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Welcome to "Great Tips for Jobseekers!" Issue Five
We hope you're enjoying the
summer and are as busy and fulfilled as we are!
This newsletter is for people who wish to increase their ability
to "get that job"! If you know someone who might find it
interesting please send it on to them so they can subscribe also!
In this issue
* Identify your strengths
* A cover letter that gets you noticed
* Choosing between job offers
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Identify your strengths
You'll need to be familiar with your strengths for your CV and at
interviews so get thinking! Your strengths are how you make a
difference for your employer. What you do best; what you do better
than most others; how you succeed.
So how do you identify your strengths? It's all down to your
achievements. Your achievements are things you did to make a
positive impact for your employer: saving money; making money;
completing a project quickly or efficiently. It needn't be
accurately measurable but you should be able to describe the benefit
to the organisation. Everyone is employed to make a difference
otherwise there would be no need to employ them. If you make a
difference then you have achievements. So what are yours? There are
two components to every achievement: an action and a result.
When you've identified around 6 achievements (at least half of which
are work related, but they don't all need to be), then think about
which particular capabilities you used to succeed in each particular
task. You should be able to generate a good list for each
achievement. Now compare these lists. There should be some skills
that repeat themselves. Your core strengths are the 4 – 6
capabilities that appear most frequently.
A cover letter that gets you noticed
To stand out from the crowd and get that interview, a good cover
letter may well make all the difference. Keep it to one side of
paper and get to the point quickly. A good cover letter has 4
paragraphs:
1 Introduction and reference the post you are applying for
2 Note the key stated requirements of the role and how you have
the required experience or capabilities
3 Again, using the information from the advertisement or job
description, state why you think the job is what you are looking for
4 Sign off, with a note that you will follow up with a phone
call in the next few days
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Workjoy provides career advice and coaching in face to face or by telephone. Contact me, Nick Gendler by emailing
nick@workjoy.co.uk to arrange a free initial consultation
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Choosing between job offers
You know the story. Weeks and weeks of job hunting with nothing
happening, then all of a sudden three offers at once! It's not
unusual, all your hard work takes time to pay off.
So how to handle it. You need to do some quick evaluations. Use a
piece of paper and consider the various aspects of the role.
First off all, the offer itself. Do all offers meet your minimum
requirements in terms of salary and the rest of the package, as well
as the other needs such as training provision, location. Think about
all the things that are important to you.
Next, the environment. Did you like the feel of the place and the
people. Ask yourself honestly.
What about the job? Does it offer you good career development
options? What about challenge? Think about all the things that
might be important to you in terms of your needs from the role itself.
Your list of criteria can be as long as you like. Ask some friends
to brainstorm this list with you.
When your list is complete, weight each item in terms of importance
by giving it a multiplier of 1 for required, 2 for important or 3 for
very important. Next, score each offer out of 5 according to how
well it meets your requirement. So, if getting trained is very
important (3) and the employer only offers you a little bit of in-
house training you may choose to give it a score of 2. The weighted
score will be 6 for training, whereas you may get a much higher score
for another employer that offers you a generous training budget.
At the end of the scoring process, count the marks for each role.
Does this help you make your decision? The most important step is
then to ask yourself if the winning job is the one you really want.
Don't ignore your instincts!
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Thank you for reading "Great Tips for Jobseekers!" Please send us
your comments and questions. We're particularly interested in any
areas of job search that you're keen to know something about and if
it's likely to be of general interest we'll write a piece for the
newsletter.
Please send comments to info@workjoy.co.uk
If you are not a subscriber of "Great Tips for Jobseekers!" and wish
to receive it in future please follow this link:
www.workjoy.co.uk/10.0.html
©Nick Gendler, Workjoy Ltd, 2004
Feel free to use this material and pass it on to others as long as
you acknowledge the source. Failure to do so will constitute a
breach of copyright.
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