Initial meeting
If your interviewer comes down to the front desk or out into the visitor waiting area to meet you, this moment can be just as important as your entire interview. You can leave the hiring manager with a bad first impression if you seem unfriendly or disorganized when initially introducing yourself, so make sure you’re ready to go from the second you pass through the front doors.

Eye contact
This seems obvious, but failing to make consistent eye contact with an interviewer when speaking is a bad sign. Without staring at him or her, make sure you look at the hiring manager or HR representative in the eye and resist the urge to look down or around the room too much, as this can be interpreted as a lack of interest or confidence.

Posture
When sitting in an interview, you want your posture to be somewhere between casually relaxed and dutifully attentive. Any behavior like slouching, crossing your arms or leaning back will be seen as juvenile and unprofessional. Alternately, sitting on the edge of your seat at military-style attention can make you seem stuffy and off-putting. Sit up straight, don’t fidget and remain engaged with your interviewer and you’ll establish yourself as a friendly and courteous professional.

Creating such a portfolio takes slightly more planning than throwing a few paper copies in a manila folder. In the field of marketing, appearance is everything, and your portfolio should reflect this basic understanding in order to cast you as professional, organized and hard-working.

In an attractive leather binder, you should first insert a cover page along with a table of contents outlining what hiring managers can find in the rest of your portfolio. Include copies of your resume and cover letter as well for employers’ easy reference.

With this preliminary materials set, you can move on to the meat of your portfolio – examples of your work. You should present as many relevant projects, assignments, papers and campaigns as possible from your internships and college courses – however, these examples should be of your best work only. Before finalizing these documents, re-edit them to make sure any typos or grammatical mistakes have been eliminated.

Persevere
Despite showing promise in high school and college, Lin was essentially overlooked earlier in his professional career by both the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets. Until recently, he had been sleeping on his brother’s couch in Manhattan and did not have a solid contract with the Knicks. His refusal to give up goes to show that perseverance is an essential quality to success – be it in basketball or any other pursuit.

Trust your team
Historically speaking, the New York Knicks have struggled against more successful NBA teams. While Lin’s skill has been a major factor in the Knicks’ recent winning streak, he couldn’t have done it without the help of his teammates. This same principle can be applied to finding a premium entry level job or internship. Trusting your network of friends, family members and professional contacts is the best way to land your first job.

Play to your strengths
While his recent success has drawn the obvious comparisons to NBA stars like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, Lin has an original style of play that doesn’t seek to copy anyone else. With this in mind, you should highlight your particular strengths when speaking to interviewers. Bringing something new and different to the table can help set you apart from the larger pool of job candidates.

Backpack
While plenty of young professionals carry backpacks to work, bringing such a casual accessory to a job interview can send the wrong impression. In order to look like a sophisticated professional, rather than a college student, find a leather briefcase or portfolio to hold copies of your resume, references and cover letter.

Strong colognes or perfumes
Smelling nice certainly doesn’t hurt in an interview setting, but it you can easily shoot yourself in the foot with an overly-strong perfume or cologne. Even if you’re saying all the right things, it can be difficult for hiring managers to move past a distracting scent emanating from your person. Stick with regular body soaps and shampoos before an interview instead.

Too much jewelry
If you’re looking for a job in the corporate world, chances are you’ll be dealing with a somewhat conservative establishment. While women’s jewelry is generally OK to wear, remove any excessive pieces like lip rings, nose rings, eyebrow rings or just about anything else that isn’t a traditional necklace, ring or earring. You can think about putting them back in once you have the job secure.

While you still need a comprehensive knowledge of medicine and healthcare to become a physician assistant, you’ll be pleased to know that the education requirements are less intensive than traditional pre-med and medical school programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the typical physician assistant program takes about two years for full-time students to complete.

Many applicants already have experience in the healthcare field as nurses or emergency medical technicians, so you’ll have to consider these opportunities first if you’re serious about becoming a PA.

Once you’re on track with your career decision, there are a number of available opportunities to consider. You can choose between working in a traditional hospital or private physician’s office. Many PAs also work in outpatient clinics or large organizations such as colleges and universities.

Money
Sometimes getting the most valuable experiences out of an internship requires going outside of the normal channels. Put aside some extra money to help finance your career building efforts like networking with coworkers over lunch and attending industry conferences. It may seem like an unnecessary financial burden, but it could mean all the difference in securing an entry level job later on.

Specialize
While you want to gain a diverse range of knowledge about your career path, many employers value interns with a specialized set of skills. If something about your job is particular appealing to you, learn as much as you can about it. When the time comes, you can use that knowledge to really impress a manager or supervisor with your expertise on the subject.

The next step
Don’t wait until the end of your internship to begin thinking about your next career step. From day one, you should organize a list of goals you have for your internship and where you want them to take you. Once you have your priorities in order, you can begin thinking of ways to follow through on them.

Exercise
Chances are, you’ll be sitting behind a desk for the majority of your day at your new career. Day after day of this inactivity can really begin to erode your physical fitness. As a result, you may need to work a little harder to stay in shape now that you’re a working adult. Consider hitting the gym before or after work or simply take a daily brisk walk.

Sleep
If you think that you can maintain your college routine of staying up at all hours of the night, you’re sorely mistaken. Within a few days of starting your new job, you’ll likely experience a level of tiredness that you didn’t realize existed before. Make sure you adjust your regular sleep cycles to ensure that you get at least eight hours of sleep at night.

Food
Now that you have some extra cash in your pocket, you might be tempted to eat out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. Not only will this habit burn through your salary, but you’ll probably end up packing on a few pounds as well. Try to bring your own lunch to work and cook your own meals at home for a healthy and affordable diet.

While the majority of your relevant professional information is contained in your application, many employers value candidates who are searchable on the internet. By creating your own website, you can organize your resume, cover letter, professional references and portfolio in an attractive and impressive way. If you’re not tech-savvy, there are several online resources to help you build a personal site easily and affordably.

Sometimes it takes a professional to get a leg up in the job market. If your usual methods have been unsuccessful for a long time, consider contacting a recruiter to help in your search. Recruiters can provide you with networking contacts and set up interviews and informational sessions with potential employers.

Even if the office seems like a laid back place, make sure to dress professionally on your first day. It’s always better to seem overdressed than show up looking like a slob by comparison. Dressing in a wrinkled shirt, jeans and sneakers will send the impression that you don’t care about your position. Once you have a sense of how other employees and supervisors dress on a regular day, you can adjust your clothing choices to match.

Many internships are unpaid, and even the paid ones usually aren’t far above minimum wage. One of the biggest financial mistakes you can make at your new job is overspending beyond your means. Chances are, you’ll be shelling out an unexpected amount of money every day for transportation, lunch and other expenses. Prepare a budget ahead of time and bring a bag lunch to help curb costs.

Can you tell me about what you do here?
Even if you already know the answer to this question (interviewing job applicants), people love an opportunity to shift the focus to themselves and explain their role in the company. After talking about your own professional qualifications for so long, it can be refreshing to hear about another employee’s day-to-day responsibilities to gain a deeper understanding of the company’s structure.

What attracted you to work here?
This question is another great way to establish a deeper personal connection with your interviewer while remaining on a company-oriented subject. Often, hiring managers will tell you a little bit about their personal lives, education and past work experiences – a helpful dialogue if you’re looking for some guidance about how you might want to progress through your own career.

Professional disagreement
One of the most popular questions that interviewers like to ask applicants is about a time when you came in conflict with a past coworker or team member in school. This question is not only designed to see how you resolved that conflict (if at all), but to see how you handle revealing a potentially unflattering past moment to your own advantage. Walk them through the situation and make them understand how you facilitated a gainful compromise for all parties involved.

Greatest weaknesses
Even more popular than the previous example are questions directed towards your greatest weaknesses. If these seem like traps, they are. Hiring managers will be on the lookout for bogus answers like “I try too hard” or “I care too much.” Your best answer should involve a true weakness of yours and then shift the discussion towards how you have since overcome that fault.

Stressful situations
Hiring managers like to know that you’ll be able to handle the anxieties and stresses of working in a high pressure business environment. As a result, be prepared to describe a particularly difficult or stressful situation you encountered in the past. Once again, make sure to put a positive spin on this story to show you were able to conduct yourself professionally in the face of overwhelming odds.

One of the best mental processes for organizing your career search is to treat it like a real job. You should set goals for yourself that you want to accomplish every day you apply to new openings. Pick a realistic number of applications you want to send out – four or five a day – based on the workload you think you can handle and your allotted time.

Then, divide your day into separate tasks – spend the morning searching for new openings, the mid-morning adjusting your resume and cover letter per job descriptions and the afternoon sending and responding to hiring manager’s emails. By creating a system that works for you, you’ll help counter the stress and frustration of aimlessly applying to random jobs.

Finally, don’t break your back applying to jobs all day, every day. Take a day off every few days or so to relax, regroup and mentally prepare yourself for the next round of applications.

Wrong. There’s still a final step towards solidifying your chances at earning that entry level position, and it’s one that many people aren’t even aware of – the follow-up. Even though you presented yourself as a strong candidate, shook hands and expressed your interest in the position, most employers expect to receive a follow up thank you letter after the interview.

According to Career Builder, about 15 percent of hiring managers state that they will not hire someone who fails to send a thank you letter. Furthermore, 32 percent may still consider the candidate, but will have a negative impression of him or her.

So what’s the proper procedure for following up after an interview? Sending the hiring manager a brief email is all it takes. Thank them again for their time and reiterate a few of your basic qualifications along with why you find the position particularly appealing to your set of skills. There’s no need to wait several days to send the thank you, either. In fact, the sooner you respond to the employer, the better your chances of leaving a lasting impression.

An open mind
After a lengthy application process, many soon-to-be interns have developed high expectations about what they’ll be doing at their internship and where those opportunities will take them. While there’s no doubt you’ll learn a lot, be prepared to tackle many less-than-ideal jobs like faxing documents, updating spreadsheets, making coffee and answering phones. It may seem unexciting at first, but one opportunity leads to another.

Some ideas
Make sure to study recent news and information on the company or organization’s website before starting your first day. Read up on what projects they’re currently working on and some of their business partners. Keep this information in the back of your mind and develop some suggestions for how you can help improve what’s already being done. You don’t have to offer any groundbreaking solutions, but your supervisors will be impressed that you’ve familiarized yourself with the organization’s current projects.

Part-time job
With nothing but a mountain of applications to fill the hours, you may want to find a part-time job after graduation. In addition to providing you with some financial stability, hiring managers will be pleased to see that you didn’t spend your post-grad summer sitting on the couch hoping for a job to come along. Even if you’re only working as a cashier at a local retailer, the opportunity will close any significant resume gaps.

Internships
Securing an internship for a few months after college is another beneficial way to continue building your resume. Paid or unpaid, internships will help you broaden your network of professional contacts while gaining new skills and experiences relevant to your field. The internship may even open a door for you at that particular organization.

Freelancing
If you’re looking to get into a communications field like journalism, graphic design, public relations or advertising, a great way to earn money and gain experience is through freelancing. You’ll be able to get your name out there while largely being responsible for your own schedule and level of involvement.