This is the time when thousands of college students across the country will soon be looking for jobs. Given the nature of competition in the current job market, job searching without much work experience can be frustrating. When you are just out of college and embarking on finding a career path, it’s easy to feel intimidated and overwhelmed. But with some hard work, a lot of ambition, smart strategies, and confidence in yourself, it can happen. Here are the best 5 job hunting tips for fresh graduates.

How to Search Jobs as a Fresher

1. Get Started by Making a Professional CV

The basic, yet the most effective component for job search. Keep it concise and stick to 2 pages. Get rid of that boring objective part. Rather, include a branded headline or a profile snapshot in bullet points.

As a fresher, you won’t be having considerable work experience. So, you have to leverage your skills and domain knowledge. Don’t just list your skills. Provide evidence of your skills through internships, summer training, and college projects.

It’s also useful if you demonstrate your practical skills through event organization, sports participation, voluntary work, contribution to college magazine or any other journal, school prefect etc.

Remove those unnecessary personal details like Nationality, Age (or Date of Birth), Marital Status, Father’s Name, Blood Group etc. Your name, address, email id and phone number on the top should be more than enough.

Include links to your social media profiles like LinkedIn & Twitter. Ideally, this should come under your profile.

2. Leverage Your Online Presence

Online presence matters a lot these days. It’s almost mandatory to have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is the most powerful professional networking platform today. In fact, your LinkedIn profile is your online resume. Almost all companies use LinkedIn to screen their candidates. It is a one-stop source of all your qualifications, skill sets, certifications, work experience, and accolades.

Another thing that you must be doing on LinkedIn is to expand your connections beyond their friends and known people in real life to other professionals and recruiting managers to gain a better chance for a job placement.

If You’re Not on LinkedIn, You Very Nearly Don’t Exist. Think about it this way: If tomorrow morning, a recruiter logs onto LinkedIn looking for someone in your geography, with expertise in what you do, and you’re not there? Guess who they’re going to find and contact? Yes, that person’s name is “not you.”

Maintain a clean profile on other social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus etc. It would be also nice if you have got your own blog site.

3. Use Online Job Portals

The online job portals might sound like orthodox, but companies and HR recruiters do use the online job portals to hire fresh talent. So, do register and start finding jobs using the online job portals. Some of the top online job portals are Indeed, CareerBuilder, Naukri, Monster, SimpliHired, TimesJobs, FreshersWorld, Shine etc. If you are for the startup jobs, sites like AngelList and CutShort are excellent ones to get started.

4. Reach Out to The Hiring & Placement Agencies

There are several companies who don’t recruit directly and use the hiring agencies. So, you can find a placement agency and submit your job profile. Some of the top agencies in India are ABC Consultants, AON Hewitt, Kelly Services India, Adecco India, Randstad, CareerNet, SutraHR, Talent Mappers, Manpower, Planman Consulting, Genius Consultants, Team Lease etc.

Generally, these agencies work as mediators between organizations looking to recruit the right talents and the job seekers, who look for the right employment opportunity. Most of the placement agencies do not charge, but some placement agencies have some charges for their services.  Please be advised that there are many dodgy placement agencies in India, which take money from the fresher but do not give any call. So, be careful of such fake placement agencies.

5. Networking and References

Get in touch with your college seniors, friends, and relatives. In the majority of cases, connection and references work well in India. Besides, many jobs do not get advertised on job portals or through placement agencies. The best way to tap those jobs is through networking and references.

It is also important to find out if you have a known person in one of the target companies where you aim to work. LinkedIn solves this dilemma and purpose for the candidates.