Never Had a Job? Four Tips to Help You Get Over the First Jo

Hopefully if you're graduating from college, you have at least one internship stint under your belt. But what if you don't have any work experience at all? You spent your summers on an anthropological dig in Boudreaux, for example. It's unlikely that your skills dusting ancient bones will translate easily to the corporate world. So I'm not going to lie: it's going to be an uphill battle convincing employers that you have what it takes to hack it at their organization. But it's not impossible.

I asked Connie Thanasoulis, former recruiter, co-founder of SixFigureStart and esteemed Vault blogger about how to find a new job if you don't already have one--in fact, have never had one. "Recruiters and hiring managers always feel that a person with a job has more posture," Thanasoulis says. "With that said, you could learn to have more posture. I once coached an employment lawyer who had never had to look for a job before. His wife did well in her job so income was not a problem. But he said that he lost all his posture and confidence. I had to talk him down from the ledge!"

While the job search of an employment lawyer is quite different from someone straight out of college, the same "posture and confidence"-building techniques are the same. Here are four tips recent grads and other inexperienced job searchers need to understand:

Four Tips to Get Your First Job Ever

1. "You have skills that are necessary in the marketplace," says Thanasoulis. No matter where you are in your career. "Make a list of your top 10 skills and quantify them--give an example of each skill in five or six bullet points."
2. "You have significant and measureable accomplishments" as a college graduate. Think of your academic experience in terms of accomplishments and make a list of your top five: Did you start a new club? Did you volunteer in an interesting way? Were you a research assistant on a professor's project? These are real, quantifiable accomplishments that will look good on your resume.
3. "You will find a job." Even if it's not your ideal job, it's a valuable step in your career. Says Thanasoulis: "The first job is so key because you learn so much. Then you can take your skills to the next level."
4. "It's just going to take some time...but you will get there!"

So chin up. Figure out exactly what your accomplishments and skills are--you probably have more than you think. Good luck!