Job Search Advice – The Best Ways to Find a Job
While I teach my clients up to 15 different strategies they can use to land the exact job they really want, these strategies fit into four categories:
- Advertisements – This may seem like the fast track to landing a job, but only 1 in every 20 people get a job by responding to online job advertisement. I tell my clients, ‘Since less than 10% of all people get hired by responding to an advertisement, then don’t spend more than 10% of your time searching for a job responding to online job ads.’ Make sense?
- Recruiters / Headhunters / Search Firms –If you are searching for a new position in the same industry and you have a solid, steady and impressive work history, you might want to use these firms as PART of your job search strategy. If you are changing industries or careers or have some potential ‘red flag’ in your employment history, you’ll probably find this is not a viable job search strategy. Regardless, using these firms shouldn’t be the focus of your job search since they account for about 1 in every 10 job hires.
- Networking – Roughly 4 in 10 people land jobs through traditional and social / online networking. This is an effective way to find a job… if you have a network in your area of interest. The good news is that it is easy and fairly fast to build a network, even if you do not feel that you are not good at it.
- Direct Contact – This may surprise you… contacting prospective employers directly – even though they do not have a job opening advertised online or on their website – is the best strategy to find the job you want. Though it takes some work and needs to be done the right way, it is the best way to land your IDEAL job… the one that you’d love to do.
The cover letter has a very important job to fulfill. It serves to grab the attention of your busy prospective employer and virtually compel them to stop what they are doing, read your resume and call you for an interview.
In this way your cover letter is much like the cover page of a magazine whose purpose is to get the attention of a prospective reader and cause them to want to read the rest the magazine.
How to Mess It Up
Unfortunately there are many ways in which most cover letter writers create less than effective content. Here are a few of the ways to mess it up:
- Cover letters that use the same tired language make you go ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ – The goal of your cover letter is to GRAB the attention of your prospect, not get them to take a nap J.
- Why read this? – Most cover letters fail the “what’s in it for me” test by leaving out clear and measurable benefits of hiring you.
- Where, oh where are the keywords? – Many folks do not include keywords on their cover letters. Huh?
- Passive ending – Not many job seekers get a call once a resume or cover letter is sent. Put the burden on reader to call you.
How to Get It Right
- Create an opening paragraph that you would want to read – If it does not grab you, tweak it until it does. I’m not happy with an opening paragraph until it makes me think “Wow, can I afford to higher this person!”. Show the paragraph to someone else too. If it does not grab them, tweak it until it does grab them. There is work involved here, which is why I think most people craft such opening paragraphs. It’s work that is so worth it, because if you lose your prospective employer here, you have lost them for good.
- Include compelling benefits – Make the benefits of hiring you very clear to the prospective employer. Spell them out in a simple and compelling way.
- Deliver on your benefits – Be sure to give three pieces of evidence that you can deliver the promised benefits.
- Load your cover letter with keywords – Make sure you have your most important keywords on the cover letter and that they are very easy to see. Don’t hide your keywords in dense paragraphs of text.
- Call to action – Since you are the one looking for work, you need to take the initiative and follow up. Instead of ending a cover letter with “I look forward to hearing from you,” close with “I will call you next week to discuss a time for us to meet.” Once you’ve included this call to action, however, make sure you follow your own promise.
