There are those...

"There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not."

Robert F. Kennedy

The real winners...

"The real winners in life are the people who look at every situation with an expectation that they can make it work or make it better."

Barbara Pletcher

The Cover Letter Blues?

by Sean Silverthorne at BNET

I always include a cover letter when I send in a resume to apply for a new job. That’s what you are supposed to do according to every “how to get a job” article I’ve read.

But here comes business writing teacher David Silverman with some contrary advice: For most jobs, “don’t bother” with a cover letter. He says they only compete with (and often just repeat) what’s in your resume, which is the real meal to be digested by the prospective employer.

That said, Silverman does agree cover letters are necessary when either you know the name of the hiring person, you know something about the job qualifications, or you’ve been referred by someone. (Uh, why would you apply for a job you don’t know anything about? But I digress)

Look, I’m still going out on a limb and suggest you send a cover letter with any job application. But when you do so, follow David’s guidelines laid out on Harvard Business Publishing in his post The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received. In essence he says keep it simple, and ”help your cause by doing some of the resume analysis for your potential new boss.”

He gives an example of his idea of the perfect cover letter. It’s a scant 75 words long, which adds to its power and makes it stand out.

As someone who has hired a few people over the years, I find that many cover letters often do more harm than good. The biggest sins, in addition to typos:

Hyperbole. ”I think you will find by looking at my resume that I am uniquely qualified to fill the role you need.” That term, which is used in every third cover letter, causes my eyes to glaze over. Other cover letter word bombs: “proven leader”, “excelled in all previous positions”, and “dynamic speaker.” Sure, tout your best assets (”I have extensive large-scale-project management experience”), but don’t oversell (”Previous employers marvel at my mastery of project management.)

Dear Hiring Manager. Someone who sends a form letter rather than takes the time to write a personal message expressly discussing the job at hand is too lazy by half. Address why the position appeals to you.

Too Long. The purpose of the resume and cover letter is not to get you the job. It’s to get you an interview. No hiring manager has time to read through your bio-epic. In fact, the more you blather on, the more potential reasons you are feeding the employer to discard your application. “Her favorite food is mac cheese? I hate mac cheese. Good bye!”

To cover letter or not to cover letter? What ingredients do you think are essential for a successful cover page?

Job Market Update

The Olivier Job Index recorded another fall in online jobs in May with a 4.32% decline, seasonally adjusted. On an annualised basis job advertisements are down 51.9% compared to May 2007.Signs that the downturn in recruitment may be bottoming, include:

The rate of decline is decreasing – this month's fall is a big improvement on the 7.43% fall in April, which, in turn, was a significant improvement on May when ads fell 12.51%.

Whilst the number of permanent opportunities fell, the number of temporary and contract vacancies actually rose 5.9% in May.

The number of adverts counted between week one and week four in May rose.

Sectors that have most improved in May include Accounting, Sales & Marketing (including retail) and IT&T.

Courtesy of Six Figures International Pty Ltd

Five Resume-Formatting Mistakes

Here at TheLadders, we look at a lot of resumes and talk to a lot of people on both sides of the desk: the job seekers who are sending them out as well as the recruiters and HR pros on the receiving end.

To pass muster with hiring decision makers (as well as the software systems they use to screen candidates), the format of your resume is crucial. Here are five common missteps that can eliminate your resume from consideration:

1. Keep it short, but don’t squeeze.While a resume may occasionally run to three pages if the candidate is making a major career switch and needs data to back it up, most resume experts recommend two pages. But don’t succumb to the temptation to shrink fonts or margins to pack in more information: Text should be at least 10 or 10.5 points, and margins should be no smaller than 0.5 inch.

2. “Death by bullets.”An unbroken block of text is hard to read, and bullets a great way to call out distinct points. But use bullet points sparingly, and be sure to include the most important ones first. A resume riddled with bullets can be even harder for your reader to navigate.

3. Don’t get hung up on the calendar.Traditional reverse-chronological resume formatting isn’t always the best tool to sell your skills, especially at the senior level. Instead, consider a hybrid resume that combines both functional and chronological information. A summary section can outline career highlights and key qualities and accomplishments, while a chronological section puts those elements into context.

4. No pictures, no PDFs.Multimedia technology has made it easier than ever before to include elements such as photographs or save your electronic resume in a format such as PDF. Don’t do either: Photos can choke many applicant tracking systems (ATSes) and cause difficulties with HR departments’ anti-discrimination rules, while Microsoft Word remains the standard that ATS software is capable of processing.

5. Don’t forget the file name.It’s easy to sweat the resume format only to choke on one small detail: What do you name that electronic file? According to a report, “Resume Filename Best Practices” from executive recruiters Palladian International of Waynesboro, Va., plenty of job seekers surveyed included extraneous information in file names, such as version date or “final,” “revised” or “updated.” Palladian recommends dividing words with a dash — and again, use Microsoft Word 2003’s .doc format, not PDF, Rich Text, or other oddities.

Matthew Rothenberg is editorial director for TheLadders, the world's leading online service catering exclusively to the $100K+ job market. Previously he worked at Ziff Davis Media, ZDNet, CNET, and Hachette Filipacchi.

Punctuality is the...

“Punctuality is the politeness of Kings.”

Louis XVIII (1755–1824) French King

Save Your Resume From The Bin!

Thank your stars you are not applying for a job with David Silverman. How you create a hyphen on your resume could very likely decide whether you go into David’s “considers further merit” pile or the “thanks but no thanks” collection.

“Personally, I look at the width of the dashes,” writes Silverman on his Harvard Business Publishing post How to Write a Résumé That Doesn’t Annoy People, noting that Microsoft Word adjusts hyphen widths based on spacing in the document. “Many people don’t know this, and they don’t notice that their dashes are all different lengths. Does this mean they are more or less qualified to be a project planner? I don’t know, but it’s easy for me to say, ‘If you don’t know that your own résumé is inconsistent, how can you be expected to supervise a multi-million dollar project?’”

Fact is every hiring officer probably has his or her own unique set of prejudices that set off little alarm bells as they read through job applications. I, for example, would look askance at David’s resume because he uses at least one too many accent marks for my liking on the word résumé, which seem to me (and my dictionary) an unnecessary bit of French pastry on a word that probably does fine without any at all.

But David’s post is very strong at reminding us of resume blunders that will probably matter to any number of potential employers.

Here are three he includes:
“Get the formatting right. Line up bullet points, dates, headings. Wacky spacing will get you questioned about skills that have nothing to do with what you can do on the job. And please learn to put dates flush against the right margin. The right-aligned tab stop remains a mystery as deep as an ocean for many resume writers.

“Choose verbs that mean something. “Assisted,” “Worked on,” “Contributed to” and so on don’t convey much to a prospective employer. Instead, say what you did: “Wrote,” “Designed,” or “Managed.” The more specific, the better.

“Rewrite your résumé for each job application. If you really want a job, your prospective employer isn’t going to be impressed by your inability to adjust one 3-page document to meet their needs. Highlight the top 3 to 7 things you’ve done that match up with the requirements of the job.”

David is right. This kind of attention to detail and consistency will help your resume jump out from the more typical collection of sloppy typos, vague verbs and generic boilerplate language. Make sure to read the full post for other useful tips.

So, what’s the worst resume ever to cross your desk? Any peculiarities you bring to your own judging of resumes?

Courtesy of Sean Silverthorne, BNET INSIGHT

Invest in Colleagues

A long time ago I worked with the president of a sales rep company. We stayed in touch, and years later he asked me for a reference. Of course I obliged. A couple of years later, when a CEO friend of his was looking for a marketing and sales VP, he referred the guy to me. It turned out to be an incredible opportunity and I got the job.

In the mid-90s, I met an engaging VP of a startup company. We sort of hit it off and got together to discuss business from time to time. Over the years I advised him on matters concerning his company. So when the marketing VP position opened up, I got a call and eventually got the job, which turned out to be another great opportunity.

In neither instance did I stop to consider that I might eventually benefit as I ultimately did.

These are just two personal examples, but I know dozens more that demonstrate that taking the time to get to know and proactively help colleagues can come back to help your career in a big way.

And don’t mistake this as just networking or karma. While I’m a big fan of both - especially old school networking - this goes way beyond that. This is about engaging with like-minded, perhaps up-and-coming individuals, like you, and being confident, adventurous, and giving enough to readily offer assistance and counsel.

For it to work, you need to remember three things:

You have to be in it for the long haul. The two examples above took place over 13 and 7 years, respectively. By definition, this sort of thing takes a long, long time.

You can’t do it gratuitously. I know, here I am offering this as a method for boosting your career, then telling you that you can’t just do it for that reason. Well, that’s just the way it is. You really do have to be passionate about the business and enjoy interacting with and helping others like you.

Choose your close associates wisely. You meet thousands of people over the course of your career and, if you pay attention, you’ll find a zillion ways to help them. It’s all too easy to spread yourself too thin. Choose your associates as you would choose your friends … wisely and judiciously. Of course, they’ll do the same.

Lastly, this sort of symbiotic way of building your career results in a far more rewarding professional life than by dealing with all those headhunters and executive recruiters. But that’s just me. Got any similar or dissimilar experiences?

Courtesy Steve Tobak, The Corner Office

Job Ads Pick UP!

This month's UBS Investment Research from Economist Scott Haslem looks at the job ad market and the promising signs of an earlier than expected recovery. The research shows "a pick up of job ads last month and suggests that the ANZ job ad series for May could show some levelling-out after its sharp falls over the past 7 months." As the job ad downward cycle looks to be bottoming out, growth in job ads could be seen earlier than expected in late 2009 rather than sometime in 2010. With this we could also see less dire unemployment figures than have been bandied about at the 9%-10% mark. A recent NAB survey suggests that this figure could be below 8%. It is promising that figures and research is suggesting a more positive outlook on the Australian employment front.

Social Networking...the pathway to a new career?

The increasing popularity of online social networking is changing not only the way people manage their careers but social networking itself.

As the downturn continues, millions of corporate managers—gripped by the job jitters—are rushing to join online social networks in a scramble to build their social capital. The popularity of sites such as LinkedIn is soaring: less than a year ago the site had little brand profile and was seen mostly as a venue for corporate suits trolling for professional contacts while plotting their next career move. Facebook, by contrast, has largely attracted individuals seeking a compelling site for fun social networking.

Today LinkedIn’s year-on-year growth is up nearly 200 percent in the United States and it now has more than 35 million members—many of whom were formerly employed within the hard-hit financial sector. And it’s just one of the many sites to which recession-struck managers are flocking: Xing (based in Germany), with its 7 million members and special Lehman Brothers alumni section, and Meet the Boss (based in the United Kingdom), which restricts membership to C-level financial types, are also experiencing burgeoning membership levels.

This surging popularity of online social networking is transforming the nature of business networking, with profound implications for the way business people manage their careers. But it also augurs profound change for social networking itself.

With so many people stampeding into Web-based social networks, the line between social and business networking is becoming increasingly blurred. An important question is whether the values and codes of conduct specific to the virtual world will come into conflict with real-world values and norms. Facebook, where the idea of a “friend” is directly embedded in the interface, is increasingly cluttered with self-promoters, career artists, and marketing entrepreneurs. What happens as this trend intensifies and those using Facebook exclusively for career networking invade?

There are, of course, powerful economic reasons behind the trend. As sociologist Nan Lin puts it in his book, Social Capital, “Individuals engage in interactions and networking in order to produce profits.” These profits are based upon information, influence, social credentials, and recognition. The accumulated social capital, meanwhile, helps individuals to gain competitive advantages in the labor market as a result of privileged access to “resources” located on the social networks.

Article by Soumitra Dutta and Matthew Fraser, Courtesy of The McKinsey Quarterly

Network your way

This time of year is ripe with both relief and anxiety for recent MBA graduates. While the pressure of final projects and exams has passed, grads who haven’t landed a job yet might be feeling the weight of those loan payments about to kick in.

I recently spoke with Sara Gaviser Leslie, a Columbia Business School MBA who is currently a case writer at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, about the importance of networking when searching for your first post MBA job. She graduated in 2002, and, like members of this year’s graduating class, found jobs somewhat hard to come by. But she was hired in July of that year, and has successfully networked her way to many fulfilling jobs since then. Here are some of her tips for getting the most out of your networking efforts.

1. Put your research skills to use: Gaviser Leslie started her post MBA job search by making a list detailing the kind of job she wanted, then searched databases to find people who did similar jobs at places she wanted to work. She followed up twice, then dropped it if she didn’t hear back. While predictably there were many people she didn’t hear back from, the takeaway is that several contacted her.

2. Ask for informational interviews: People will be more apt to meet with you if you express interest in finding out more about their job, rather than asking them if they can get you a position in their company. When Gaviser Leslie went on these informational interviews, she tried to be as specific as possible about what she wanted to do in her career, which made it easier for people to suggest others she should get in touch with. “I also made it a goal to leave these meetings with the name of at least one other person I could talk to,” she says.

3. Extend your network: Cold emailing company directories isn’t the only way to network with potential employers. Gaviser Leslie recommends extending your network by asking your peers what their parents or siblings are doing and asking for an introduction if it seems like they could help.

4. Be organized: Gaviser Leslie kept a detailed spreadsheet of everyone she spoke with, which was not only a valuable resource for her, but for friends who were later looking for jobs. Also, “when you’re methodical you feel like you’re getting something done,” says Gaviser Leslie. This in itself can be a valuable morale booster when you’re in the midst of the job search process.

Courtesy of the Stacy Blackman Blog

Formulating a Positive Point of View

To formulate a positive point of view, you must replace your ingrained negative patterns of thinking. It's possible to replace these ingrained patterns of thinking because the personal point of view is primarily learned. This principle of human behavior is explained more fully in the following two points.

Our personal point of view develops as we grow up. You may have learned personal values, work ethics, or parenting while growing up. For example, as a parent, when you say anything to your children, you may feel that you sound like your own father or mother. This is because we learned parenting from our own parents.

As adults we tend to act according to what we have learned. We learned our predominant point of view, positive or negative, and tend to live this out. This view manifests itself in our behavior when we manage a negative situation.
To better understand how we tend to live according to our predominant point of view, consider the following example. If a person has learned a predominantly negative pattern of thinking while growing up, then it's possible the person will have the following thoughts in the workplace.

I believe it's a jungle out there.
I believe it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.
I am stupid and incompetent.
No one ever gives me a break. They are always out to get me!

The real danger of negativity is that it feeds on itself. There is both good news and bad news associated with the fact that our predominant pattern of thinking manifests itself in our behavior.

The bad news is that many of us learned the pessimistic pattern of thinking.
The good news is that we can unlearn this pattern and learn a positive point of view.

To unlearn a pessimistic point of view successfully and develop a positive one, always keep this idea in your thoughts: "I choose how to view a situation." This idea is the basis for developing a positive point of view.

When you say, "I choose how to view a situation," you can choose to view things optimistically, and you gain control. This can help you avoid your pessimistic pattern of thinking in negative situations.

Choosing a positive response starts by being aware of how a situation affects you. You can recognize if you are reacting negatively by being aware of the signals, or indicators, from your body and mind. An indicator you can anticipate is your increasing stress level. Your thoughts become confused and worried, and you develop a short fuse. You find it difficult to smile.

Remember, by choosing to view things optimistically, over a period of time you can internalize and lock in what you have learned and begin to formulate a more positive point of view.

Courtesy of Shawn Grant

Do or do...

“Do or do not, there is no try.”
Yoda Jedi Master, from the "Star Wars" film series