Job Hunting Gone Wild

If you aren’t aware that the economy has taken a dive; then you’ve been living under a rock, in the middle of the wilderness, on a desert island. Washington State is at 9% unemployment, Oregon is climbing at 12%. Most of the country is in fear of needing, or in dire need of a new job.

So how do you attack the job market, make an impact and beat out the competition?

3         easy tasks:

1)      Resume- this isn’t going to fly anymore. This needs to be you most professional Highlights.

a.       You want this short- to the point, and begging the reader to ask YOU questions about your work history; thus starting the interviewing process.

b.      3 is key- Three paragraphs is what you should try to keep this too- if it’s a letter format. If you are making a resume with brackets and in template form- keeps it to one page. Remember that recruiters and HR Reps are extremely inundated with applicants. So make it count.

c.       Use fonts and color schemes that stand out. A light yellow background stands out great in a pile of papers; so does Calibri or Times New Roman for fonts. They’re the easiest to read as well.

d.      Good contact information- if you haven’t updated your resume since you were living with your parents, or living in your first apartment (10) years ago. Make sure you have the current address and number on there. E-mail address is essential as well. Take care to go the extra mile, and make an e-mail just for job hunting. Firstname.lastname@e-mail.com sounds a lot better then- well, you can guess. I don’t want to make a fake inappropriate e-mail address, have it be real and get suede.

e.      Use spell check- then ask a friend to look at it.

2)      Cover Letter- This is where your personality must shine. Make yourself stand out. Be friendly, nice and not too uptight at the same. Fewer and fewer people these days are not including this in their application. It’s making it easier to pick applicants just because they made a cover letter.

a.       Do not try to sound overly professional- again you’re not uptight you have a personality. More and more companies are about team work and Organizational Psychology.

b.      Download a basic cover letter template from your office software (it’s in Word).

c.       Address the company- or individual directly (if known), and the position you are applying for in your intro.

d.      Tell the basic highlights of what interests you- this gives a personality with your resume. Do you like to volunteer, what is your experience with it? Do you have a blog, what do you write about? How do these things tie into what you are applying for?

e.      Always thank them at the end for their time reviewing your information- if they think this is a bad fit to go ahead and pass along information to someone who may be interested in it.

3)      Networking- this is done the high tech way, as well as the old fashioned way. I encourage both

a.       Job boards are great way to find jobs at numerous companies in one stop. Sign up for them all. Write out one or two resumes. One’s with different functions. Upload them.

b.      Start opening up the phone book- call the HR departments of companies you think you want to work for. Make contact with a live person. Put a voice with a name. That will turn into a face with a voice- then a better shot at employment.

c.       Print out/e-mail a copy of your resume to all of your friends, and former co-workers/current co-workers. At least 50% of all of my hiring into the corporate world was because of who I knew. They forwarded the resume on for me; the rest was up to me.

d.      Staffing companies- go through them. They’re great to work with. The only catch is you have to stay on top of them. Call every Monday (unless told to call a different day), to see if there are new positions available to them to fill. Then send a follow up e-mail on Thursday or Friday keeping you in the loop with them. Tell them that you’re going to do this ahead of time. They will actually thank you for doing that, because of high volume of candidates they have. People fall through the cracks all the time, and it shows them who is still looking for work, and who’s serious about it.

I do have a copy of my resume and cover letter on my hub- the links are below. I do need to update it to be honest.