How To Manage Expectations Of The New Optimistic Job Seeker

Job seekers are more optimistic now than ever.

Kaspars Grinvalds

For the first time since 2009, employee job market confidence has reached beyond half of the population surveyed, according to Glassdoor’s new study.

Yet, the reality is, fewer than half of 2014 graduates have professional jobs — those which require a college degree, a new Looksharp report shows.

As a career counselor, you’re likely to run into some ambitious job seekers with high expectations for their career. Though, overall, unemployment is declining and job openings are slowly becoming more abundant than years prior, role requirements are becoming more specific. Save your job seekers some disappointment by helping them manage their expectations and giving them the resources they need to succeed.

Here are a few tips to help job seekers manage their expectations and achieve their career goals:

Advise them on negotiating pay rate

Looksharp’s report reveals a disconnect between what students expected and actual starting salaries. College seniors with a full-time job offer expected to receive an average of $57,000 starting out, but the actual average starting salary ended up at $55,000. That’s just an average across all majors.

Some majors had significantly larger expectation gaps than others. For example, students who majored in arts expected a starting salary of about $70,305, and in reality only received around $44,394.

Help job seekers conduct research on sites like Salary.com and Glassdoor to see what professionals in their industry make at various companies. Remind them to take their experience into account, and come up with a salary they can suggest when applying for a new job. Then, provide them with strategies to help negotiate the salary they want.

Help job seekers find jobs that build the skills they need

Of the 2014 college graduates who are employed full-time, only a little more than half found a job within their major, according to Looksharp’s report.

Employers are often looking for employees with specific skill sets. Being fresh out of college, recent graduates don’t typically have the real-world experience required to have built these skills, unless they’ve had internships.

Recent graduate job seekers might be surprised to find their dream job isn’t available to them right away — they’ll need to work up to it by taking an entry-level job. If no entry-level jobs are available in their specific field of study, they’ll need to look at jobs that build skills that are transferrable to their field.

Help job seekers look for jobs that will build the skills future employers will want — leadership, communication and teamwork, for example. In fact, nearly 78 percent of employers surveyed in NACE’s Job Outlook 2015 report said both leadership and the ability to work on a team were the most important skills they look for on a candidate’s resume.

Share the best career resources available

Of course, along with a solid plan, job seekers need the right resources to succeed. As a career expert, you should have no shortage of tools to recommend. While job boards and social networking sites keep you and your job seeker in the loop about openings, don’t forget about opportunities where job seekers can connect with key professionals in person.

Career fairs are an excellent resource for this, and even more so when using a tool to reveal insider information about what to expect when attending. Look at the variety of new tech tools available to help job seekers manage their search on-the-go. For example, PathSource just released a new Apple Watch app designed to help job seekers find local career fairs and navigate their way around them.

This newfound empowerment among the workforce is a great thing, as long as job seekers stay grounded and realistic in their expectations. As a career guide, you have the power to help job seekers succeed with the right advice and resources.

What are some expectations job seekers you’ve worked with have for their careers? What strategies do you use to help them succeed?