KARLA PORTER

I’m hav­ing one of those days where the glass isn’t half full it’s over the top! So instead of the Top 10 Ways to Suck as a Can­di­date I’m com­pelled to be pos­i­tive and save that list for another day.

Pay atten­tion Let­ter­man, you never know when your num­ber will come up.

1. Write a cover let­ter.
   Most peo­ple don’t these days and if you do you WILL stand out. Make sure that it is cus­tomized for each com­pany you are apply­ing to. Tem­plates are fine, you can’t change your life in every let­ter. Just make sure you at least name the posi­tion, com­pany con­tact name if avail­able and rea­son for want­ing to be employed there. And please, explain your gaps in employ­ment and rea­son for a change in career objec­tives if applicable.
2. You have an objec­tives state­ment that is cus­tomized and mean­ing­ful or you leave it off.
   If you keep past­ing ‚“Employ­ment with an orga­ni­za­tion that allows me to reach my poten­tial and has room for advance­ment” the Recruiter is just gonna’ puke — so don’t do it, OK?
3. You don’t fall for putting “Ref­er­ences Avail­able Upon Request” on your resume.
   We Recruiters are pretty darned smart as a breed. Put it this way, we don’t need ref­er­ences unless we’re really inter­ested in you. If we get to that point and ask you for them and you can’t cough them up you’re toast… So, we know they’re avail­able, OK? No need to take up room with that. It will help you keep it to 2 pages.
4. You fore go sub­mit­ting a novel for a well con­structed, aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing, max­i­mum 2 page resume.
   No mat­ter how tempt­ing your auto­bi­og­ra­phy is, we are not Lit­er­ary Agents, at least at the day job. This means you too CEO, CIO, COO, CFO and all your alpha­bet friends. Even if we called you first and asked you to con­sider the posi­tion we’re still going to need a resume and it can’t be a white paper on you. Save the white papers for your portfolio.
5. You have a port­fo­lio.
   It could be your web­site, exam­ples of your work, white papers, power points, what­ever, but it exists and you present it well. Oh, and it is your work, you didn’t copy and paste.
6. Your social net­work­ing pro­files reveal you are squeaky clean.
   A Google search doesn’t trig­ger sirens and red strobe lights. You know, like this…

   

7. You study up for the inter­view.
   You research the top play­ers, you know the mis­sion state­ment, you com­ment on recent achieve­ments author­i­ta­tively. In other words, you took the time to inves­ti­gate through LinkedIn con­tacts you went after and asked for advice, you read indus­try reports and you got on the good side of the Recep­tion­ist and you gleaned insider knowl­edge which you use dur­ing the inter­view to show you don’t miss a beat and you are pro-active, full of energy and ready to assume the position.
8. You leave panel inter­view­ers feel­ing like if they don’t select you it will be their loss.
   You are “the one” and it’s not going to get done right with­out you, woo hoo!
9. You do judi­cious cus­tomized follow-up with each inter­viewer by name and sprin­kle in rea­sons why you are even more inter­ested in the posi­tion after the inter­view.
   Even if you regur­gi­tate back what they told you they were look­ing for do some­thing… don’t leave empty airwaves.
10. You nego­ti­ate the offer with finesse and send me a thank you email.
    I’m going to start col­lect­ing a dime for my words of wis­dom. Let’s see where that gets me. When the mar­ket gets going good again I’ll be bump­ing that up to a quar­ter so speak now if you want a good deal.

What would you add to or sub­tract from this list? It’s a work­ing doc­u­ment not the 10 Com­mand­ments set in stone so chisel away!