Not much advice to give on searching for jobs. But I have half an hour before I go to pick up my girlfriend from the mall .. so here goes .. .Searching for jobs is a process where one learns as he/she goes along.
Will try to give some points which may help. I graduated with a BS degree in Canada and was lucky (? - I do have special Vulcan Powers ;-) ) to get a job offer after sending out 5 resume’s on the first day.
But what I did do was a lot of research and plan out what exactly I wanted with regards to my job search.
Couple of points:
Keep track of who you have sent resume to / who you addressed the resume/cover letter to . One way of doing this is keeping an excel sheet and also maintaining a seperate email address only for storing the resume’s you send out. You can Bcc the mail you send out to this address.
Please have a professional email address. By this I mean that DONT have an email address like sexykitten@hotmail.com as your email address to list on the resume.
If you have listed your cell phone please keep a professional voice mail. No messages like ’’Hi .. you have reached Sexy Danny .. . leave a msg’’.
If you can read a book called ’’Electronic Job Search Revolution’’ by Kennedy/Morrow. They give a very good insight into how companies these days are using the electronic format (of resume’s) to short list candidates.
Come up with a cover letter and dont make it too long. Its should be just enough to give a brief info about yourself and make the person interested. In reality hardly anyone goes through cover letters .. then again you never know.
For new graduates - it may be a good idea to list the courses you have taken and also list a couple of projects you may have done during school as experience (if you dont have prior experience working in the industry).
Similar to the mantra for a successful restaurant or bar . .. LOCATION .. LOCATION .. LOCATION .. . . for job search it is .. ’’ NETWORK .. NETWORK .. NETWORK ’’ . .. by this I mean that you should use the people you know and their contacts to land a job. DO not be afraid to say ’’I am looking for a job’’. You have lot to offer and there are companies looking for good people ALL the time.
It is sometimes a good idea to have visiting cards printed with your name .. education .. address on the front and on the back have 7-8 points with bullets ..
e.g. hard working
excellent analytical skills etc.
Have a time table as to what you want to do through out the day / tasks for the day. Be structured and organized and this will help you in the long run.
I had made a list of companies I was interested in .. in my field along with their website .. contact numbers .. printed it out .. called up HR and tried to find a name of a person .. always nice to send a name of person whose email u can send the mail to instead of the general HR mailbox .. If you can find the name of the person .. usually .. firstname.lastname@company.com would be the email address. Certainly worth trying. You can say that you got the email address from a person you met.
Go to meetings of some forum in your city .. if there is none try to organize something .. for example .. if there is a certain technology .. lets say .NET .. if there is a .NET club or forum in your city .. make an effort to attend the meetings and meet up with people with similar interests .. even if u dont get a job these people in 4-5 years will be at good positions ..
Try to make yourself stand out - by this I dont mean that you should cross dress or have a sex change operation ;-) . .. the bottom line is .. you are selling yourself .. there are buyer’s in the market .. either they convince them that you are the right person ... or they sell you some BS that you are not the right fit .. either way .. its 1 or 0 . .nothing in betn . .
Plenty more to say but hope this helps .. .
Good luck in whatever you do.
Cheers !!!
The Friendly Vulcan
Spock