“Yahoo, I have finally graduated!” So goes the typical exclamation of someone who is garbed in the graduation robe with the certificate in his hand.

After those final days of slogging and burning midnight oil preparing for the exams, it has finally come to this moment - yes, welcome to the real world. You are now qualified to join the jobseekers’ market and start looking for your first job.

Speaking from personal experience, working life should hold a wealth of opportunities for you to learn about interaction between human and work and more so, whatever you learn within the four walls of the lecture hall, it may not be applicable in the working place. So, you need to open up your mind and heart to explore the world around you.

Nowadays, graduates hold qualifications that allow them to enjoy greater choices in the types of jobs that they can apply for. As much thoughts and mulling may have been put into the selection of the course that you have chosen to study, it is also imperative that you work out your plan in your first job hunt.

Before you pull out the ‘classified’ pages from the newspaper or pay a visit to Jobstreet.com website, it is good to take some time to understand the meaning of ‘work’. The concept of work has sometimes, been misconstrued as a tough way of making a living. “I want to buy a car, pay off my house, quit my job and never work again!” It is quite ironic that we can’t wait to graduate to become a working adult. Then, we begin to take work as a weekly grind and try to endure only by relishing the anticipation of the workless weekend. And, after a few years, we start to plan for our retirement. Well, young graduates, work may not always be easy, but it is certainly a part of your life that you will learn the value of responsibility, the value of accomplishment and the value of dignity. These values which your universities do not teach you. Getting the right perspective of ‘work’ will help you to strive towards achieving these values instead of merely working for a paycheck, and hopefully, you will be promoted later and get a bigger paycheck.

Therefore, prepare your mindset to learn these values from your first job:

Value of Responsibility
Your job or profession helps you to develop a sense of responsibility. Although we learn a certain level of responsibility from our family circle and also in colleges or universities, nowhere do we learn it to the degree as that from the working place. Job descriptions, defined duties, performance expectations, deadlines - they all exert their positive pressures on us. Either you meet the requirements or you may lose your job. Therefore, your job forces you to accept the challenges of responsible adulthood.

Value of Accomplishment
What is accomplishment? It is the sense of satisfaction that your hard work has finally brought you pleasure. Just like you have accomplished your graduateship and given you the sense of success, it helps to build up your self-esteem and confidence for your next assignment - your first job. Whilst your responsibilities will increase and tasks become complicated, your previous success and accomplishment will move you to work harder. You will learn the joy of a job well done.

Value of Dignity
Dignity means self-respect. It is important that we fill our days with pleasant, meaningful activities. Diligent labour or work helps to produce dignity in us who are committed to it. Whether you end up being an executive who reads the market accurately, or a lecturer who delivers a well-prepared paper or an accountant whose book balances, you can experience dignity. Therefore, choose your first job well and be committed to it, and you will reap the rewards.

How can you project yourself to be the right candidate for your prospective employer? Remember, you are a fresh graduate with no or minimal working experience. A quick scan through the newspaper easily tells us that most positions require a certain level of working experience from the job applicants. So, what are your chances of getting a job? Well, there are positions in the professional firms that provide working opportunities for fresh graduates in the accounting, taxation, secretarial or legal line. You may try for a management trainee position where you will be trained for various management aspects in an organisation.

Here are some pointers to help you to be competitive in the job market:

Basic Resume Minimums
According to the human resource expertise, short-listing suitable candidates for interviews can be quite a challenging task, especially with the piles of written applications sent by applicants via post and on top of them, online applications via JobStreet.com. It may either take a lot of luck or a power-packed, eye-catching letter from you that will do the trick of getting short-listed! So, how do you compose this masterpiece?

Keep your resume short and concise. Type your resume in simple English laying out the background information, for example, personal particulars, educational achievements and co-curricular activities. A letter of reference from the educators would be an advantage. A four-page A4-sized printout of the letter plus the resume would be neat. Submit copies of your certificates only if requested to do so.

Do Your Homework
In today’s competitive global economic situation and job conditions, graduates need to keep themselves up-to-date with the nation’s Vision 2020 and any changes in policies as well as continual assessment of companies’ performances through the business write-ups in the newspapers.

If you are called for interview, do a quick research on the company via its website so that you will have an edge over other candidates with your knowledge on the company.

Interviewing Skills
Give yourself sufficient time to prepare yourself for the interview, that is, arrive about 15 minutes earlier than the time for the appointment. This is to give you sufficient time to fill up the job application form.

Interviewers may like to find out more about you in the following areas, so be prepared:

• Personal background
• Education qualification
• Five-year career goal
• Other skills, for example, computer literacy or command of other languages

Work on your spoken and written English as most business transactions and communication are conducted in the said language.

Watch Your Attitude
Attitude, to me, is more important than education, money, circumstances, appearances, skills or giftedness. It will make or break a company and therefore, employers look for workers with right attitude. Our attitudes are our most important asset and based on a study by a US consulting firm with the personnel directors of a selection of American largest companies on their reasons for firing an employee, the results were interesting and underscore the importance of attitude in the business world: incompetence (30%) and attitude problem (52%) ranging from dishonesty and lying, negative attitude, lack of motivation, communication problem and failure to follow instruction.

It is the attitude that makes the difference. Impress the interviewer with your positive attributes.

Never Give Up
Be willing to work for the experience sake even if it is not your preferred job. Honour the opportunities, disciplines and pressures of the working place as they play a primary role in your continuous learning, growth and maturity process.