Conference 7.286::digital

  I put a VTX infobase together awhile back for Human Resources that 
  contained this information.

  Check out VTX CAREER_US, specifically Chapter 6, Getting the Job 
  (Main Menu 6).  If you can't access VTX, mail me and I'll send you 
  the TXT and/or PS file.

    If you can't access VTX, contact your site services (ie, hotline) or
    send me mail and I'll help you get access to VTX.
    
    Jim

    Thanks for all of your replies.  I have one other question
    I probably already know the answer.
    
    Has anyone done their resume using color?  Any graphics been
    added?
    
    

    Don't get carried away with color printing on resumes.  I recall one
    time someone sent in one that was printed on light brown paper in dark
    brown ink, probably by the person's headhunter firm.  The photocopies
    of it were *very* hard to read!  They were grey on grey.  I finally
    wnet down to personnel and had them find the original resume and made
    my own copies for the folks who were going to interview her, on a
    copier where I could control the contrast, so we had something we could
    read.  So, don't do that!
    
    /Charlotte

    I sit down the hall from a former HR guy.  KEEP AWAY from fancy stuff
    and use acceptable paper, i.e. gray, white, light blue.  Keep away
    from pink or resumes that glow in the dark..Immediate turnoff.
    
    They are only interested in facts, not what you can do with your PC.
    
    See ya,
    
    -Jack

resumes and cover letters serve different purposes.

resumes are read by the people you want to offer you an interview.

cover letters are read by the HR people that pass (or don't pass)
your resume along to the people that offer you the interview.

HR people appear to like 'novelty', be it in colors, pictures or
content - perhaps it brightens up their day...

So *sometimes* an eye catching cover letter, with a normal resume
works out better.

Also be aware that the HR people have automated much of the resume
scanning process - they feed them through a software package that
translates the resume into a standardized list of skill sets.
So try to make it easy on the software (because no human may
look at your resume if the software doesn't kick out the right
skill sets).  State the buzzwords most appropriate to the job
you want.  Use a 'normal' font so the scanner doesn't have problems.

Just my opinion - I don't work in HR, but we have an open job slot
at the mo. so I've been recently exposed to the HR people...

	Joe

    
    MicroSoft WORD for windows (latest version) has wizzard to
    help you write resumes and cover letters.  I haven't pulled it up
    but read it in the manual last night.
    
    Jon
    

    cover letter are good. there are different ways to do it, below
    is just a small example of how i would do mine if i were you.

    suppose you are a looking for programming job, this is what you should
    say in the cover letter, suppose you are writing to the manager
    who is Mz \debra (say) and the company is  we_do_it_right inc., in
    some_town in masssysteueusts (say), you can start like this, also
    notice the format (very important!) and notice how in the cover
    letter you tell mz \debra about WHERE you saw the ad and WHY you
    want to go work for we_do_it_right inc. also make sure you
    mention that your salary requirement is negotiable, DONT put
    a number right now until you check things out, also make sure
    you give a phone number where you can be reach.

    hope this helps
    \bye
    \nasser

    x---------------------- cut here for sample cover letter ----------X


    to Mz \Debra, Manager of software services             \bob \doe \joe
    we_do_it_right inc.                                   pobox 1234
    pobox 12345678                                        another_town,MI
    some_town, masssestuteueusus  123456

                                                          may 15 1994

    dear Mz \debra,

    iam sending this cover letter to express my desire to work for
    we_do_it_right in the position of programmer, i saw yours ad in the
    Sunday section of the Boston telegraph the other day and and iam always 
    been very impressed by we_do_it_right products and software, iam a good 
    programmer and as far as the salary is concerned this is negotiable.

    i look forward to hear from you, my home phone number is
    <and you list your home number here with area code>, please feel free to 
    call me anytime (collect if need be) to answer any questions.

    below is my resume for your considerations:

    looking forward for us meeting to discuss this more in the near future.
    iam flexible as far relocation and i dont smoke too.

    thank your
    \bye
    \<your name>
    <below you insert your resume in a SEPARATE page!, not on the same
    page!)

    Your local public library will probably have a resume writing guide book
    in the reference section.  These typically have example cover letters.
    
    I have also seen a number such books in  shops such as Wordsworth's at 
    Harvard Square.
    
    It may be of interest to you to review some of the example cover
    letters in these guide books for ideas on what will best suite your
    needs.

re .8

   This has always worked for me.

   /Stuart

    Nasser,
    
    Don't forget to run your cover letter through a reliable spellchecker
    before you drop it in the mailbox.
    
    Edward.

    	I teach Technical Writing at a local college and one unit that I
    teach is on Resumes and Cover letters. Based on seeing many. many
    common mistakes, I can pass on this information:

    	A strict rule when writing the cover letter (actually when writing
    anything) is to write for the reader and not for yourself. That being
    the case, you should never (and I mean never) start your cover letter
    off with "I". Basically who cares about you? What I want to know is how
    you can add to *my* company.

    	A far better way to start off a cover letter is to acknowledge the
    company and comment on the high quality of work or product (you can be
    sincere about this, it doesn't have to be complete bull and anyway, if
    you didn't think the company was stellar you shouldn't be applying).

    	The next important piece of information is to tell them how your
    skills can complement and add to the company. This is a very powerful
    positioning statement so spend some time making sure that you are
    writing exactly what you think reflects you.

    	So many people submit cover letters that start off with "I am
    writing in response to the ad in Sunday's...." Basically that is
    powerless and tells me nothing about you except that you are without
    enough wit to come up with a more exciting intro to yourself.

    	Key points for writing a cover letter:

    	You should have an individualized cover letter for each company
    (not tough to do with word processing, besides, people can smell a form
    letter from miles away).

    	Do research on the company, what is the name of the person you are
    submitting your letter to (far better than Dear Sir or Madam). What is
    the name of the department you want to work for. What is it that you
    *specifically* want to do? (things like "I am looking for a job in the
    graphics arts department" just don't cut it).
    	
    	Your resume lists your skills, your cover letter should list the
    value and importance of those skills (in general and not specifically)
    to the job situation.

    	The length should not exceed 1 and 1/2 pages.

    	Write your cover letter and have someone else review it. Sit on it
    at least 24 hours before you send it out.

    	My students come in what what they think are great resumes and
    cover letters. By the end of the semesters (with an average of
    resubmitting 4 times) that is exactly  what they have, it's not easy,
    it takes time, but the difference can be striking.

    				Wendy

    We got a resume once that not only was it blue ink on light blue paper,
    but it was landscape!!  Both my boss and I said "YECK!!"
    
    -sjd
    

For a variety of books on Resumes, or cover letters use VTX DLNCATALOG.  This
will get you into the catalog of the Digital Library Network.  If you have
never used one of the libraries you can register right there.  You will then
be able to browse in the catalog under the subject "resumes" and order any
of the many books their are on that subject.  The books you order will be
sent to you by interoffice mail.  I don't think anything can be much easier
than that.

I remember a coworker showing me a resume that included a picture.
His comment was, "What's he trying to prove, that he's white?"

    The KISS rule applies in 99.999% of cases. The only exceptions I'm aware of
    are the entertainment biz and advertizing (but not at the entry level).
    
    Myself, I really like the Yana Parker "Damn Good Resume" series of
    books published by Ten Speed Press.

    
    A vote for the Word for Windows resume and cover letter wizard.  I
    am a very new WFW user and produced a first draft in about 10 minutes
    using one the wizard and one of their templates.  What I can't vouch
    for is the value of the templates themselves, but I'm going to be
    finding out.
    
    Steve
    

    re: .12
    
    How does one go about finding out the kind of information you suggest
    about departments and names and so forth?  Calling the company
    generally elicits the name of the personnel director and nothing else;
    the corporate structure is generally considered confidential
    information.  Or at least the people who answer the phone think so. Is
    there a reference source that covers this sort of information?  What
    about companies that are too small or too new to be included?
    
    --bonnie

    Bonnie, Bonnie, is that you?

    	There are several ways in which you can gather information about a
    company (both large and small)

    	1. Network - ask someone who works there or who knows something
    about the company. With the amount of people on the net these days,
    this is not hard to do.

    	2. If the company is public, find the year-end financial report
    (you may have to order it, or go to a library). At the very least with
    this, you will know what the structure of the company is like, the
    products it is hyping and the direction it seems to be taking.

    	3. Do some 'ol fashion footwork - go to the library and look in the
    microfiche files for press releases from that company (I used to write
    press releases for a tiny, tiny company, every company has them). While
    you're at the library ask the reference librarian for help, it will
    make her day and she (or he) probably has some great ideas of how to get
    more information. 

    	4. Call the company and ask to speak to someone who is responsible
    for the XXX department. Granted in large companies you might get
    stone-walled but in smaller companies, very often they will feel
    flattered. even in large companies like DEC, I often get phone calls
    from outside people looking for information. Some, I talk to and even
    send them on to other more appropriate people, some I don't have the
    time to talk to and I tell them, no hard feelings just bad timing.

    				Wendy

    In response to using the resume template in word, I was just in
    word and my macro template is blank,  I think it's something that
    needs to be loaded on, does anyone have any suggestions or a copy
    of the floppies?
    
    Regards,
    

    re: .19
    
    Hi Wendy, Yes, that's me.  I wasn't sure it was you.  
    
    Thanks for the pointers.  I'm on contract -- which means I have to do
    the legwork several times a year.  The companies I've been dealing with
    are for the most part definitely not public, and I hadn't been able to
    find most of them in the newspaper archives.  Are you saying the
    library should have copies of the actual press releases, not just the
    ones that were published in the local newspaper?
    
    Networking is still the best, I guess.  But it's slow.  I got this
    contract on a feeler I'd put out more than a year before.  At least it
    comes through eventually.  
    
    --bonnie

    
        .19

    hi \wendy,
    
    at the rate you are doing your cover letter it will take you like
    a week to research it and do one, and figuring that one sends on average 50
    ones to get one interview (national average), and for 10 interviews
    you get one offer, this means it will take \joe \doe about 50*10 =
    1000 weeks to find a job. that's about 10 YEARS !!! 

    it is nice to know the name of the person you are sending your cover
    letter to, but one hopes that the company is more interested in the
    skills and education of the appliances not if he spend a week in
    the library to find the name of the manager of the department.

    plus i seen in my days some stupid ads where they list the job and
    ask you to send your resume to the personal department at some 
    pobox, you see tens of these ads, if you are going to do all
    this work you said just to find a person name to mail the letter
    to, by the time you are done the manager you wrote the letter to
    might be TFSO'ed also and all research in the library will be wasted.

    \bye
    \nasser

    
    .22 (me)
    
    i checked my math with my calcualtor, it looks like i made a typo, it
    should be 10*50 =500 weeks not 1000 weeks, that is about 10 years still
    though. way too long a time.
           
    \bye
    \nasser
    

    	Sure you can send out 50 form letters with your resume (hoping that
    *one* might hit the mark) or you could send out 5 well thought out and
    researched letters that would all hit the mark (or certainly come a
    heck of a lot closer than your form letters).

    	It all depends on if you really want *a* job or *that* job.

    	Re: your calculation on sending out 50 resumes:

    	First of all, if you are sending out 50 resumes, you are not
    interested in getting the job that you want, you are interested in
    getting any job, if that is your goal then that is an appropriate way
    to approach it.

    	If you are interested in getting a specific kind of job (say one
    that will challenge you and in which you will be happy) I would hope
    that you would put more effort into it and that the total number would
    be far less.

    	Lastly, if there were really 50 jobs that I was interested in, (I
    can't even imagine that happening) to do the legwork and to write the
    letters (granted, I can pretty much write these in my sleep at this
    point), I estimate it would take me a solid two weeks (80 hours of time
    without the kids). I would say that your estimate of 10 years is a tad
    on the high side.

    	It all just really depends on what you want, just any old job or
    the job that interests you.

    				Wendy

    
    A quick recommendation is the information in "The Handbook
    of Technical Writing" By Brusaw, Alred and Oliu.  St Martins
    Press, NY. ISBN: 0-312-35808-3

    "Resumes for Jobs $75,000 and over", or something close to that
    is a title of a resume book that i thought was good.  the format
    is fairly simple but what i thought was different is the focus they
    put on you and your skills.  the philosophy it follows is that you are 
    presenting your skills and achievements and where you worked was 
    secondary.
    
    the book has a lot of good example cover letter and resume's and each
    tailored to some type of position i.e. an engineer's resume vs.
    a project leader's resume.  
    

        .24

    >First of all, if you are sending out 50 resumes, you are not
    >    interested in getting the job that you want, you are interested in
    >    getting any job, if that is your goal then that is an appropriate
    >way to approach it.

    gee whize, HOW do you know if it is the job you want or not 
    before you even interview to learn more about it and to see
    the people you will end up working with?? and to get an interview
    you need to send a resume.

    many ads list some skills they want, you have these skills 
    and it is something you like to do, so you send your resume.

    unless you are like a brain surgeon where you dont see many ads for that,
    many other jobs there are many ads for them, such as programming for
    example, it is very easy to see hundreds of ads for a programmer, many
    of them you can do, (C, C++ , unix blaa blaaa) , and if you are looking 
    for a job, you'll send your resumes to the ones you think you can do.

    plus, there is no such thing as THAT job any more. job hunting is
    sort of like a marriage search, if you stay home waiting for THAT prince 
    charm to arrive then you'll never get married, becuase there is no
    prince charm out there, but you have to compromise and
    stop dreaming, the world outside is rough and tough and things that
    work for a school project dont mean they will work in the real world.

    \bye
    \nasser

    
    This is what I did, as a defensive measure:
    
     1. Went to the college I graduated from, and pulled a
        comma delimited ascii file of 1500 high-tech companies
        in a 6-state region from their database. Includes contact
        names at the level of decision maker (aka, people with
        budgets).
    
     2. Paid a company $100.00 for a list of software companies
        with more than 25 employees in my area.  Also in comma
        delimited ascii format. Also with a list of people with
        budgets.
    
     3. Read both into a cheap-o database program and saved it
        in .dbf format.
    
     4. Wrote a cover letter and resume in Winword 6. Gave field
        names for <first_name> <last_name> <company_name>, etc on
        the letter.
    
     5. Let Word connect to the database via the odbc drivers
        (easy, automated).
    
     6. Pushed the mail merge button, told it to merge at the printer.
    
     The result is the ability to do a mass mailing quickly. This is
     just in case Digital makes a bad decision and rightsizes, downsizes
     TFSOs, outsources, or fires me.
    
    This, of course, is rather a "shotgun" approach, and I won't know
    if it works until I have to actually try it.
    
    Glenn  
             

    
    
    
    
	The following is in response to a mail message asking how to start
    a cover letter if you don't start it with "I".
    
    __________________________________________________________________
    
    
    
	I had one student who changed her cover letter from:


	I am writing to apply for a teaching position at ....

	to: (I'm paraphrasing, can't remember the actual text)
	
	
	The quality of instructors teaching in the Business Writing
Department at XXX is impressive. With my degrees in both Journalism and
Technical Writing, I believe that I can add to this reputation of
teaching excellence.

	Ok so it sounds a little hokey but the general idea is there.
Basically you want to acknowledge the company (reader), and then tell
them why they should be spending their time reading your letter
(benefits to *them*).

	This is really not new information, it follows good writing
standards in that one should write for the reader and not for yourself
(a pitfall that many people who write cover letters fall into, I have, I
would, I will, I, I, I, I).

	This is not to say that you should not use the word "I", by all
means there is a time and a place to use it. Positioning, it is all
dependent on how you position the information.

				Wendy
                                                                      

    
    .27
    
    	Sorry to burst your bubble but I did find Prince Charming and I'm
    still very happily married to him.
    
    		next argument of defense?
    
    				Wendy

        .30

    > Sorry to burst your bubble but I did find Prince Charming and I'm
                                     ^                              ^

    but you , yourself, just used "I" twice in like just ONE line !!


    this thing about the "I" just dont make sense, i mean you are the
    most important person in your life, why should i ignore myself
    just for the gratification of the one iam sending my resume for?

    if the manager wants to hire me because i made them look like king
    albert and made myself look like iam not no one by not even saying 
    the word "I", then i dont want to work for that manager.

    you should be proud of what you have done, and to say that
    i did that and i did this and i can do this, nothing wrong with this, 
    the manager should hire you for your skills sets and what you have 
    done, not because you used no "I"'s in your letter and you used more 
    "you"'s.

    if a manager wants to hire me and not hire me based on this, then this
    is a clown company just interested in make up and cosmetics and not
    interested in where is the real beef.

    \bye
    \nasser

                    <<< Note 3079.29 by SUPER::WTHOMAS >>>
    
>	This is not to say that you should not use the word "I", by all
> means there is a time and a place to use it. Positioning, it is all
> dependent on how you position the information.
    
    Nasser:
    
    Pay attention.
    
    					andrew

    And I found Snow White, but she's a blond.
    
    chg 

    Re .31
    
    Nasser,
    
         Try looking at this another way.  When you go shopping for
    something, are you more interested in the company that makes the
    product, or what the product can do for you?  Granted, some companies
    are better than others.  But, for example, let's look at a simple product
    like spaghetti.  I can't think of any pasta company who doesn't
    know how to make spaghetti noodles.  So my primary consideration for
    buying one brand over another is how accomodating the price is to my
    budget.
    
         I don't care if the manufacturer of brand x has been in business
    for a 100 years.  I don't care if another manufacturer has 19 different
    types of pasta on the market.  And I really don't care if a manufacturer 
    won some kind of award for having the best pasta manufacturing technique. 
    All I care about is satisfying my own needs.
    
         So whether you're shopping for food or shopping for new employees,
    you're primary concern is you (and your business).  In this scenario,
    Nasser, you are the manufacturer, and your product is your skill at
    doing whatever.  Frankly, I'd much rather hire someone who has enough
    interest in my company to find out about our needs, instead of having 
    to sift through a pile of resumes and cover letters that say nothing 
    more than "pick me!"
    
        True, as a prospective new employee, you have a right to satisfy
    your own needs.  But how many interviews do you want to walk away from
    saying "What a waste of time that was!"?
    
        My recommendation is that you take Wendy's advice (and perhaps sign
    up for her technical writing course), or figure out how to stay with
    Digital until you retire.
    
    
    Regards,
    
    David
    

re .33:

Which dwarf are you?

    .-1
    
    no, its WAS english !!
    
    \bye
    \nasser
    ps. can you imagin a guy this twit that he can't see english when he
    sees one? no wonder DEC is in such a big trouble !
    

re .33

> ..but she's a blond.

Snow White is a man??

    
    Gentlemen, please.  It is English not english.
    
    Steve
    

RE:                 <<< Note 3079.39 by NASZKO::MACDONALD >>>

   >> Gentlemen, please.  It is English not english.
    
     It was neither.  It was \nasserish.

                                        Greg