Okay, we’ve all been there! You have a great resume. You have an even better cover letter. You have the qualifications. But your phone just keeps on failing to ring. Oh, you’re getting phone calls from friends and family – but the phone call you’ve been waiting for, the one that comes from the employer of your dreams, is just not happening.
Day in and day out you resend your resume to another company thinking this one MUST be the company that will call you and get you out of your rut of a job. But what if that doesn’t happen? How do you ensure that your resume will be viewed and will result in an interview?
Attack! Consider yourself a marketable good and think of creative ways to present yourself to an employee as an exclusive commodity. Don’t just send out your resume or worse yet, click send an application on your monster account and wait for the phone calls to start ringing. You have to really put yourself out there.
What does that mean for your job search? Well for starters, you can forget about applying to every job that catches your eye. This is a waste of your valuable time. Instead, what you are going to do is choose nine companies, nine positions and stick with them for the next two weeks. During that time, you are going to do the following:
- Make initial contact – If there is a company you are interested in, whether they are hiring or not, you are going to make a friend. This does not mean you are going to be shopping buddies. No, you are going to contact someone who is in a similar position or who is in the same department as the one to which you are going to apply. You are going to call them and schedule an informational interview (see Importance of Networking). During the interview, learn as much as you can about the prospective company and be sure to ask the person if it is okay to mention them during an interview or on your cover letter.
- Go straight to the head – Call the company and see if they are hiring. If you’ve already seen a posting advertising a position, then you are going to respond to that posting. But first, you are going to find out who is responsible for the hiring process and send your resume and cover letter directly to that person. This first resume will be sent in TWO formats – the ASCII format which is an non-formatted resume that can be pasted directly into an e-mail and will be able to undergo an employer’s keyword scan. The second resume will be formatted and sent through snail mail.
- Follow Up! Follow Up! Follow Up! – Here is where things get tricky. Depending on how badly you want the position, your follow up can take a number of different formats – sending a follow up letter, making a follow up call, having your inside contact recommend you, or finding out a secret indulgence the HR manager has and feeding into it. For example, if you know the HR manager loves chocolate, you can send a box of chocolates every day with your business card demonstrating to the HR person that you are eager, a go-getter, and know exactly what you want. Now this strategy may not work for everyone. Only you know what your limits are to being determined versus being pesky. Either way, you must take some form of follow up measures to let the employer know you are a serious candidate and not arbitrarily sending out your resume to everyone (See Most Common Resume Mistake).
If you utilize these strategies, along with maintaining a professional image through your paper choice, resume and cover letter formatting and words, finding a job should be a quick, painless process. Remember the key to finding a job is casting a wide net through networking, but being selective about which fish you actually want to bring home with you.
As always, good luck with your job search.
Sincerely,
Ayesha Long
Stepping up to a Better Career with Professional Career Documents
