| Getting People to See You Begins With Letter, Resume |
| For recent college graduates or professionals beginning a new job search, a job hunt can be an exhausting process. One of the reasons is that to be successful in your job search, you have to market yourself, and many people just don't know how. |
| Start with two of the most important building blocks for a successful job search: the resume and cover letter. The purpose of a resume is to tell an employer what a person has done in the past. The cover letter tells the prospective employer what skills and abilities the job seeker has that will allow them to be successful in the future with their company. Each cover letter should be crafted to be very specific to the job applied for. |
| Some experts recommend never having a resume longer than one page. Anything beyond that won't get read. Conventional wisdom is that most resumes are read for eight seconds, so adding another page to your resume becomes unnecessary, since you'll only be placing an even greater textual demand on the reader's eight seconds. |
| If you have limited work experience, like a new college grad, consider creating a functional resume that emphasizes skills. For example, near the top of your resume you would list such skills as knowledge of specific software, bilingual skills, or relevant volunteer experience. |
| In your cover letter point out the strengths of your resume and direct a potential employer to things that you cannot explicitly state in your resume but that make you stand out. |
| In both resumes and cover letters, always use high quality paper. Stay away from slang language and avoid using contractions. You want to present yourself as a professional, even if you've never held a formal job before. |
| Find out if your school has a career services department, and if so, ask for guidance. Also, seek out friends, family, professional organizations, trade journals, job boards, recruiters, staffing agencies and industry specific directories to help in your job search. |
| Above all, avoid common mistakes by following these guidelines: |
| • Respond quickly to job leads, within a day at the most. |
| • Return a potential employer's call immediately |
| • Be on time for interviews. Even being five minutes late will start you off on the wrong foot. |
| • Be enthusiastic. Often the recent graduate still has a relaxed college mentality, but this doesn't work well in a job interview. |
| All these experts agree, thank you notes for an interview need to be sent within one day of an interview. Thank you notes also give you the opportunity to point something out about yourself that you didn't make clear during the interview process. |
| When it's time to sit back and wait for the job interview calls to come in, remember to listen to and edit the outgoing message of your home answering machine or cell phone. |
| So whether you're a new college graduate or an experienced professional who has been recently downsized, the guidelines are the same. |
| Write a good resume and cover letter, be organized and keep track of who you interview with, write thank-you notes and maintain a professional image, even if you're just at home waiting for the phone to ring. |
| You never know. |
| (ARA) |
