I know that I am not the most experienced or the most knowledgeable person on this subject. There are countless professional headhunters who have no end of professional advice to dispense. I do, however, have some small amount of experience in recruiting and recognizing talent, and I often find that job seekers do not know the basic "good ideas" of making the best presentation possible. Many times a candidate who is extremely talented goes unnoticed due to his or her lack of ability to present himself or herself. This is to the detriment of both parties - since the employer wants the best talent but instead gets the most polished candidate, and the best suited candidate doesn't get the job. Since thus far this is a "blog about nothing", it is de facto a "blog about everything" and I decided to post a few ideas of mine on the crucial topic of presenting yourself to employers.
1. Find out where the employer goes to recruit:
Companies tend to be methodical about hiring. If they use a certain venue, you need to be there. Sometimes the venue is an event, such as a live job fair or college campus recruiting booth (usually for entry level, and quite uncommon these days). Other companies may use internet job posting sites such as Monster. Or, you might need to have a profile on LinkedIn. Whatever the venue is, you need to be there. You are unlikely to be noticed if you are going anywhere that is not the main venue. (Of course, many if not most jobs are filled through networking, which is entirely different from soliciting yourself).
2. Dress for the event:
If you are going to be at a job fair, for example, make sure you look like a determined job seeker and dress as in your business best. This automatically puts you a notch above any competing candidates who looked washed up and jaded in their business casuals. If you are not meeting anyone personally, this doesn't apply - you can post your resume on Monster while wearing your bathrobe (though there is a machlokes when it comes to telephone interviews if dressing the part applies. For the record, in my opinion it does pay to dress for a phone interview, and stand and smile).
3. When soliciting yourself in person, skip the cover letter and go for the personal touch:
Too many candidates show up to job fairs armed with a resume and cover letter, and then expect those pieces of paper to do the work for them. That is not the est way. A cover letter is to be used when you are introducing yourself via mail, fax, or email application. If you have the opportunity to get in a room with someone from a hiring company, you need to present yourself through your appearance, your bearing, and your words. Speak up - don't mumble - and introduce yourself. Talk about why the company would benefit from hiring you. At some point you may be asked for your resume, but don't expect the other person to read it - expect to have to do all the work describing yourself. Don't expect to be asked good questions - expect that the other person has no idea how to draw you out, and come prepared with the answers he or she needs to hear so that you know what to say if you are not asked.
4. When soliciting yourself via email fax or mail, use a cover letter:
If you don't have the opportunity to tell the person hiring why you would be good for the company in person, you will need to craft a letter that says it and send that instead. The focus of the cover letter should be why the company is interested in you, not in why you are interested in working for the company. The cover letter that says something like, "I have always wanted to work for a Fortune 500 company, and I have accounting experience that makes me suited for the role you are looking to fill" would probably be tossed in the garbage. Especially if there is another cover letter that says something like "My ten years of accounting experience should be of interest to a triple-A rated Fortune 500 company such as this one". This is because the second letter starts off with a tone that leads the person reading it to believe that you are about to say why your experience will be helpful to the company. Remember that the company doesn't care at all about what you want, they only want to make sure that they get what they want. Make sure to follow this principle of speaking in terms of how you will benefit the company in all communication with the company, and you will again distinguish yourself from the glut of other candidates.
5. Keep your resume short and sharp; Use sound bites instead of sentences on your resume:
The resume is a document of great importance in the business world, for whatever reason. Therefore, if you want to get noticed and get the hiring manager interested in who you are (and you do!) you will need to have a great resume. Most people misunderstand the purpose of the resume, though. It seems that people think a resume should tell the story of their life, so that the hiring manager can go through a stack of resumes and choose the most qualified person. This is far from the truth, because you can't tell very much from a piece of paper. At best, you will be able to see who is qualified and who is not, but that rarely narrows the field to one person, and even if it does it still does not mean you would want that person working in your office. The resume should give enough information to communicate your qualifications, and it should leave the reader curious about you. For example, suppose I am looking at a description of your teaching experience. I would expect to see the name of the school, your title (Teacher) and the dates you were there on one line. Below it, I expect to see a short description of your responsibilites. If you write, "Taught history to seventh grade boys, covering the Middle Ages through the Renaissance and had students make presentations", I am overwhelmed with detail - uninteresting detail. A far better description would be something like, "Taught seventh grade history" and on a second line, "Encouraged students to research and present independent projects". This leaves the reader wondering what research you got a bunch of seventh graders to do, and how. Teacher's resumes are not my strong suit, so I'm sure someone else could improve on the example, but my point should be clear - you want to give snippets of information that leave the reader wanting to know the rest of the story, just like the sound bites you hear on the radio. The time to give over the rest of the story is at the interview, when the questions come up. And by structuring your resume in this way, you have hopefully increased your chances of GETTING the interview by a great deal.
Now that I got started on this subject, I can barely stop myself. But I don't want this to turn into a huge megillah. There is definitely an art to preparing resumes, cover letters, and presenting yourself in person, and there is no simple set of rules. Like any art, it is a combination of ground rules and personal method/adaptation. What I have mentioned is a few ground rules that I think are important to get yourself noticed in a competitive job market - mainly, be brief and clear in your resume and arouse the reader's interest, make sure that you are presenting yourself at your best and in the best places, and always speak about why they want you, instead of the other way around.
The last thing I will say is don't expect this to be easy or quick for you. Expect that it will take you hours to come up with the right wordage for your resume, hours to prepare the perfect cover letter, and hours to think of all the right things to say about yourself and how to say them. The payoff will be huge - a candidate who prepares adequately is putting his or her best foot forward, the one who does not invest the time is crippling himself or herself. Hopefully, your time investment will yield a positive return!
Valuable information. Priceless!
ReplyDeleteThank you.