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One of the local papers had an article about how to increase the odds of your emailed resume being read and acted upon. I thought this topic would be a good follow up to my post on how to get your resume read. While I thought the advice was generally good, I had a few comments and some additional advice I’d like to share. The first three points are those from the newspaper with my comments added.
1. Use the Right Attachment Format
I was watching a concert for the band Journey with their new singer (okay, he’s been there for two years now) and it got me thinking about how he wound up in that role. Arnel Pineda played in various bands in the Philippines for about 25 years when one of the members of Journey saw his videos on Youtube. At the time, Journey was looking for a new singer and they flew Arnel out to San Francisco to audition.
I’ve recently attended a few events where I’ve met a number of folks who are “in transition”. Several of them have been looking for work for while and some of them have recently begun their search. It’s a tough market out there so in order to be successful, you need every tool and every advantage you can get. I’ve posted a number of tips on these topics but I felt this would be a good time to organize them in a way to help job seekers through out the process.
Make sure your experience and qualifications are strong:
Last week, I provided a list of tips to help high school students make the most out of their years in school so now I’ve come up with a similar list for people in college. College is an interesting period for most people. Some go overboard with all the freedom they have and end up having a lot of issues. Others view it as a reboot of their lives from high school – they’re in a new place with new people and a clean slate. While others see it simply as the next step in the progression of programs that make up their lives and miss out on some of the opportunities.
In today’s competitive job market, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people are applying for the same job. To add make things even more challenging, many of the people submitting resumes meet only a fraction of the qualifications (if any) which makes the job of the person scanning the resumes even more challenging. But that doesn’t matter to you, the job seeker. What does matter is how you can stand out from the crowd so that your resume is actually read. Here’s how.
Resumes are not one-size-fits-all:
Unemployment is sky high and the talking heads on TV can barely conceal their pleasure when they share the latest bad economic news. So it’s no wonder people are panicked which means they spend less money which means businesses take in less money. This then means that businesses need to let people go and those folks will certainly spend less money…. The bottom line is that anyone with a job has a chance of losing it.
As if going on the first round of professional interviews in your lifetime weren’t stressful enough, the news media is constantly preaching that they sky is falling. So how do recent (and soon-to-be recent) graduates compete for jobs in this tough environment? Here are some tips to help you stand out in a positive way:
Be Presentable:
It may have been fun to get your tongue pierced, your favorite band’s logo tattooed on your arms and dress for class like you just rolled out of bed (okay, so you did roll right out of bed right before class). But now it’s time to buckle down and get the world to take you seriously.