What Not To Do With Your Resume
December 27th, 2005
Always Include a Cover Letter
Do NOT send your resume without a cover letter. Whether you are answering a want ad or following up an inquiry call or interview, you should always include a letter with your resume. If at all possible, the letter should be addressed to a specific person – the one who’s doing the hiring – and not “To Whom It May Concern.”
A good cover letter, like a good resume, is brief – usually not more than three or four paragraphs. No paragraph should be longer than three or four sentences. If you’ve already spoken to the contact person by phone, remind him or her of your conversation in the first paragraph. If you and the person to whom you are writing know someone in common, the first paragraph is the place to mention it.
What NOT to DO with Your Resume Once You Have it Printed
Do not change your resume except to correct an obvious error. Everyone to whom you show the resume will have some suggestion for improving it: “Why didn’t you tell them that you had a scholarship?” or Wouldn’t this look better in italics?” The time to consider those kinds of questions is before you go to the typesetter. Afterward, the only thing to keep in mind is that there is not such thing as a perfect resume, except typographically.
A second point to remember: do NOT send out a mass mailing. If you send letters to 700 company presidents, you can expect a response from 1 to 2 percent – and 95% of the responses will be negative. The shotgun approach is expensive; it takes time and costs money for postage and printing. You’ll get much better results if you are selective about where you send your resume. The important thing is to concentrate on known hiring authorities in whom you are interested.
Risk and Opportunity: Career Transition Issues
Any job search is going to involve risk and opportunity. If you are autonomous, you are able to view the risk opportunity and to come up with creative ideas for changing jobs. However, many job searchers being to lose their sense of independence and control after some setbacks. They start believing that nothing they do will help lift them out of their situation.
An autonomous person is “self-governing” and believes that his actions will have a definite effect on his or her life. One of the most important aspects of finding or changing a job is to keep believing that you can control your life. When this belief beings to falter, many people slip into some of the traps of self-doubt and loss of independence.
Seven key issues that most people confront during a job hunt are:
Self-esteem: Do you feel good about yourself, your daily life, and your future? Are you self-accepting? Do you have a positive self-image?
Self-validation: Do you validate yourself both from without and within? Do you have an inner sense of your own worth? Are you able to learn from the feedback you get from others during the job hunt?
Risk-taking: Are you willing to take the risks needed to get what you want? Are you willing to reveal yourself even in a situation such as a job interview when you’re not completely in control?
Sadness or depression: Can you feel sad about loss, but still bounce back? Can you learn from failure even as you feel good about success?
Internalized anger: Can you recognize when you feel angry? If you are angry, can you identify which of your needs are not being met? Can you discover effective and appropriate ways to express anger?
Goal setting: Are your goals appropriate to who you are and what you need? Are your goals and expectations realistic in terms of the current job market and your own training and expertise?
Phase of life issues: How have your goals changed over time? Has your self-image changed as you have changed and grown? Are you flexible enough to change as your life changes?
