First job

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I just want to start by saying I'm new here and this is my first post. Anyway, I am one year away from graduating and I want to start gaining some experience and skills. I am studying Health Information Technology since I'm good with computers and I have medical knowledge based on my previous major in Clinical Lab Tech. I've been in college since I graduated high school and besides doing volunteer work during HS years, I never really worked in my life. This summer, I've been trying to get a volunteer position at hospitals but I have not heard back from HRs so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm thinking it's my lack of work experience and skills. So I'm thinking outside the box a little and I'm considering applying for a clerical job at the local library since it's easy and doesn't require too much experience.

The website says I have to have a resume and it's been a long time since I've written one. I'm so used to writing it towards health related jobs or volunteer opportunities that I'm not sure how to geared it towards a library job. If anyone has had experiences with resumes that would great. I haven't really told anybody about this yet but I planned on seeing one of my counselors who works in career and employment services.

Also I would like to know how you landed your first job and some tips to help me. Sorry if I ramble on and if I seem all over the place that's how my thought process works lol

Hi jewels! First of all welcome! I may not be a whole lot of help here, as my first job was actually given to me directly by my uncle, who was my boss in a restaurant chain. I couldn't keep it long though... Lots of mental issues.

But if there's any piece of advice I can give you, it's to sell your best qualities as much as possible, and be assertive. Google Forms has a few different layouts of resumes that you can fiddle around with. There are also lots of tutorials on how to perfect your resume and make it great. ^-^ Find what qualities you are best with, and milk them on your resume. For example I'm great with transcribing and dictation, as well as childcare, so my resume is covered with fine details about my excellent linguistic skills and many years of working with kids--both my own and not.

Also about being assertive... Say you go to an interview, and they tell you they will call you within a day or two to let you know if you did or didn't get the job. If you don't hear from them within the allotted time, give them a call! I can't stress that enough, as I see a lot of people just throw up their hands and give up when no call comes. Sometimes companies just get caught up and forget to call everybody. So pester the heck out of them. XD It tells them that you are serious. In my experience, over the 5 jobs I've had since leaving high school, the ones I never scored were the ones where I showed little interest in getting follow up calls from. I only had one company tell me flat out after I called them that I didn't score the job. Everyone else was delightfully surprised, and usually needed a couple more days to deliberate, but always called me back.

Good luck!

Hey thanks for your help sorry you couldn't keep your restaurant job. I can somewhat relate to mental issues as I tend to be back and forth with anxiety and depression and the classic meltdowns (that's another story). Anyway I searched through Google and I'm trying to decide which layout I want to go. Like I want to look good on my resume but I have a lot of gaps. I've been focusing more on my computer skills but I'm trying to think of the soft skills I can focus on too. Like I can get along with others fine and I can complete tasks I'm punctual but I'm not known to be a people person at all. Like I said I still plan on going to career and employment services and they can help me from there.

As far as being assertive I usually give HRs a week before calling them but one place they never called back and another the receptionist was rude and they seem unorganized so I was like why waste my time. Whatever I'm not gonna sweat it just gotta keep on moving. I've been emailing my teachers also to see if there are volunteer opportunities for me just anything to get started. I'll keep you updated on all of this.

I interned at a staffing agency earlier this year so have some experience with resumes (and have clerical experience besides).

Do you have a skills summary at the top? If you do you need to add skills like data entry, document control, mention you know how to use Microsoft Suite (list the major ones out because some places use software that looks for keywords on resumes, and if you don't have Word, Excel, Outlook, etc on there you may be passed over. And also I looked over resumes myself and looked for those keywords as well). Mentioning scanning, photocopying, faxing, etc are good too. Any office type work that you have experience with - like I have experience filing and preparing interdepartmental labels, collating, and preparing billings.

Is there going to be customer service in this job? If there is and you have experience through your volunteering mention it.

How does your resume look? A nice looking resume is incredibly important, no more than one page (this only really changed for jobs where you really need to back up your work experience over years of time). A long resume is not something most businesses want to see, because they are looking over multiple resumes and dealing with multiple clients and they just want to know at a quick glance if you're qualified.

You need to spin the skills you've learned in school and through volunteering towards what you're applying to as much as possible. You may not think some skills apply, but they do. I worked with a woman who was wanting to transition from being a dental assistant to doing data entry, and she was able to use her experience with dealing with x-rays and scans in the dental office for a document control position she was applying to that required experience scanning. I believe she ended up getting the job too.

Hi, lidsmichelle. I took your advice and did a skills based resume. And it's amazing how the woman used her X rays experience to get the job in data entry.

Anyway I was about to send it in when the hospital I sorta gave up on called back and asked if I was still interested in volunteering. I said yes and now I have to do background checks, drug screen, etc. I'll still keep this job opening and all the advice in the back of my head in case I still wanna try that. Thanks for all your help.

I had a internship after internship and got tired and said to the guy that kept sending me on internships "i want a real job and get paid for the things i do since i do the same things as they do, except for no cost for the corporation". And it happened. I could finally start thinking about having a life.

It only lasted 6 months but at the time it felt great to have money and be able to pay for yourself without having to rely on your parents.

I just want to update everyone that I am currently doing volunteer shifts at a local hospital gift shop. I started last week and its pretty easy so far. Not quite what I had in mind but I'm willing to take anything right now. My whole attitude is basically go with the flow and see what happens.