Just graduated and looking for work during the coronavirus pandemic? Author Alexa Shoen shares guide to landing an entry level job

Feeling discouraged looking for work during the pandemic? An author has tips to land an entry level job right out of college.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Applying to jobs when more than 39 million people have filed for unemployment can't feel great, especially when you have little to no experience.

About 3.9 million students are expected to graduate from college this year. Some may be feeling discouraged, but Alexa Shoen, author of the new book #ENTRYLEVELBOSS: How To Get Any Job You Want, said there are things recent grads can do to land an entry-level position.
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"I graduated with a degree in English and a jazz performance degree and wound up being the first copywriter to ever PM a backend information architecture team at Facebook," Shoen said.

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Shoen can still clearly remember her struggle to find work after graduation. "I wrote this for people who are panicking. When I graduated after my undergrad, I was in college in the middle of the recession," Shoen said. "This phenomenon that we've seen over the last ten years, is that every entry level job isn't really entry level. It requires one to three years of experience that students don't know how to get. We've seen the statistics on this. Even in the pre-COVID times, even when the economy was good, almost one in two undergrads doesn't quite get a job that needs a college degree."

Shoen has created a 9-step approach to getting an entry level role. The steps start with being able to name the employers you want to work for, the job you want, and step back from the Google searches for a moment and breathe. "Boomers we love you," Shoen said. "Please stop advising your children to call people at the office. The stats on this say 80 percent of jobs, 70 to 80 percent of jobs never make it on to LinkedIn."
"I'm so passionate about people not going straight to LinkedIn to do cold applications," Shoen said. "You have to get your jobs through referrals, through personal networks. That can be really intimidating because it may seem like, 'Oh that's not fair. It's who I know,' but the amazing thing we don't talk about enough is with the internet and a well crafted email, you can actually know anybody."

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Social media DM's can also work as a way to reach out. Shoen said recent grads should play up their tech skills. It's valuable. "Get really curious about how remote work...works," Shoen said. "That doesn't mean you need to go work for a company that specializes in remote work or anything like that. But, I keep telling people there isn't some version of the economy that's operating in a normal way."
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Every Friday, Shoen hosts a FREE career clinics on the #ENTRYLEVELBOSS Instagram page where she answers questions from job seekers.

THURSDAY'S FEATURED JOB:
Company: Facebook
Position: Research Engineer, Artificial Intelligence (University Grad)
Qualifications:

Experience in developing and debugging in C/C++ and/or Python.

Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining, a degree (PhD, Masters or Bachelors with relevant research experience) in Computer Science or related field.

Experience building systems based on machine learning (especially deep learning) methods.

Research and software engineer experience demonstrated via an internship, contributions to open source, work experience, or coding competitions.

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