1. Max Out Your Experience.
While you’re still in school, find time to fill any experience voids in your resume so that by the time you begin your job-search, you’ll be an unbeatable prospect to employers. If you have not yet worked in your field, now is the time to secure an internship — whether during one of the terms or during your holiday break (or even during your spring break). Internships are your strongest experience, but certainly not your only experience.

If you’re like most college students, you probably belong to a few student organizations. As a senior, you’re typically expected to help lead — and employers want to see that leadership ability, so grab a leadership position in at least one organization.

Of course, many other types of experiences can benefit you — some of which few students ever list on their resumes, such as work-study, part-time jobs, volunteer work, team sports, and class projects.

2. Use Your Career Services Office.
As a college senior, you should be well acquainted with the multitude of services offered by your school’s career center. No? Sadly, you’re not alone. But it’s not too late to learn of all their services — and to take advantage of as many of them as you can.

Some typical services you can find in your school’s career center include resume-writing assistance, internship and job leads, career and job-related workshops, resume posting on the school’s job site, mock interviewing and other interview tools, employer information sessions, on-campus interviews and career fairs, and networking connections (including one of the best networking sources: alumni).

In fact, most of the folks who work in these offices will do everything they can to help you prepare for the job market.

3. Develop a Job-Search Plan.
Maybe in a good economy you can get away with just winging it and seeing what happens come graduation, but in a bad economy one of your best tools in landing at least one great job offer is developing a job-search plan. This month-by-month plan maps out the rest of your senior year, providing a broad strategy and timetable for perfecting and implementing your job-search. Your job-search plan — which you should develop and implement as soon as possible — includes all the sources of job leads you intend to use, including informational interviews, your network of contacts, career services office, college professors, job fairs, job boards, and cold-calling. It also includes all the activities you need to accomplish before starting your job-search, such as polishing your resume and prepping for job interviews.

Start your job-search plan with the basics of what you seek — the type(s) of job, the nature of employer (corporate culture), and the geographic location of where you want to live. If you’re not really sure of any of these things, then start your plan here — because these basics are the foundation for success. But your job-search plan will also include all three elements listed above for new grads, including finding job leads, polishing your personal career brand, and following up everything.

Learn more about developing your job-search plan in this article: For Job-Hunting Success, Develop a Comprehensive Job-Search Plan.

Final Thoughts
Some of our students and former students jokingly refer to Quintessential Careers as a black hole because of the depth of information we have on these subjects — and it’s true… you can go as deeply as you want on all the topics discussed in this article because of the site’s goal to provide you with all the tools to empower your first real job-search.

So, with that depth in mind, here are a few more key resources for recent college grads and college seniors.