Without sounding too snide (I hope), did you go to college for an education or credentials? If it’s the latter, strike while the iron is hot (i.e., before the stuff you learned is obsolete) – put together a resume that emphasizes what you studied, your accomplishments in your field of study (particularly any opportunities you had to put your learning to use), and any other experiences you have had that demonstrate your ability to perform the tasks expected of someone in the types of positions you’ll be applying for. In my opinion, as someone who has hired for both positions requiring experience and those where I was looking for someone “entry-level”, you should be tailoring your resume to each individual position you apply for – read the job requirements, figure out what the hiring manager is looking for, and tweak the resume you send them to emphasize the things that seem to be important to them.
If you went to college for an education, then you have both a harder task in front of you and a wider range of options. The best advice I can give you is to get a job. That’s not as flip a response as it sounds. It really doesn’t matter that much what the job is – a bit of work experience goes a long way. I majored in English as an undergrad, and promptly entered a Ph.D. program in English Lit. While I was in grad school, I started working part time as a proofreader in an advertising agency. When I decided to drop out of grad school, I was able to talk the agency into making it a full-time job, at $14K/year (in 1988). Was it a dead-end job? In a lot of ways, yes. I was promoted and given raises twice and fired once in the next eighteen months. I never worked in the advertising industry again. But it led directly to the job I have today, sixteen years later. I went to work as proofreader at a type shop. At that job, I learned typesetting, and began to experiment with the new desktop publishing equipment in my spare time. Before long, I was running the desktop side of that business. When I began to get burned out there, I was offered a job doing tech support for one of our software vendors. I was with that company for the next eight years, first doing support, then managing support, then doing product management, making VP at 29, and finally running the company as a division of a larger company after it was acquired and the owner/founder was fired. From there, I moved to my current company, doing support and QA, managing QA, and now doing consulting. At 40, my income this year may crack the six-figure mark, depending on how my bonus plays out for the fourth quarter.
Just go to work somewhere, anywhere. If it’s related to something you think you want to do, so much the better, but if not, don’t sweat it. Go to work, start earning some money, and you’ll figure out what you want to do and how to get there soon enough. Most people I’ve known in their early to mid twenties make the mistake of assuming that you have to become a smashing success right away to get anywhere. By the time you’re thirty, you’ll be amazed at how little the things you’re worried about today will have mattered in the long run.
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