Get a job with no experience

Q: How do I get a job when I have no experience?

A: Focus on the skills you do have, rather than the ones you don’t.

It’s the age-old conundrum – you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience. So how do you get your foot on the career ladder? Whether you’re fresh out of education or looking to follow a new career path, feeling like you don’t have the experience to land that first job can be frustrating. So, here are some of the ways you can turn this situation to your advantage and get a job with no direct experience!

Focus on what you do have

Don’t get too hung up on experience. Your attitude to work, your personality, your understanding of the company and its activity, motivation, resilience, ideas for the future are of great interest to hiring managers. This means that in the absence of hands-on experience, knowing how to describe your personality is one the most important factors when it comes to making a great first impression during a job interview and it’s essential in helping you to stand out from the crowd. If you can describe your personality to your advantage, your soft skills will come shining through. Every employer wants to know if you’ll be a good fit for the team or office and the only way they can find out…is if you tell them.

Gain self-awareness

Get to know yourself, in particular your personality traits and strengths, as well as your cognitive abilities. Armed with this knowledge you will be able to truly understand yourself and be in a much better position to frame meaningful conversations with prospective employers. You will also be in a position to better identify what career path for follow and where to focus your future development. You may already have taken the free PeopleHawk personality Test and if you haven’t, do so now. It only takes about 10 minutes. Your test will give you a high-level overview of your personality traits. But for the really meaningful insights as to who and what you are and how you tick, make sure you click through to your Personality Guide. This is where you’ll get the really juicy stuff.

Show willing

Your 6-page Personality Guide is built around the skills, attributes, qualities and abilities which make you who you are, benchmarking you across the 12 leading behavioural traits and work styles employers measure. These are the quantifiable metrics that actually determine how you will perform in a job and this is what employers care about. Hiring managers want to know how you approach problems and would take ownership over your job and career. They want to know how you’ve grown over the years. Your Personality Guide will reveal attributes these and other that convey how you can learn and adapt to change. Of course you don’t have to stop with just your Personality Guide. You can use PeopleHawk to build your complete professional career portfolio, with Infographic Resumes, Career Aptitude Tests, Video Interviews, Elevator Pitches, Live Profile Cards and more. All in the one spot and in the cloud.

Your next step

If you’re new to PeopleHawk, then click through and take the Personality Test now. It could be the most important 10 minutes you’ll ever invest in your career. And if you’ve already done the Test, then make sure to download your Personality Guide. Its clearly laid-out insights will open your mind to what who you are and what you could become. Knowing your strengths, you’ll be able to play to them and use them to grab that job and advance your career.