Is the Cover Letter or Resume More Important?

Michael Zipursky

Michelle, an experienced recruiter shared with me how critical the resume is. How she detests resumes that are made to look all creative – it makes it harder to scan and find the key information.

Todd, who works for a large technology company, told me his company doesn’t even read cover letters until after they’ve scanned in all the resumes and done keyword searches on them – they only look at resumes that have that magical number of keywords that tell them the person could be a good fit.

The founders of 37 Signals, in their recent book Rework say that resume’s are pretty much useless. That it’s all about the cover letter. The resume doesn’t say who you are, it doesn’t tailor itself to the job. The cover letter is where you can speak to the employer and tell them why you’re different, why it’s worth their time to meet with you.

So who is right? Maybe they all are.

The fact is, if you want to increase your chances of getting hired you need to create a killer resume that showcases the skills and experience you have that is relevant for the job you’re going after. Plus, you need to have a personalized cover letter that communicates your passion for the job and why you’re a good fit for it.

Want that job? Increase your chances and cover your bases.

Do both and do them properly.

New Way to Visualize Your Resume

Michael Zipursky

Visualize.Me Home Page Graphic

Toronto based startup, Visualize.Me has opened its beta site with a product to turn your resume into a visual graphic.

The service uses your LinkedIn profile to generate the graphic.

It’s a cool tool and worth checking out.

12 Things Hiring Managers Look for in Job Applications

Michael Zipursky

FreshGigs.ca recently conducted a poll of Canadian Human Resources managers to find out what they look for in a resume and cover letter.

Below is a list of the top 12 things you should be including in your applications:

Needs to be well written
Error free
Focused on skills and accomplishments
Demonstrate what value you can bring to the table
Personalized message and greeting
Tailored to the specific job (not a copy and paste message)
Presentation, look and feel of materials ie. Personal Branding
Selling your strengths
Promotions received and increased responsibility
Wide variety of skills
Transferable skills
Industry experience

What do you do to reach your goals?

Guest Author

What are the best ways to ensure that you reach your goals? For example, do you write everything down on a piece of paper? Do you throw it all out to the universe and hope for the best? Do you envision yourself reaching your goals? Do you try to do your best?

If you are relying on any of the above four strategies for reaching your goals, chances are that you are not succeeding and falling short in your attempts.

Heidi Grant Halvorson is the author of Succeed, a new book that talks about goal research and how people successfully reach their goals.

According to her work, people reach their goals best when the goals are very specifically detailed. You’ve heard of SMART goals that are specific, measureable, attainable, realistic and time-bound (or some variation thereof – there are several different permutations of what SMART actually stands for). Well it turns out that there is research to substantiate that – people who write down specific goals are more likely to attain them – especially if they detail out the little steps that are required along the way. Breaking one big goal down into several tiny goals, each of which is a SMART goal, will greatly enhance your chances of success.

Furthermore, just hoping for the best doesn’t work – and believing that the goal will be easy to attain doesn’t work either. In Halvorson’s research, participants who believed that they could reach the goal and it would be difficult to reach were more successful than participants who also believed they could reach their goal, but it would be easy to do. Why? Because people in that first group were prepared for adversity and steeled themselves to be resilient and tenacious. People who believed that the path would be smooth were thrown off when things didn’t go as planned. And really – when do things ever go as planned?

So when you have a big goal – or a little goal – that’s important to you, and you are committed to it, here are a few tips to help you with your goal achievement:

Write down your goal and all the steps you need to take along the way
Ensure that each goal and sub-goal is specific, measureable and set times when you will work towards that goal and a final date that you hope to achieve it
Be prepared for a rocky road
Enlist others for their help and support

And, of course, celebrate and reward yourself when you reach success! After all, you’ll have earned it!

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Lisa Sansom is the Founder of LVS Consulting. A certified coach and positive psychology practitioner, Lisa helps businesses, teams and individuals be at their best. For more information, please visit LVS Consulting or email Lisa directly at lisa.sansom@gmail.com.

Freelance Camp Vancouver Is Coming!

Michael Zipursky

Well folks it’s that time again. On September 10, 2011 Freelance Camp Vancouver will be hosting its annual “Unconference” at the Network Hub in New Westminister.

This promises to be a great event and FreshGigs.ca is happy to be a supporting sponsor.

Here’s from the official press release on the event:

Experienced business personnel and successful local freelancers will be sharing their stories as well as insight on how to grow a freelancer’s business. This is a true UNconference, the schedule is created the morning of when the attendees arrive. We start the day off with guests pitching to be presenters for the day and the freelancers vote on who they want to hear speak.

Topics from landing a freelancer’s dream project to dealing with the nitty gritty details of doing business will be discussed. The Freelance Camp is the opportunity to make connections with like-minded people across many fields. Over 130 people attended last year’s event, including freelancers from Victoria, Kelowna and Seattle.

Over 130 professionals attended Freelance Camp last year. If you’re interested in going be sure to register soon. The even only costs $10 and the proceeds go to charity.

Details and registration here: Vancouver Freelance Camp and on Twitter at @604freelancers.

What Mindset Will Enrich Your Work?

Guest Author

Do you believe that artistic ability is a gift? That you are born with it, and while you can nurture it and take lessons, essentially you either have it or you don’t. What about the ability to sing? What about inherent sports ability – do you believe that high-performing athletes, like the Michael Jordans of the world, are just simply talented at what they do? If so, then you may be holding a fixed mindset, and that can be detrimental to your own ability to grow and flourish.

Carol Dweck has made a research and academic career out of researching how people hold beliefs about ability, and she has coined two phrases to explain these two patterns: fixed mindset and growth mindset.

The fixed mindset believes that intelligence and ability are inherent – that you are born with them and there’s not much you can do to change that. Leaders are born, not made. Intelligent children will naturally rise to the top.

The growth mindset believes otherwise – yes, there are certain talents that may be more natural to people, but through hard work, effort and attention, you can grow and learn and change your artistic ability, your athletic prowess, and your intelligence.

What are the ramifications of these two mindsets? Individuals with a fixed mindset learn to fear failure. Why? Because they see every situation as a test of their inherent abilities, and failure means that they just aren’t good enough – and it’s a hopeless situation because they can’t change (or so they believe). This means that individuals with a fixed mindset shy away from challenge and new situations – they don’t like to be out of their comfort zone. And if they do fail or perform below expectations, they may cheat and lie and blame others, rather than confront their own mindset or beliefs.

However, individuals with a growth mindset embrace new opportunities – they see every new situation as ripe for learning, and failure just means that they are on the learning curve and need to work harder, learn more, try something different. Individuals with a growth mindset love challenge, and they have stronger work ethics and end up achieving more and aiming higher. Those athletes, artists and singers that seem to have natural talent? Often, it’s the result of years of hard work, training and dedication. That’s the real growth mindset at play.

What is the mindset that you tend towards? When you fail, do you see it as an opportunity for learning, or do you interpret it as a fixed limitation of your natural abilities? Embrace failure and welcome feedback – that’s how we grow and learn. In the end, you’ll achieve more for it.

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Biggest Job Application Mistakes

Michael Zipursky

I recently spoke with 20 HR professionals and asked them:

“What are the biggest mistakes you see candidates making when applying for jobs?”

Every professional should take 2 minutes right now and read their responses.

Mistakes made:

• Speaking very negatively about employers or co-workers. Candidates who speak objectively, even about tough employers, demonstrate more credibility.

• Forwarding his/her resume to multiple employers at the same time via the “To” or “Cc” field. Each application MUST be personalized.

• Grammatical errors.

• Resumes that were not up-to-date (contain out of service phone numbers). These errors show the person lacks focus or isn’t diligent in ensuring the quality of their end product.

• Receiving resumes without cover letters. It’s like walking into a meeting without saying hello and trying to get down to business. Cover letters are an important part of the process.

• Being too personal in an interview.

• Making little to no effort to demonstrate their knowledge about the actual position they are applying to or the company itself.

• Embellishing one’s title, accomplishments and length of service at a prior job in order to obtain a higher position, and assuming those details will not be checked.

• Note: 33% of resumes contain embellishments. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to do. It means too many people are doing it!

• Likewise doctored or fraudulent credentials such as educational degrees/diplomas or training certificates, driver’s license abstracts, etc.

• Not recognizing the organizations name when you contact them. Candidates who had absolutely no idea who we were when we contacted them to discuss their application.

• No excitement or passion shown in their resume, cover letter, and/or the interview.

Job Hunting Tips: A Students Perspective

Guest Author

As a typical 21 year old university student, it should come as no surprise that the Internet plays a big role in my life. From reading the news online, to making weekend plans via Facebook, or setting up a conference call over Skype, the Internet is a tool I’ve grown up with. Many post-secondary students today don’t remember the days of wandering the streets armed with hard copies of their resume or scanning the pages of a newspaper looking for the magic words: “We’re hiring!”

Having successfully landed summer internships over the past five years in a number of different industries, I wanted to share a few of the things I’ve learned along the way in conducting an online job search.

1. Start with top employer lists. If you have no idea where to start, a list like Canada’s Top 100 (http://canadastop100.com) can help you figure out what companies would be a good fit for you. Take a look at the judging criteria and see how companies have ranked in the past. Are they moving up or down the rankings? How do the benefits they offer compare to others in the industry?

2. Access career portals or other job portals. Many universities and colleges have dedicated career portals with postings available to students or recent graduates. These portals are particularly useful, as employers are often targeting students from a certain school. Other job portals are industry-specific, like FreshGigs.ca, which can save you time and make your search more efficient. Some portals even include a map so you can easily see where a company is located, any nearby amenities and accessibility to public transport.

3. Get LinkedIn. Take advantage of the “Who’s viewed my profile?” feature to see if any recruiters have recently looked up your name on LinkedIn. Search for common connections, and encourage others in your network to help introduce you to the right people. Look up current or past employees of a company you’re interested in and reach out to learn about their experiences. Update your tagline to show that you’re actively looking for employment, and keep your profile up-to-date using keywords.

Use the Internet to your full advantage. The information is already out there, so why not use it to make your job search more efficient? It sure is better than hitting the streets and cold calling companies who aren’t even hiring.

Written by Katherine Wong Too Yen. Follow Katherine @kwongtooyen

Learn to be More Optimistic – part 2

Guest Author

Last post, I shared with you the elements of optimistic thinking, also known as explanatory style. According to the research done by Dr. Martin Seligman, optimists not only live longer and have better relationships, but optimistic explanatory style can correlate with professional success. Here’s a look at how this works.

In the 80s, Martin Seligman was called in to consult with Metropolitan Life, an insurance sales company that wanted to improve its retention of out-going cold call sales agents. When I presented this case recently to a group of new MBA students, I asked if anyone had ever had a job like this. Two students raised their hands. I asked them, “How was it?” They both answered, “It sucked.” The rejection rate for out-going cold call sales is high – if you are lucky, you might get a 10% conversion rate, and you never know when that 1 in 10 success will happen. You might hit a dry spell of 30 or 40 or more calls before finding gold.

That sucky work and high failure rate led to a high turnover rate as well. 50% of new hires quit in the first year. Met Life estimated that it was losing $75 million in hiring and training costs annually.

With Seligman’s work in optimism, Metropolitan Life started screening new applicants for optimistic explanatory style. Did it work? The stats speak for themselves.
Of new hires, pessimists were three times more likely than optimists to quit. Why? The top 10% optimists were selling 88% more insurance than the bottom 10% pessimists. Again, why?

There are many possibilities – optimists may have been forming better client relations, optimists may have been staying on the phone longer with potential customers, optimists may have been working longer hours. But what is most likely is that optimists simply made more calls. Each rejection was seen as a temporary setback, and each new phone call was seen as a new opportunity. Optimists’ self-talk was keeping them moving forward to a new call, and their success at sales was fuelling their desire to stay with the company. Pessimists’ self-talk was keeping them mired in the muck and they made fewer calls.

Cold sales is a numbers game – the more calls you make, the more you will sell. Quite often, job seeking is also a numbers game – the more resumes you send out and the more networking you do, the more interviews you will get; the more interviews you get, the more job offers you will get. Same thing with selling your creative services – the more proposals you present, the more gigs you get.

Optimistic thinking skills will help with your resiliency and keep you moving forward to the next action step.

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Want a Job? Be a Pro!

Michael Zipursky

Looking for a job and landing one are two different things.

Want to find one? No problem, we’ve got plenty of them.

Want to land one? Be prepared to work for it.

Applying for a job doesn’t require a great deal of manual labour or time. But you’ve got to approach it the right way.

Far too many job seeking professionals take the lazy copycat approach.

They go to apply for a job, paste in some pre-written text and hit ‘send’ so often it’s like their finger’s got a nervous twitch.

Here’s the problem…

Employers, business owners, and entrepreneurs aren’t dumb. In fact, they are usually quite a smart bunch.

And while you may think it’s a numbers game, the more applications you send out the better, that’s not always the case.

“I got an email the other day from an applicant. He didn’t even bother to include a message in the body of his email. Just his resume!”

That quote comes from an employer I spoke with. What do you think your chances are of landing that job? I’d say….hmm…..none!

If you want to stand out from the crowd and increase your chances of landing a great gig, here are a few steps for you to follow:

Research the company before you apply. That way you can sound knowledgeable about their company when you apply. Including a few mentions of their business, market, products, etc earns you brownie points!
Write a personal message for each job you apply for. There’s nothing wrong with using pieces of a previous message. Just don’t slam the whole thing in their each time.
Make sure your message focuses on how you can help the company fill the needs they have. Remember, they have a Continue reading →