraper as the Pittsfield Building in downtown Chicago. Located at 55 E. Washington Street, the 38-story tower, designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, was the citys tallest building when it was completed in 1927; it was designated a Chicago Landmark in 2002. The Skyscraper Guy, also known as real estate investor Tom Liravongsa, purchased 30 of the buildings 40 floors and has announced plans to convert most of the space into residential units, Crains reported. Liravongsa is founder and CEO of LCre Global, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, boutique specializing in real estate and other alternative investments. Fast Company has reached out to Liravongsa for comment. On TikTok, as renovations begin, Liravongsas spotlighting the buildings original features, including a hand-carved copper ceiling, 100-year-old tobacco shop, and a bronze elevator dial, for his 50,000-strong following. Owning a skyscraper is a full-time job, he says in another video, but somebodys gotta do it. @theskyscraperguy Owning a skyscraper is a full time job and somebodys gotta do it original sound – The Skyscraper Guy Since posting his first video in late 2023, Liravongsa has taken his audience of millions along as he demolishes entire floors (costing upwards of $200,000), discovers tunnel entrances 150 feet underground, and walks down 100-year-old fire escapes that are a spine-tingling 250 feet above ground. @theskyscraperguy WHAT!!! It cost #howmuch to do a single floor #demolition in a skyscrapper!? Try $200K at least! #follow me #formore and #findout how I #spend #100million original sound – The Skyscraper Guy He is also happy to share tips for others in the market looking for their very own skyscraper. I watched this whole thing like Im going to go buy a skyscraper tomorrow, one commenter wrote.
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E-Commerce
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Every generation has its tinkerers. People who get their hands dirty not because they know exactly what they’re doing, but because theyre following a feeling. No formal training. No permission. Just curiosity, instinct, and a slightly obsessive need to mess with things until they do something interesting. Welcome to the age of vibe coding. The term itself surfaced just weeks agocoined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in February. In a now widely memed post, he described vibe coding as the act of programming through intuition rather than structure, trusting the feel of what youre building, not just its logic. The phrase exploded across dev forums, design threads, and TikTok sidebars. Merriam-Webster added it the following month under slang & trending, defining it as the practice of writing code, making web pages, or creating apps, by just telling an AI program what you want, and letting it create the product for you. Which is a long way of saying: winging it, brilliantly. Even Sir Demis Hassabis, founder/CEO of DeepMind, recently stated that the explosion of natural language coding will open up fields for creative people, tipping the balance away from and engineering mindset to an instinctive, creative one. But lets be honestthis isnt new. When instinct outpaces instruction Take early electronic music. The pioneers of modular synth werent conservatory-trained composers. They were sonic explorers, patching cables into buzzing machines and twisting knobs until emotion emerged. As Brian Eno famously observed: Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable, and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. What is that, if not analog vibe coding? Or look at the rise of the indie game scene. Minecraft, Braid, Undertalenone of these were born from a major studio pipeline. They were built by people making weird, emotional things with code, trusting their gut over any formal game design doctrine. Same with the postwar hot rodders in California, or the drift racers in Japan. They werent automotive engineers. They were teenagers in garages, modding beat-up engines until they could tear through salt flats or carve hairpin turns sideways. Tuning by ear. Testing by feel. Rewriting what cars could be without ever asking how cars should be made. Sound familiar? Vibes have always been a feature, not a bug Vibe coders are the natural descendants of this lineage. Theyre working with AI the way early skate culture worked with architecturenot as passive users, but as instinctive reinterpreters. Theyre pushing limits not by following a manual, but by making one up as they go. The outputs might look a little glitchy. A little offbeat. But thats part of the point. The future rarely starts with polished perfection. It starts with side quests, zines, garages, and basement experiments. It starts with people making things that feel right, even if they cant yet explain why. Dont mistake chaos for lack of vision To the outside world, this kind of experimentation can look messy. But look closer, and youll see a different kind of intelligenceone that isnt defined by credentials, but by creative fluency. These are people who speak machine, even if they dont always write it perfectly. Theyre fluent in feeling. Fluent in remix. Fluent in future. And when the tools are this powerfulwhen a few prompts can conjure films, music, code, business plansfluency in vibes becomes a serious superpower. So before we rush to regulate or rationalize this new wave, maybe take a moment. Listen to the noise. Feel the current. Theres something big building here, and it isnt coming from the top down. Its coming from the garages again. From the kids with GPT in one tab and Ableton in the other. From the creators who dont need to ask permissionbecause they already have momentum. The takeaway? You dont need a roadmap to lead a movement. You just need a signal, a pulse, and a willingness to follow the vibes. Mark Eaves is founder of Gravity Road.
Category:
E-Commerce
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