Tag Archives: send a resume

How often you should send a resume?

Posted on September 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

Do you want to get hired?  Do you want to be noticed? Do you want to get a job?

Fine.  Send a great resume.  Once.

Do not send a resume every 2 weeks.  You will be placed on the spam list and your resume will never be opened again.  You will be laughed at by receptionists and managers because they can’t believe you don’t get the hint.  Your name will get on the permanent reject list of losers they don’t ever want to interview.  It will stay on that list for 5 or 10 years.  Really.  People remember those who annoy them the most.  You will be blackballed in companies that those people you annoy move to.

When should you send the same resume again?

  1. When you find someone you know at the company, and ask them to drop your paper resume off at the hiring manager’s desk.
  2. When you ferret out the name of the hiring manager and want to send it directly to that person instead of to the HR department.  Email works.  Sometimes paper gets their attention better. Not always.
  3. After you have called them, and they ask you to re-send it.
  4. When they post a different job that you want to apply for.
  5. When you completely and massively redo your resume.  Then send a note with it saying that you completely rewrote your resume and hope it will be more helpful than the old one. Ask them to delete the old one and replace it with this one.
  6. When you change your email address, phone number, or house address. Again, ask them to replace your old resume with the new one.
  7. If your job title has changed.  Ask them to replace your old resume.
  8. If it has been 6 months or more since you sent the last one.

I was just talking with my partner about 6 different individuals who have poisoned their job search in the area they live.  They keep spamming the same companies with their resumes.  Sometimes the hiring managers even tell us, “Don’t send someone like Joseph Gordon.  We want people who are hirable, not just pretty resumes.”

Don’t expect your persistence to play off when you refuse to do more than send a resume.  You need to figure out how to be the best candidate for a job.  They won’t hire you to stop you from annoying them.

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Do you dare call managers and CEO’s in a company?

Posted on April 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

…fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day…and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.  (Esther)

Do you dare call managers and CEO’s in a company?

No ad is in the papers or on the internet. You want a job there.  So you look up their website and just send a resume.  Right?  Err, okay, but there is a better way.

Calling into the company can get you an interview and a job much more quickly.

Here is what often happens if you just send in your resume without calling:

HR gets the resume and automatically enters it in the database.  No job is available.  Two months later the job opens up.  They do a quick database search.  You might be able to do the job, but it has been 2 months and they have 187 fresh resumes to process.  They know they can just send those resumes to the manager without having to make any calls.  It is so much easier not to call you, why bother?

You see the opening and send your resume again.  The data entry clerk sees it is already in the database.  A flag is already set on your database entry saying you were checked out in this job search.  There is no significant change in your resume.  You are not considered for the job.

Think about it from the manager’s perspective. The ugly normal way is that he knows an opening is coming up.  He’s going to fire or promote someone.  Maybe they have a new project coming up and he’s budgeted for 3 more employees in 2 months. As soon as he tells the Human Resources (HR) department, they will ask him to write job descriptions (2 hours of work).  Then HR will advertise the positions and send him 187 resumes.  He will have his secretary wade through them.  He will then ask HR to call the 7 people he is most interested in.  HR will tell him only 5 can interview with him.  It is only going to get more time consuming from here on out. He hates the process.

One alternative.  He keeps in touch with likely candidates.  He offers those candidates a job and tells HR about his choice.  Which do you think he would rather do?

You need to be that likely candidate.  There is very little competition before a job opening is announced. The time to contact the hiring manager, CFO, controller, COO, or other person involved is BEFORE they need you.

Next week I’ll tell you two things you can do to be a candidate before the ad runs.

Something To Do Today

Write down the names of 3 companies you would really really like to work for.  Read this blog next week for what to do next.

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Next week:     What to say to companies

Intelligent use of recruiters

Get famous, get a job

Sneaky no good cops set a trap for me

Katrina, FEMA and who’s in charge of you

A surprisingly great trumpet appeared

Brass knuckles and the law

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Posted in Finding jobs, Job Boards, Networking, Resumes

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