In a recruiter’s pool of candidates, applicants who have never mastered professional habits like clear communication or an embrace of curiosity will stick out like a sore thumb. For your job seekers to stand out from the competition, ensure that they’re comfortable with the practices that lead to success. 

It’s always necessary to be competent with the technical skills required for the position. But a job seeker is much more likely to be a successful hire if they’re familiar with which behaviors are most beneficial in a professional setting. 

These habits are important for all job seekers to learn, no matter what stage of their career they’re in. Whether they’re fresh out of college, accepting a big promotion, or making a midlife career change, they need to establish valuable routines to earn sustained success.

Let’s take a look at the five most important professional habits they need to learn:

This post was updated in September 2022

Too many candidates are failing to make a follow-up effort with employers after making contact with them. CareerBuilder found that 37% of job seekers don’t follow up with an employer after they have applied, and 57% of job seekers don’t send thank-you notes after an interview.

This lack of engagement can hurt their chances of getting offers and advancing in the hiring process. Here’s how you can guide job seekers to make the most out of their follow-up:

(This post was updated on 6/22/2020)

College graduates are quickly learning the high expectations for their first job out of college aren’t exactly going to be met the way they pictured. There are many perks they hope to find at their first job that end up missing.

It’s important for career counselors to fully understand the anxieties of college students and the extent of their expectations surrounding that all-important first job.

Once you know what those lofty expectations are, here are a few ways to handle them as their career counselor:

When people hear the term ‘etiquette,’ they tend to think of stuffy, formal dinner parties that involve too many forks, white linen napkins, and uncomfortable suits and gowns.

This discomfort and stress people associate with it is unnecessary. Etiquette is important to have in several settings, and it’s easy to learn. And one of the most important places to act appropriately is in the office.

In an April 2014 report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), companies listed professionalism in the top four competencies they consider to be essential in their candidates.

Proper manners in the office is not as simple as refraining from cursing at your co-workers or saying “thank you” to your team. Communication is the most important aspect of every company, and email is a major part of that.

For job seekers, email is usually one of the first modes of correspondence they engage in with potential employers, so learning how to write professional emails is crucial to the job hunt.

Let’s take a look at how you can help job seekers learn proper email etiquette:

Hiring practices have changed dramatically over recent years, with several new trends completely redesigning the recruiting landscape. A major part of the hiring process is the interview stage, which has also seen an influx of different types and formats.

No two interview processes are created equal. You have the traditional face-to-face interview, the phone interview, the video interview, the panel interview — the list goes on and on. This can be overwhelming, especially considering that 52 percent of interviewers make their decision about a candidate in the first five to fifteen minutes of the interview, according to an April 2015 study from the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.

How can you help job seekers prepare for all these interview variations? There are several obvious mottos like “be honest” and “dress to impress” that candidates can practice, but let’s take a look at interview tips that address common mistakes for each type of interview:

The job market for millennials is more competitive than ever before. Over the last decade, the unemployment rate has been on a steady decline and is at an all time low of 4.9 percent according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. However, millennials are still having the hardest time finding jobs.

How can the ‘Net Generation’ beat the odds and secure decent paying jobs in today’s market? This is a great opportunity for career counselors to show their grit while helping this unique generation of go-getters find their place in the workforce.

Millennials are generally recognized for having two abilities their predecessors have not: positivity and an above average capability to use technology. Since employers hope to add these two qualities to their team when hiring a millennial, it is your job to show how your job-seeker exhibits both of these traits and more.

Here are three tips to tip off employers to your millennial candidate and land them that job:

(This post was updated on 6/24/2020)

With businesses shut down due to COVID-19, about 20.5 million people were on state unemployment rolls in early June 2020, according to the New York Times. It was the 13th straight week that filings topped one million. This extended period of high unemployment brought a question to the minds of many workers: is this forced break in work a good time to think about changing careers?

Despite the popular advice of “following your passion,” job seekers should pause and reflect before changing career paths. The best thing to do is ask the right questions to identify what is meaningful, what provides value, what skills are transferable, and what a career change looks like in reality.

Here is what your job seekers should ask themselves before changing careers:

As the experts job seekers turn to during the job search, we all have go-to pieces of advice we dish out when they need support. But with so many changes happening in the way people find jobs, are some of our traditional job search tips becoming outdated?

Just as we no longer encourage job seekers to send out their resumes through snail mail, there is other advice we need to take out of our repertoire.  Here are four common job search tips we need to stop telling our job seekers:

Job seekers are more optimistic now than ever.

For the first time since 2009, employee job market confidence has reached beyond half of the population surveyed, according to Glassdoor’s new study.

Yet, the reality is, fewer than half of 2014 graduates have professional jobs — those which require a college degree, a new Looksharp report shows.

As a career counselor, you’re likely to run into some ambitious job seekers with high expectations for their career. Though, overall, unemployment is declining and job openings are slowly becoming more abundant than years prior, role requirements are becoming more specific. Save your job seekers some disappointment by helping them manage their expectations and giving them the resources they need to succeed.

Here are a few tips to help job seekers manage their expectations and achieve their career goals:

As a career counselor, it’s your job to keep your job seekers up to date on the hiring trends they need to know to land a job. 

To take advantage of the current job market, inform job seekers about these four important hiring trends: