Job Hunting: It’s Like a Job, Only Harder
For recent college graduates or
professionals beginning a new job search, a job
hunt can be an exhausting process. One of the
reasons is that, according to the experts, to be
successful in your job search, you have to
“market” yourself, and many people just
don’t know how.
According to Loribeth Dalton,
director of career services for The Art Institute
of Las Vegas, “The job search is very
similar to sales and marketing. To be successful
you must follow a linear strategic plan.”
For example, says Dalton, start with
the two of the most important building blocks for
a successful job search: the resume and cover
letter. “The purpose of a resume is to tell
an employer what a person has done in the past.
The cover letter tells the prospective employer
what skills and abilities the job seeker has that
will allow them to be successful in the future
with their company,” she says. “Each
cover letter should be crafted to be very
specific to the job applied for."
Michael Courteau, professional
development instructor at The Art Institutes
International Minnesota recommends never having a
resume longer than one page. Anything beyond that
won’t get read. “Conventional wisdom is
that most resumes are read, on average, for eight
seconds, so adding another page to your resume
becomes unnecessary, since you’ll only be
placing an even greater textual demand on the
reader’s eight seconds,” he says.
If you have limited work experience,
like a new college grad, consider creating a
functional resume that emphasizes skills. For
example, says Courteau, near the top of your
resume you would list such skills as knowledge of
specific software, bilingual skills, or relevant
volunteer experience.
In your cover letter, says Kirsten
Wright, graduate employment advisor at The Art
Institute of Washington, “point out the
strengths of your resume and direct a potential
employer to things that you cannot explicitly
state in your resume but that make you stand
out.”
In both resumes and cover letters,
always use high quality paper. Stay away from
slang language and avoid using contractions. You
want to present yourself as a professional, even
if you’ve never held a formal job before.
Read Page 2 of "Job
Hunting"--->
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