| 6 steps for landing your dream job |
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Serious job candidates should work
proficiently with Microsoft Office products, PowerPoint and e-mail,
says Amy Baker, a former Dell human resources executive, and author
of "Succeed at Work Without Sidetracking Your Faith: 7 Lessons
of Career Excellence for Women."
"Be able to e-mail effectively
-- get to the point, businesses don't want fluff or typos,"
she says.
Also tweak your resume and cover
letter to incorporate buzz phrases used by the company in its press
releases, Baker says. If the company strives to increase sales in
the next quarter and you're applying for a sales position, discuss
how you will increase sales or how you boosted sales for a former
employer. Not only does it help you understand what they're looking
for in an employee, but also it shows them you have business savvy
and the ability to speak the language of the industry.
Before you save and print your
resume and cover letter, check your documents' structure for impact
-- what do you lead with? If you have an advanced degree, put it
up front in your resume, says career and life transitions coach
Marcia Merrill.
If you don't, put your experiences first and your education last.
"Lead with your accomplishments,"
she says -- even if that means having a separate accomplishments
section. Whenever possible, quantify your successes, such as how
much money or time you saved the company for a particular project,
and put them into bullets for easy reading. Nixing those long paragraphs
in your cover letter and resumes and chunking the information into
bullets makes an employer more likely to read them. "You don't
want a novel," she says.
5. Not a local?
Act like one.
After all that effort, your career-making resume might find its
way to your employer's wastebasket if you neglect one minor detail:
your address.
That's right.
Employers have an overwhelming
desire to hire local candidates, says Rothberg. They don't want
to pay for relocation if they can hire someone locally. So if you
don't live in San Francisco and your dream job resides there, don't
send an online resume and hope for the best: "Get thee to San
Francisco," he says.
For your resume's sake, get a local
address -- from a friend you're staying with or by renting a post
office box, if you can't afford to move before you have a job. That
can be your mailing address. If an employer asks, say you're in
the process of moving -- if that's the case, of course.
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