Work On It Wednesday: Asking for Help With Your Job Search

By Emily Young MA ‘16

Getting a job is tough.  Especially when there are endless paths you can take with your degree.  Instead of trying to determine a career path on your own, reach out to your network for help.  Your contacts’ experience will help steer you in the right direction and their suggestions of who to talk to will ultimately lead you to a job.  While there is nothing wrong with asking for help with your job search, how you ask for help makes a huge difference.  

1) Your Asking for Guidance, Not a Miracle

One call is not going to land you your dream job/internship—unless that call is to your fairy godmother.  Determining a career path and finding a fitting job takes time and introspection. You need to help your network help you by providing some direction.  What are your passions, skills, interests, shortcomings, previous work experience, end career goal, etc.  The more direction you can provide direction you can provide them with, the more they will be able to help you.  Just like the saying, “you can’t help a person who isn’t willing to help themselves.” Do your homework, before you contact someone for help.

2) Don’t be Generic

Most likely the people you are contacting are busy, important individuals who get hundreds of emails a day.  If you want your email to stand out, you need to have a clear subject line. I personally use the subject line “USC Student seeking Informational Interview about (fill in topic).”  The subject line gets across who you are and what you want.  Generally, contacts are more inclined to make time to talk to a student than someone already in the workforce.  Also, if someone referred you to talk to this individual put that in the first line of your email.  That way if the individual quickly opens the email they will know how you received their contact information.

3) Make it Easy to Forward your Information

Always attach your resume for reference because the individual you contacted may very well just forward your information to another contact they know or even HR.  I also urge you to write your ultimate career goal in every introductory email. Including an intro ensures that if anyone else reads the email, they will also know your end goal.

4) Say Thank You

The time of people who you are contacting is much more precious than yours. They are paid professionals offering you free help—be appreciative and say thank you.  Since their time is more valuable, this means you need to work around their timetable.  Do your best to be flexible to their time constraints and needs.

5) Follow Up

If someone in your network recommended you contact someone, make sure you not only contact that individual, but also follow up after you contacted that individual.  Two ways to do this 1) CC them on your initial email, if appropriate or 2) Share the result of your outreach in another email. Not only is it good to thank someone who’s helped you, but your recommender may be able to help you further with interview advice or a stronger recommendation now that the company is interested.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help!  That’s what the Trojan Family is for!

~Emily