Finding Job Leads: Selling Yourself

Headhunters like to be in an exclusive position with you, but that doesn't help you much. Therefore you should find 2 or 3 that you want to work with, and keep careful tabs on where they want to submit you. Companies don't like to get the same resume from different places. It makes their hiring process really messy if they bring you on.

Also you should make yourself a job-hunting business card. Print it yourself or use www.vistaprint.com but it should look like a "real" card, even if it's very simple. Make sure it has your name and a business title (John Smith - Professional Cheeseburger Taster), your # years of experience with that title, a few things that you want to highlight (17 years food critic for burgers monthly magazine, 40 years enjoying burgers) any degrees or professional certifications that are relevant, and your cell phone and/or home phone number, a PERSONAL, professional sounding email address (yahoo, hotmail, or gmail if you don't have one already), a website address where your most recent resume can be downloaded, (www.geocities.com/johnsmithburgertaster) and absolutely nothing else. This is your 2x5 sales pitch. You're going to give this to everyone you meet and they won't need to remember what you do or how to find you and it shouldn't be cluttered with a lot of extra info. You can put any extra information that you want to convey on the simple web page where you can keep multiple versions of your resume, create a general cover letter, etc.

As for the email address, there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating a new email address just for your job hunt. Regardless though, it should be professional sounding. johnsmith2122@yahoo.com is a far preferable email address to bigsexyjohnson@yahoo.com. So if you have any double entendres in your regular personal email address, you should create another one just for the job hunt.

Now you have to keep up with everyone who is looking at your resume. Every time you send a resume out or your headhunter(s) submit you then have a spreadsheet where you list the company, when you were submitted, who actually did the submission, the job title, and a sentence or two about the company. You'll want that information later when the company calls, or when another headhunter wants to submit you for another position. Large companies would never notice if you were submitted 3 or 4 times so long as you are applying for different jobs in different places. But you need to make sure that you aren't being double-submitted ever.

So that leads us to the next thing, which is how to get people to read and respond to your cover letter and resume.

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