It happens every year. Students are right on track with their job search, but then they go home for the holidays. They’re torn between family events, re-energizing, and catching up with their old friends. Then your job seekers return to school stressed out because they’ve fallen behind in their plan to land a job after graduation.

While it’s important for students to enjoy the holidays, if they don’t make time for the job search, they will miss out on great career opportunities. Luckily, with a little bit of forethought, they can find ways to incorporate their job search into the holidays. All it takes is a little guidance from a career services professional, like you.

Help your job seekers make the most of their break by showing them how they can participate in the holiday revelry while focusing on their careers. Here are three tips to keep your job seekers on track during this busy time of year:

When students come to the Career Center asking for help with an internship resume, you know you’re doing something right. Your reach should expand beyond just identifying the right major or starting the job search process. All those steps in between, including landing a great internship, should take up a significant part of your wheelhouse as well. 

Young adults often hear that if they pick a career path they love, their job will never feel like work. But not everyone has that opportunity. Whatever industry your job seekers have in mind, the burden of student loan debt can make finding job satisfaction difficult. 

The topic is unavoidable in the career center. Many students have already signed their loans and are worried about potential consequences. In fact, a 2021 study from ResumeLab reported that half of respondents experience medium to high levels of stress over their student loan debt. 

And there’s no doubt that this stress interferes with their career development. The study also found that almost 40% of borrowers accepted a job they didn’t want because of the salary. 

Those are some pretty bleak statistics, but conversations about it shouldn’t have to be all gloom and doom. Instead, be honest and informative. Offer support on how to tackle the job market when students feel like debt is hanging over their head. 

Here’s what you can do in your position at the career center to provide beneficial conversations on student loan debt: 

Being mindful of professional growth at the job seeker stage will improve students’ job satisfaction in the long run and improve their chances to push forward in their careers. 

With today’s competitive talent pool, it’s natural for students to lower their job search standards. But they aren’t doing themselves any favors by defining their job criteria as merely “a job.” 

Although it is essential to have somewhere to land after graduation, it’s never too early for students to consider what they would want beyond that first step. 

A crucial factor for job seekers to consider is how a position will help propel their professional growth and career development. Right now, not nearly enough students about to graduate know how to look for that. 

Here’s what you need to do as a career services professional to promote the importance of students’ professional growth: 

It’s time to set expectations for yourself for the new school year. The year of virtual. 

If your school is going completely or mostly virtual this year, your typical day of career counseling is not going to look the same as it once did. But that’s OK. Frankly, it shouldn’t.

Working from home means more than just a lack of face-to-face time with students and colleagues. There are many considerations for your return to career counseling this school year.

Your productivity will change, so reset your expectations. According to NACE’s Career Services Benchmark Survey, career services folks spent 55% of their time student-facing last year. If that’s what your day used to look like, don’t feel like you need to hit those same quotas in a virtual environment. 

For one thing, it’s not as easy to access your students since they won’t be walking by your office throughout the day. Therefore, walk-in appointments are a thing of the past. 

For another, you need to avoid burnout. In a recent survey from Monster.com, 51% of workers said they’re experiencing burnout while working from home during the pandemic. You need to take care of yourself in order to successfully take care of your students.

Adjust the way you think about helping your students. Instead of meeting with them in person, support students virtually through a number of platforms:

You see it every year. Students are right on track with their job search, but then they go home for the holidays. They’re torn between family events, shopping, and catching up with their old friends. Then your job seekers return to school stressed out because they’ve fallen behind in their plan to land a job after graduation.

While it’s important for students to enjoy the holidays, if they don’t make time for the job search, they will miss out on great career opportunities. Luckily, with a little bit of forethought, they can find ways to incorporate their job search into the holidays. All it takes is a little guidance from a career services professional, like you.

Help your job seekers make the most of their break by showing them how they can participate in the holiday revelry while focusing on their careers. Here are three tips to keep your job seekers on track during this busy time of year:

Recruiters don’t type keywords into a job search engine and cross their fingers hoping top candidates pop up. In today’s recruiting world, social media, effective job boards, and an emphasis on company culture allow recruiters to look deeper into potential candidates and their whole person.

While this is a pro for both job seekers and employers, it means students entering the application process need a whole new set of skills and better career advice. And with recruiters maintaining that employee referrals remain the top source of high-quality hires, those skills must include networking, understanding hiring pros, and building meaningful relationships.

Students will be entering a workforce that’s at an all-time unemployment low. To help them stand out above the crowd, it’s critical career counselors teach them how to be self-marketing experts — no matter their field of study.

Here’s the career advice you need to give your students to turn them into self-marketers:

(This post was updated on 7/6/2020)

Many years ago, the interview process was simplistic. 

I would still consider it nerve-wracking, but not as demanding of a process. Today’s college students need to worry about more than aligning their skills, qualifications, and experiences with the job description. 

Now they’re facing phone and video interviews for jobs that may start completely virtual. Plus, they need to understand and prepare so much more. Students need to learn the company’s mission and culture (which might be different, now that it’s virtual), find a network using social media, stay professional while texting recruiters, and discover themselves all along the way. 

The pressure of finding a well-paying job immediately after graduation is already toppling. Especially when about half of college graduates in 2020 may be headed for unemployment, according to The Hill. Adding the weight of the changing interview process is overwhelming for many of your students. 

Here’s how you can help them tackle those fears and effectively prepare for the changing interview landscape: 

Thomas is an interview pro. He says all the right things and gives the impression that he knows his stuff. In fact, when Thomas gets job interviews, he gets the jobs.

The trouble is, Thomas usually quits or is fired after only a few weeks. His lack of skills and experience were masked in the interview by his confidence and smooth-talking nature. 

Meanwhile, Beatrice has more than 10 years of experience in her field. During that time, she’s collected various honors and awards for high achievement. Co-workers turn to her first to answer questions about complicated topics or gain helpful insight into a work problem.

However, Beatrice is not a good self-cheerleader. She gets nervous in interviews and often gives odd or incomplete answers to questions. Since trying to shift her career path, Beatrice just cannot seem to get a call back after interviews, despite having the skills and experience to excel in the roles. 

Both Thomas and Beatrice could benefit from a bit of interview guidance, but for different reasons. As a career counselor, you must know how to recognize job seeker strengths and weaknesses and steer them clear of sending up interview red flags or, arguably worse, pulling the wool over interviewers’ eyes.

Here is a look into how you can help job seekers appealingly present themselves while remaining true to the facts: