There's an old marketing maxim I live by when advising job seekers. It dates back to the 1930s and comes from Robert Collier, one of the best writers of sales letters who ever lived. It goes like this: To create successful advertising, the writer must enter the conversation already going on in mind of the reader. Because everybody is thinking about something. If you can tap into a person’s thoughts with your message, they...
Much has been said about creating a perfect resume, but job seekers pay very little attention to the document that precedes it: the cover letter. A well-crafted cover letter can not only deliver a solid first impression, it can actually influence the hiring manager even before the resume is reviewed.
In my professional practice, I often come across cover letters that resemble cookie-cutter templates. Generic letters can...
Résumés have come a long way since they were just typed pages that chronologically listed employment histories, job duties, and educational qualifications. Hiring managers are inundated with hundreds of résumés that still follow “old school”.In a competitive economy, however, a résumé needs to work much harder. Every inch of résumé space must be used to effectively communicate your value proposition and differentiation stra...
Celebrity and customer endorsements -- those attention-grabbing testimonies and user accounts on popular commercials -- have also been used to make candidate résumés meatier, minus the celebrities of course.Career coaches and professional résumé writers often showcase snippets of employer, client, vendor, or peer comments to give client résumés extra punch, and hiring managers something memorable.“Testimonials are powerful...
From screening job applications to conducting interviews, hiring practices have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past decade. Despite all the changes, common resume myths continue to plague job search practices at all levels. The article attempts to debunk some of these myths.Myth 1: It's all about the number of pagesThe one-page rule is probably the most common myth about a resume. Candidates, even senior execu...
Establishing your brand in a cover letter can be a tricky thing. You want to be creative, yet professional. So if the prose is stifled, the reader can actually feel how the writer struggled with every word, every sentence, and every thought.Here are a few tips to help get the creative juices flowing and extend a brand that conveys confidence and your capabilities:Don’t over do it. You don’t have to fill the document with do...
I’ve written before that you can learn more about finding a job by emulating marketing experts than by reading every employment book in the library.And I still believe that’s true.To illustrate, here’s a tactic from Bob Bly, publisher of The Direct Response Letter (www.bly.com) and author of more than 70 books on advertising, copywriting, and other topics.Bly suggests the following for publishers of email newsletters (e-zin...
In an age of online application processes, and emailed resumes, why do so many companies still have you fill out a paper job application when you arrive for an interview or before they make you an offer?You would think they have all the information they need from you already, why is it necessary to have you fill out the paper form?Is it necessary to duplicate everything on your resume onto the application? What exactly, are...
As I talk with many candidates, the biggest frustration I hear is that there is no response to resumes they send out. Although many have worked hard to develop a large contact list, targeted specific companies of interest and have a specific system or plan in place to send out resumes, I find most do not follow up on sent resumes.When I ask the question, “Have you followed up with them?” I usually get the deer in the head l...
We recently had an open position we were trying to fill and I was amazed—or should I say appalled—at the blanket responses we received from job seekers. Potential candidates sent us cover letters describing experience they possessed that was completely irrelevant to our opening; it was the same as someone having a degree in veterinary medicine but seeking employment as an IT director. Did these job seekers really think th...