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Are you having trouble balancing your midterm and pre-Spring Break assignment deadlines with your application and interview deadlines? That’s totally understandable, it’s a stressful time of year. Since it’s such a hectic time, and because students missing deadlines is happening more and more, we have put together a few helpful tips for avoiding the stress and frustration that comes with missing an important deadline. Each company sets a deadline for reasons that fit their needs, so it’s important to find a way to manage them. Not meeting that deadline places you, the candidate, in an awkward position and your chances of being considered for a position drop considerably.
Here are some tips to avoid missing deadlines, both in your career search and even in other
- Care about meeting deadlines in your daily life. Make sure assignments, job tasks, etc… are completed on time. If you a student who is typically lax with regards to deadlines, it’s time to rethink your routine. Working and deadlines is common in all areas of post-grad life so it’s important to establish a good routine now. It’s never too late to get organized!
- Apply for a position you are interested in ASAP. Don’t wait, acting sooner rather than later will help you avoid the dreaded “oh no” moment that comes with logging into BentleyLink and seeing that the deadline has passed. In order to speed up your application process, be sure your documents (Resume, Cover Letter) are tailored, and ready for submission at all times.
- Create a reminder. If you cannot apply ASAP, put a note in your calendar, phone, or planner to remind you to follow-up. If you use the reminders app on your phone you can even choose different priority levels for the reminders, which affects whether or not they’ll go away. I always set them as high priority so that it’s on my notifications menu until I say that I completed it, that way I can’t forget!
- Create a list of your weekly deadlines and organize your thoughts around the first step to meet them. Organization is key at all points in the career search as it’s important that you keep track of what opportunities you are pursuing; but, deadlines are arguably one of the most important things to keep track of so make sure you keep track of them using your preferred method.
- Plan adequate time in your schedule to meet all deadlines. Always give yourself some extra time just in case, you never know when a technology or connectivity error will strike!
- When you’re in the job application zone, put away distracting devices. Minimizing distractions will minimize the possibility that you get distracted and forget what you were doing, only to come back to a screen that says the deadline has passed.
- Hold yourself accountable. Acknowledge the missed deadline, learn from it and work hard not to let it happen again
Good luck and happy application season!
