今年春天即将从大学毕业吗？恭喜！如果你去年秋天便已经开始找工作，但到目前为止未能如常所愿，别灰心。没有找到工作的不止你一人。全美大学与雇主协会（NACE）建议，2019年毕业生工作市场从两个方面来讲尤为特别。

首先，招聘经理似乎变得更挑剔。略多于40%的大学大四学生在秋季面试后获得了工作。对比在2016年秋天获得工作的2017年毕业生数，这个数字降低了5%。秋季招聘在近些年已经取代春季招聘会成为了主要的招聘季。NACE调查称，与此同时，学生们也变得“更挑剔”。即便在那些获得工作机会的学生中，接受工作的学生数量也出现了降低，他们转而选择继续寻找工作。你可能已经发现，其中很多人如今正是你的竞争对手。

那么你如何才能从中脱颖而出？丹尼斯·都德利称，“成绩好，课外活动和实习经历都会加分，这是肯定的，但更加难找的是‘软’技能。”丹尼斯是一名资深企业培训师，经常围绕职业准备这一议题，在大学校园进行演讲，对学生进行辅导。丹尼斯还撰写了一本充满智慧、实用的新书，名为《行动起来！：得到工作，获得关注，然后升职》（Work It!: Get In, Get Noticed, Get Promoted）。“如果你的‘个人技能’在竞争中技压群芳，那么你将成为面试官的青睐对象。”

另一项NACE的调查支持这个观点。当被问及对新毕业生有什么要求时，82%的招聘经理和人力资源专业人士将沟通技能看作是排名第一的技能，紧随其后的是解决问题和团队工作能力。如今大红大紫的分析和量化技能则在雇主的需求单上排名第五。

都德利表示，“面试官并不期望新毕业生拥有丰富的技术专长。从这一点来看，他们更关注的是你是什么样一个人，以及如何展示自己。”在了解这一点之后，她提出了五个有助于获取工作机会的小窍门：

1. 倾听自己的内心。

好消息，他们会招聘那些愿意真诚讲述自己个人经历的人。都德利说：“清晰的表达能力至关重要。”值得一提的是，避免使用Z世代（95后或00后——译者注）广泛使用的一些不良习惯，例如“升调”，也就是在一段声明的结尾使用上扬的语调，听起来就像是提问一样。都德利指出，另一个不良习惯就是“‘嗯，是的’，人们说到这里的时候会压低声音，然后说‘嗯，是的’，而不是把要说的话说完。例如，有的人在讲述实习经历时会说，‘我从事过一些数据分析和营销研究，还有，嗯，是的。’”请勿这么做。“练习讲完整的肯定句。自信的演讲方式可以掩盖诸多个方面的问题。”

2. 不要相信拼写检查功能。

都德利说：“你还需要有一封漂亮的求职信，如果可能的话，抬头直接写上面试官的名字，并借此告诉面试官为什么自己是这份工作的不二之选。”然后仔细检查求职信和简历，寻找错误。不幸的是，拼写检查帮不了什么忙。都德利指出：“拼写检查经常难以区分‘their’或‘there’与‘they’re’。你不能放过任何一个细微的纰漏。”

3. 需要记住的四个词。

为了回答面试官经常提出的各种行为问题，在与面试官对话时至少讲述一个你可以从四个方面来介绍的故事：情形、任务、行动和结果。都德利说：“面试官可能会问：‘讲一讲当你遇到问题时你是怎么解决的。’描述一下当时的情形，为什么会如此困难，你自己都做了什么，以及结果如何。”在理想情况下，它应该是一个有关团队工作和如何解决问题的故事，但并不一定就得是轰轰烈烈的壮举，例如在自己手臂受伤的情况下带领高中长曲棍球队赢得了全美比赛。都德利说：“小故事就行，哪怕只是你课程中的一个团队项目。目的在于让面试官了解自己如何应对挑战，以及自己在受聘之后会如何对待工作。”

4. 遮盖自己的刺青。

在去某个机构开始工作之前，人们对于机构能够接受（或不接受）哪些事物没有明确的概念，因此都德利建议人们在面试的穿着打扮方面采取“保守或中立”的策略，其中包括一些明显的印迹。都德利表示，“除非你是面试加入Soho最时髦的发廊，那么请移除或遮掩刺青和穿刺。往小了说，这些事物会分散注意力，往大了说，它们会让你出局。”她还表示，我们还可以从另一个角度看待这个问题：“有关自身个性打扮的任何物品，如果你对其积极影响没有把握，那么这些物品都有可能带来消极影响。”谁会需要这些东西？

5. 写两封感谢信。

在每次面试完成之后，尽快写一封简短的邮件，感谢面试官给予的面试机会，并简单重申自己对这份工作的激情。然后用不同的措辞，手写一封感谢信，通过平邮来邮寄。（请再次重复检查拼写错误。）为什么要写两封，一封难道不够吗？都德利解释说，此举反过来会影响竞争。她说：“如果招聘经理已经为一份工作面试了12、20或60个人，而且你的名字在此之后两次出现在他/她眼前，而不是只有一次或者一次都没有，那么你被他们记住的概率就要大得多。”然后，被聘用就有希望了。（财富中文网）

安妮·费希尔是职场专家和问答类专栏作家，是《财富》杂志21世纪工作生活指南专栏“Work It Out”的作者。

译者：冯丰

审校：夏林

Graduating from college this spring? Congrats! And, if you started job hunting last fall and have gotten nowhere so far, cheer up. It isn’t just you. A new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) suggests that the job market for 2019 grads is a bit peculiar, in two ways.

First, hiring managers seem to be getting pickier. Slightly more than 40% of college seniors who were interviewed in the fall got offers. That’s a drop of more than 5% from the number of 2017 graduates who had been offered jobs the previous autumn, which in recent years has replaced spring as prime recruiting season. At the same time, students were “more selective,” too, the NACE survey says. Even among those students who received offers, fewer accepted them, opting instead to keep looking. As you may have noticed, many of them are now out there competing with you.

So how do you stand out from the crowd? High grades, extracurriculars, and internships are great, of course, but “it’s the ‘soft’ skills that are much harder to find,” says Denise Dudley, a longtime corporate trainer who frequently speaks on college campuses and coaches students on what she calls career readiness. Dudley also wrote a smart, useful new book called Work It!: Get In, Get Noticed, Get Promoted. “If your ‘people skills’ outshine your competition’s, you’re in demand.”

Another NACE poll backs up that view. Asked what they’re seeking in new grads, 82% of hiring managers and HR pros ranked communication skills at Number One, closely followed by problem-solving and the ability to work with a team. Analytical and quantitative skills, hot as those are these days, came in fifth on employers’ wish lists.

“Interviewers don’t expect new grads to have tremendous technical expertise,” notes Dudley. “At this point, they’re much more focused on who you are and how you present yourself.” With that in mind, she offers these five tips to land a job:

1. Listen to yourself.

Better yet, enlist someone else who will tell you honestly how you come across. “Speaking articulately is essential,” Dudley says. In particular, avoid widespread Gen Z tics like “upspeak”—ending a statement with an upward intonation, as if it were a question. Another unhelpful habit is “‘um, yeah’, where you trail off and say ‘um, yeah’ instead of finishing what you’re saying,” Dudley says. “For instance, someone describing an internship will say, ‘I did some data analytics and marketing research and…um, yeah. ’” Don’t do that. “Practice speaking in complete declarative sentences. A confident speaking style can cover a multitude of sins.”

2. Don’t trust spellcheck.

“You need a killer cover letter—addressed by name, if possible, to the person who will be interviewing you—that tells why you believe you’d be a terrific hire,” Dudley says. Then go over it, and your resume, looking for mistakes. Unfortunately, spellcheck is no help. “A common mistake is mixing up ‘their’ or ‘there’ with ‘they’re’,” notes Dudley. “You want to get every single little error out.”

3. Remember the acronym STAR.

To answer the kinds of behavioral questions that interviewers often pose, go into the conversation with at least one story you can tell in four parts: Situation, Task, Action, Result. “An interviewer will probably say something like, ‘Tell me about a time when you faced a problem and how you resolved it’,” Dudley says. “Describe the situation, why it was difficult, what you did about it, and how it turned out.” Ideally, this should be a tale of teamwork and problem-solving, but it doesn’t need to be anything hugely dramatic like, say, leading your high school lacrosse team to statewide victory despite your broken arm. “Small examples work—even from a team project in a course you took,” says Dudley. “The point is to give the interviewer a picture of how you respond to challenges, and how you’d be on the job if the company hired you.”

4. Tone down your tats.

Before you start working somewhere, you usually won’t have a clear idea yet of what’s acceptable (or not), so Dudley advises erring on the side of “conservative or neutral” in the way you dress for interviews. That includes ink. “Unless you’re applying to the hippest hair salon in Soho, remove or hide tattoos and piercings,” she suggests. “At best, they’re distracting, and at worst, they’ll put you out of the running.” Another way to look at this, she adds, is that “anything in your personal style that you don’t know for sure is a positive could be a negative.” Who needs that?

5. Write two thank you notes.

As soon as you can, follow up on every interview with a brief email thanking your interlocutor for his or her time, and briefly reiterating your enthusiasm for the job. Then, in somewhat different words, write a handwritten thank-you to send via snail mail. (Again, double-check both for spelling errors.) Why two notes, when one would probably do? It comes back to minding your competition, Dudley explains. “Let’s say the hiring manager has interviewed 12, or 20, or 60 people for this job,” she says. “If your name pops up in front of him or her twice afterward, instead of just once or not at all, you’re far more likely to be remembered.” And then—here’s hoping—hired.

Anne Fisher is a career expert and advice columnist who writes “Work It Out,” Fortune’s guide to working and living in the 21st century.