How to Answer the Answering Ads

If you were to gather a group of friends who had completed job searches and ask them where they felt their campaigns were weakest, chances are most would tell you it was in answering ads. Over the years job-seeker after job-seeker has told me just that. Answering ads- particularly blind ones that must be answered via a box number-is for many job-seekers a wasted effort. Many have reported they secured only one interview out of forty or fifty ads they responded to. Some job-seekers have actually received not a single reply to their answers to ads during the course of their job-search campaigns! Yet in recent years I have worked with other job-seekers who have secured one interview for every two responses they sent out. For this latter group, responding to ads is obviously not a wasted effort. The key question to ask yourself, then, before you start answering ads, is why so many job-seekers have such little luck in their attempts to secure interviews through ads. Here are four good reasons:

• A great many job-seekers answer ads for which they are not at all qualified because they respond only to the job title shown at the top of the ad and not to the content of the ad itself
  

If these persons had carefully analyzed the specific qualifications stated in the ad, they would surely have realized they had no business responding in the first place. Just because you have been an "Operations Manager," for example, does not mean you are a legitimate candidate for every operations manager job you see advertised. If the small print in the ad states you must have ten years of data processing experience and you've had twenty years of cosmetics manufacturing experience, you really can't hope to succeed, even though, on the basis of job title, you'd expect to be in the ball game. This is not to say it's a mistake to respond to any ad when you're not fully qualified. But certainly you can't hold high expectations when you lack the critical experience sought by an employer. Likewise, if a company spells out a dozen requirements in its ad, and you meet only two of them, you really can't expect a reply. Other candidates are bound to come closer. Yet, a great many job-seekers respond to ads without reading them thoroughly, and are then terribly frustrated when they're not invited in for an interview! In short, don't bother to respond when you are not a legitimate candidate.

• Many job-seekers create a poor impression of themselves with the documents they submit in response to the advertiser's request
  
  
  

My files contain "cover letters" scribbled in an almost illegible script. What legitimate business person would present himself in this amateurish fashion? These same files contain letters with misspellings-including the name of the person the ad requested the job-seeker write to; poor grammar; sloppy typing; even notes on yellow-ruled paper. Sadder still are the well-typed letters in my file which say nothing more in three or four paragraphs than "Here is my resume." Stilted phrases like "attached for your consideration" and buzzwords like "in-depth experience" abound in such letters but there's no meat to them. The advertiser receiving such letters has to conclude that the applicant has no idea of how to go about writing a cogent, forceful, direct document in support of his cause. Check the letters you send out. Ask yourself only one question: If you received your own letter, would you say it came from a professional or an amateur? Keep in mind that in those cases where resumes have provided proof that the candidate is "adequate" for the advertised position, many a cover letter has downgraded the advertiser's opinion of him. First impressions are that important. A well-thought-out cover letter, professionally typed, enhances your prospective employer's opinion of you regardless of whether your background is or is not the most suitable of those responding to the ad.

• Many job-seekers rely on their resumes to sell them although this document can hurt their chances of securing an interview
  

How so? Well, for one thing, chances are your resume describes your career chronologically, with what you do at present right up front. But the advertiser might not be at all interested in the things you now do. If what you did five years ago, however, is relevant to the advertiser's needs, you might well be qualified for the position. But in sending your resume, you are asking your reader to unearth for himself that part of your experience he is seeking. He may just not have the time or inclination to sift through your resume to uncover what he is looking for! If another candidate applying for the same job has recent experience sought by the advertiser and it's up front in his resume, naturally he'll have the advantage.

Your resume can hurt you in another way, too, by needlessly revealing negative aspects of your career that would be better discussed in person once you met with the advertiser. Let's say you are interested in a position that calls for someone with eight to ten years of line manufacturing experience, and you've had fifteen. Your resume in response to such an advertisement says immediately that you are overqualified. If many other candidates have had precisely eight to ten years of experience, you may never be invited in for an interview. This is unfair to you, of course. You have the required experience. In fact you have had more than what is called for! But the fault is yours nonetheless for sending a resume in this instance. Had you written to the advertiser about your last ten years of manufacturing experience and saved the other five for an interview, you might have made it in the door. Only if your resume supports you as the ideal candidate-one with almost all requirements sought by the company placing the ad-does it serve you in good stead. Otherwise, you might be better off not sending your resume at all!

• The great majority of job-seekers fail to respond to advertisers' clearly identified needs
  

Most help-wanted display ads have a wealth of information in them. Often these ads are two and three columns wide; two to five inches deep. Advertisers spend a lot of money for this space in order to define as precisely as possible what they seek in the "ideal" candidate. Often ads like these-which you see regularly in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, for example-list ten or twelve specific requirements that are presumably the basis of the advertiser's selection process. Unfortunately, almost no job-seekers bother to write covering letters explaining how they can specifically fill these needs. But suppose for a moment that the advertiser doesn't see the key words he's hoping to find in your resume because you use different phrases to describe the same experience? Or suppose that you fail, for some reason or other, to specifically mention in your resume a qualification you have that the advertiser insists on? In circumstances like these, the advertiser would never realize that you were the best person for the job. And it's undoubtedly one reason why you could fail to obtain interviews when you sincerely believe you are the "perfect candidate" the advertiser is searching for.