Match your Potential with the Right Graduate Job

ou know what your skills are, but do you know which skills employers are looking for? Match your potential with the right graduate job!

By now you have read thousands of tips and suggestions on how to identify and highlight your skills in your CV in order to impress the potential employer. But one thing you have to keep in mind is the employer will be impressed just in case your skills match the ones they are looking for, no matter how good you resume is. It’s very important to find the right job by matching your own skills with the ones required for a particular job vacancy.

Recent graduates are facing an increasing competition on a job market and a harsh financial environment which makes a graduate job search a hard and stressful experience. Discouraging market circumstances along with the lack of working experience may seem impossible to overcome, but it is not that hard if you learn how to make your profile interesting for the employer you want to work for.

This is especially important when you are looking for your first graduate job or graduate training, since the first working experiences determine the future development of your career. It’s difficult to glean your top talents without proper professional experience, however there are tools out there to help. You can find suitable tools that offer free psychometric tests, questionnaires to identify strengths and weaknesses, and job matching tools online. Certain sites offer full career reports and other assessment features in order to kick-start careers and to help them on their way to get their graduate jobs. In these hard times, discovering your skills and matching them with the required ones will prepare you for an easier job-hunting process and help you get the right graduate job.

One you have identified your top skills and potential areas of strength, make sure you reference these skills for every job that you are applying for. Don’t just throw your CV around and hope that someone takes notice. Look for jobs that specifically address your strong points, and make sure that you craft a CV that demonstrates your competence in each required skill set.

Recent graduates have a tendency to be unfocused and scattered in their approach to job search. If you are looking for your first professional job or are looking to break into a new industry, highlighting your skills and talents is the next best thing to demonstrating professional experience. In order to demonstrate your skills, make sure that your CV talks about your personal strengths, data points from psychometric or other tests, academic achievements, and a list of your interests (narrowly focused on the job that you are applying to.)

Finding your first job or entering a new line of work can be a difficult task, but it is one of the most important steps in life. Finding the right job that matches both your potential and abilities is the first step to any successful career. If you take the time to plan your approach and develop your CV properly, you will stand above most applicants.

First Job Interview: How to Prepare

In this day and age, jobs are scarce. You may find yourself looking for work for many months before something comes up. If and when an interview opportunity does come up many people make the mistake of not preparing enough. What you need to realise is that with the current economic situation there will be highly qualified professionals seeking low qualified jobs, it won’t be uncommon to see highly qualified and experienced individuals applying for low level graduate jobs, competition will be fierce.

You really do need to do everything possible to impress the interviewee. Remind yourself of all the work you’ve put in with your job search and don’t let the interview opportunity go to waste by being unprepared. The more interviews you have the more confident you’ll become; you’ll get familiar with the process and the type of questions you can expect to be asked. Your first interview is always nerve-racking and preparation is essential.

There are numerous ways to prepare for an interview.

• First and foremost you need to prepare yourself for contact with the employer. It’s common that in the week before the interview you’ll be in contact quite a few times. They may choose to call you or email you. If you don’t already, get used to having your phone with you all the time, you never know when an employer’s going to contact you. Missing calls will not look good, whereas answering first time shows you’re well organised. You may also want to have a pen and pad at hand so you can take essential notes, for example interview times and locations etc.
• Your email also needs to be on top form, you can see a lot about someone’s language skills via their emails. Again with emails you need to be prompt, if it means leaving your email open all day, so be it. Getting back to your employer a day late will show that you’re unorganised and perhaps uninterested. Your email structure is important, it’s advised that you do some research on the internet into formal email structures. Also try and take an intellectual approach and use as many ‘big words’ as possible.
• Your appearance is key. It’s always advised that you wear a well fitted suit to an interview; even if you’re told that the dress code is casual I’d still wear a suit, you need to do everything possible to impress the interviewee. As well as a suit, you need to make sure you style your hair smartly as to look professional.
• Prepare answers for those predictable questions. For example:
  • Why are you good for this job?
  • What do you know about the role?
  • What are your strong points/weaknesses?
  • How will you use your skills in this role?
• Do as much background research on the company/industry as possible. Find out if they have a website, if they do, read as much as possible. Research the role on the internet and speak to friends/family that are in a similar industry. This is crucial.

When attending the interview there are many things you need to do, they may seem obvious but are essential and can’t be overlooked.

• Manners are key, you need to remain polite from the moment you step foot in the building to the moment you leave. Greet the interviewee with a smile and a firm hand shake, tell them it’s nice to meet them and when they ask how you are remember to ask them how they are. Sit down when told to do, don’t slouch, and make eye contact – but not too much eye contact.
• You need to answer questions confidently, speak loud and clearly throughout. There is however a fine link between confidence and arrogance so be careful.
• Most importantly (you’ll hear this a lot), be yourself, don’t be too robotic and don’t be fake. Nobody likes someone who’s fake, the interviewee will know that you’re nervous, there’s no need put on an act.

We Didn’t Stretch Ourselves to Buy a Home

I completely understand why some aspiring homeowners contemplate stretching their budget to buy a new home. When my husband and I hunted for houses in Florida, we could have easily rationalized going with a higher price point. My husband insisted he would be earning more money each year, which would make it easier for us to afford our mortgage payments. I argued our expenses would go down after we finished furnishing and landscaping the new house. According to a recent Bankrate.com article, people are tempted to stretch their budget to buy a home while interest rates are still low and home prices are still reasonable. Although we contemplated buying a home twice as expensive as the one we purchased, our good sense prevailed.

Getting preapproved for misery

We were preapproved to buy a home for $400,000, but we didn't view that as our spending budget for a new home. Instead, we through about how much we would have to sacrifice in order to make the payment on a home that expensive. I am so glad we didn't spend the maximum amount we were approved for in 2005. We purchased a home for half as much or about $183,000. Because we can easily afford our mortgage payments, we can splurge on vacations and tech toys.

Paying less in property taxes

By purchasing a home in a lower price range, we pay considerably less in property taxes compared to our friends who live in swankier neighborhoods. We chose a community that did not include CDD (community development district) fees that pay for amenities and the infrastructure of the subdivision. We pay just $400 a year for home owner association fees, while many of our peers pay an extra $2,000 a year or more in CDD fees. Our property taxes are just $1,300 a year, which is extremely low in our area.

Having breathing room

If we had purchased a more expensive home, we would not have been able to handle all the financial curveballs thrown at us. First, we had to deal with pay cuts during the Great Recession as opposed to those pay increases we had become accustomed to in the 1990s. Also, we couldn't take out a home equity line of credit because we had zero equity. In fact, we had negative equity in our home after the housing crash. Buying a home we could afford made it easier to live on one income and save for our children's college and retirement.

Perhaps the greatest reward of owning a less expensive home is being able to own it free and clear in less time. I know we technically could have afforded the $2,000 a month mortgage payments, although granted, it would have stretched our budget. With a low payment of only $900 a month, we can afford to pay off our home in half the time while also enjoying our extra spending money.

My Mid-Life Plan to Get Out of Debt

When it comes to getting rid of debt, I know I have two options. I can either earn more money or reduce the amount of money I spend. As a woman in her 40s, my strategy for getting out of debt is a lot different than it was in my 20s. I now have a husband and two college-age children as well as aging parents who sometimes need financial assistance. A recent article by The Street pointed out that the personal debt trend is troubling at a time when the overall economy is showing positive signs. According to The Street, the average consume debt per household is $7,200. Consumer debt in the United States has reached $11.3 trillion, which is truly mind-boggling. I've come up with a plan to pay down my mortgage debt of $94,000, car debt of about $19,000 and credit-card debt of about $4,000. When I was younger, I had a lot more energy to boost my earnings. Now, it's easier for me to reduce spending.

Stopping the gravy train

As a member of the sandwich generation, I'm often torn between paying my own bills and those of younger and older family members. When I was single, I didn't have to worry about anyone besides myself. It's a little trickier to juggle my personal finances when so many other people are involved. I didn't want cut off family without warning so I instituted a family "credit limit" of about $80 a month to help pay for unexpected bills or a yearly limit of $1,000. I also had to temporarily suspend holiday and birthday presents or include it as part of the yearly allowance.

Cutting out costly ingredients

I also had to figure out where I could cut my spending in order to allocate more money for debt repayment. I recently read a U.S. News & World Report article that listed a few of the items that will be more costly in the near future such as chocolate, bread and beef. Although I don't need to worry about the rising cost of cars or houses, I do need to be aware of sticker shock when shopping for food or clothing. I am planning to spend less money at the grocery store by using coupons and cooking meals that do not call for the more costly ingredients. I save money on clothes by shopping my own closet.

Following a written plan

As part of my budget, I calculated how much extra I could send to the mortgage company and the credit union that handles our car loan. Since the interest rate on the car is so low, we can double up on the monthly payments so it's paid off in just 2 years. An extra payment of just $300 a month means our house will be paid off in 10 years from now. I also wrote down a plan for paying unexpected bills as well as how to invest windfalls such as a tax return. If we can't pay off our one credit-card bill with a tax refund, I will use some of my contributions to a Roth IRA to knock it out.

In my 20s, I wanted to get out of credit-card debt so I could improve my debt-to-income ratio and become a homeowner. At this stage in my life, I'm more worried about having my home completely paid off so I don't have as many expenses when I retire. I don't consider my home to be "good debt" because it eats away at what could be my discretionary income. Since I started working my plan last year, I've been able to stay on track. I just have to remind family members that we will have much more in the future if we give up just a little now.

My Home Was a Horrible Investment

So many of the people I know seem obsessed with figuring out whether their home purchase was a good investment. During the housing bubble, they bragged about how much their homes were worth. When the housing market crashed, they bemoaned the fact that their home was worth less than they owed on their mortgages. I'm just as curious to find out how much my home is worth, but I don't view my home as an investment anymore. I think about my home as a place to live. I also know it's less money to pay my mortgage than it is to rent a similar house. I recently found a calculator at CNNMoney that helped me determine if my home was a good investment.

Plugging in the numbers

I plugged in the fact that I bought my home in July of 2005 for $180,000. I then went to Zillow and read that my home is worth $122,200, according to the site. Since I recently had the home appraised for a home refinance, I went with that number. I plugged in the $130,000 appraisal number for the calculator.

Comparing my home to stocks

The calculator compares the annual and total returns of my home to stocks and bonds. The annual return on my home was a negative 4.2 percent compared to the average U.S. home, which had an annual negative return of 3.7 percent. My total return was a negative 27.8 percent. My negative returns compared to the positive total stock returns of 5.3 percent and the positive return on bonds of 4.8 percent.

Factoring in the interest

If the calculator had factored in how much interest I paid on my mortgage loan, I would have seen an even greater loss on my so-called "investment." If I go back and plug in how much I purchased my home for including the interest I'll owe, the numbers tell a much different story. I changed the total cost to $280,000 to include the interest. My annual return was a negative 9.5 percent. My total return stands at a negative 53.6 percent today. In order to recoup my investment, I'll need to sell my home for $150,000 more than it's currently worth on today's market.

While my home isn't a good investment compared to stocks, I used to view it as a safer investment over the long run. If I invested the money in stocks in companies that went bankrupt, I could have lost the money, I'd tell myself. Now, I simply don't view my home as an investment at all. It's like purchasing a car, shoes or a handbag. I bought my home to use it. As it stands today, my home is a terrible investment from a financial standpoint. But I'm still happy living in it as opposed to a cardboard box.

Home Equity Loans Make a Comeback, but Not for Me

 After being underwater on my mortgage for several years, the last thing I wanted to do after building up equity in my house was go out and get a home equity line of credit. According to a recent article by Bloomberg, rising property values are fueling a home equity loan comeback. The demand for Helocs declined for six years, probably because a lot of people had zero or negative equity in their homes. The lending for Helocs rose 30 percent this year and is expected to rise another 31 percent to $104 billion.

Saving for higher taxes

Some people are taking out home equity loans because the values of their homes have bone up. Experts say housing prices went up about 8 percent this year. However, I am thinking about the higher property tax bills that come with increased home values. I don't want to be stuck paying back a Heloc in addition to owing more property taxes. I based my savings on the highest amount of property taxes we paid during the housing bubble. As long as I have the difference between the higher property taxes and our current property taxes in savings, I know I'll be able to weather the imminent hike in my mortgage payment.

Boosting the economy

I know that the economy gets a big boost when people spend more money. However, I can still be a consumer without getting into debt. I don't like the idea of having to sell my home in order to pay off my Heloc in an emergency situation. I'd rather pay down my mortgage so the other thing I have to worry about is the taxes and insurance. It seems to me that taking out a Heloc would put me in a shaky financial situation when the economy is already uncertain.

Tapping equity to buy stuff

I would rather maintain a more minimalist lifestyle than tap my home equity. Even though the value of our home has not completely recovered, a Realtor told me homes such as mine are being appraised at about $150,000. Since we owe about $100,000, we could potentially use our equity for various purchases. According to the Bloomberg article, from 2013 to 2014, a lot of Americans used their home equity to purchase everything from cars and televisions to cruises as well as home renovations and repairs. My husband and I would rather keep saving money in a home maintenance fund. Once our home is paid off, we will have plenty of extra money for renovations as well as vacations.

Even though I don't intend to obtain a Heloc, I believe the statistics that show many people are using Helocs, especially for home renovations. I can see some wisdom in investing in home-improvement retailers. It's becoming evident Americans are back to spending. Since many banks require people to take out a minimum of $10,000 or $25,000 for a Heloc, many people almost feel motivated to spend rather than save. To me, it's a vicious cycle that ends in a debt trap. I'm surprised that Americans aren't more cautious about their homes after the major housing crisis.

Investing With a Conscience

I've heard that ignorance is bliss. When it comes to investing with a conscience, I believe that to be true. When I research the companies that I am partnered with as a "shareholder," I become inevitably disturbed by their lack of transparency, ethics and morality. Big business and money don't appear to mix with values and virtue. In our capitalistic world, it seems like it's all about money. But, to me as an individual, making money isn't as important as helping people.

Being a more responsible investor

I recently read a "Socially Responsible Investing" report published this year by TIAA-CREF. The report encouraged more disclosure on climate change issues as well as non-discrimination. While some people are concerned about matters such as global warming, other people don't want to invest in companies that do not share their religious convictions or values. I've invested in the past in ETF or exchange traded funds that fall under the category of "faith-based funds." As an investor, I think it's important for me to be responsible about how I direct my money.

Holding the ultimate authority

According to an article in the Graziadio Business Review, shareholders should not underestimate their power in a capitalistic system. Shareholders have the ultimate power over corporate conduct. The article pointed out that there is a huge market for Socially Responsible Investment or SRI. Some of the issues considered when screening companies for inclusion or exclusion in an SRI include defense/weapons, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, community relations, community investment, employment equality, human rights, labor relations and animal testing. I think investors can create even a greater demand by refusing to invest in companies that exploit and corrupt people.

Sacrificing returns on my money

According to the article in the Graziadio Business Review some experts say it's a misconception to say that socially responsible investors are sacrificing returns. SIR investing does not necessarily lead to underperformance. It's still possible to have a diversified portfolio that excludes unethical companies. I'm always interested in researching different faith-based funds as well as various SRI options. Some experts suggest the faith-based funds have higher expense ratios because it's more expensive to screen companies. To me, I wouldn't mind sacrificing a bit of my return if it meant I could sleep better at night.

I know I don't want to make money by being a shareholder in a pharmaceutical company that knowingly made money by selling a dangerous drug or a company that ignored manufacturer defects in order to make a bigger profit. I think it's great when people invest in mutual funds that only invest in firms that share their core religious values or prove they have an ethical track record. It's difficult to make a change as one person, but as socially responsible investors, it's easier to make an impact.