You should know one additional point of importance in answering ads. There is an established response pattern that seems to hold regardless of time of year, geographical location, type of job, or any other factor. Many executive job hunters rush to respond to an ad within a few days after it appears, thinking that it will put them ahead of their competitors. This is a mistake. When a PE has many responses to read, he may not read them carefully. Even a good response can get lost in the shuffle. Also, the hiring executive tends to cut large numbers of resumes or responses rather severely, reducing, say 200 responses to only 5 for final consideration. A response arriving later will compete only with other later responses and the few "winners" from the huge early response, not the entire 200.
To minimize the chance of your response being overlooked and to take advantage of the reduced competition, do not respond until one week after the ad appears. Don't be afraid to wait. The chances are very slim that you will miss out within two weeks after the ad appears. Most good positions are not filled immediately. Would you want to hire someone for an important job without seeing all the top people available? If you respond too early, you are more likely to lose out than to get an immediate interview and quick hire. Recall that Bob F.'s interview getting response didn't arrive until almost three weeks after the ad appeared.
How to Draft a Superior Response to Any Advertisement
When you respond to an advertisement, you must aim at a very small target with a rifle, and not with a shotgun. Take the advertisement apart line by line and list every requirement you find. Add to this list the requirements you discover in talking with the personnel manager and the hiring executive. For every requirement, list three to five accomplishments from your resume that support your qualifications.
Omit a requirement only if you do not meet it.
In your response, list the requirements in the same order given in the ad, followed by the requirements you have uncovered on your own. If degree requirements are stated in the ad, give your educational accomplishments immediately after that requirement. If degree requirements are not stated, conclude with this information as you did in your sales letter. Stick to the order in which the requirements are stated in the ad, and follow with the requirements you have ferreted out on your own.
Use and organize the information in your response just as you have done for your sales letter. As with the sales letter, the information comes from the same source: your detailed resume.
Always restate each requirement listed in the advertisement as well as the additional requirements you have identified through other sources. Do this because:
- Frequently when large numbers of resumes are received for one position, a screener looks through them to assure that the basic requirements are met. Restating these requirements clearly makes it easier for the screener, who may know nothing about the job at all, to spot and check off your ability to meet each job requirement.
- Restating each requirement shows that you understand the problem.
- Restating acts as a checklist for you so that you will not inadvertently omit a requirement.
Why You Shouldn't Respond to a Request for Salary Information
An advertisement may ask you to indicate your salary history and/or desired compensation. It is generally to your advantage not to give out such information until you get to negotiations. At that time you can use it as the situation dictates to negotiate the highest salary possible.
Unfortunately, if you fail to give salary information in your response when they ask for it in the ad, you may be eliminated from the competition for an interview. If you do list this information, you could be eliminated for being outside the range that the PE is willing to pay. You will also compromise your ability to negotiate for the highest salary possible.
What do you do? You must base your decision on the particular job, your situation, and how strongly the requirement for salary information is stated in the ad. In general, I recommend not giving out salary information, even if requested, until the final stage of your hunt, when you get into negotiations. Also, as I will explain later in this chapter, if your initial response fails to result in an interview, you will write a follow up letter. If salary information is requested in the ad, you can include it in the follow up letter. Do not release it otherwise.
If you have a choice between supplying salary history or desired compensation, it is usually better to give desired compensation, unless your salary history is a strong indication of your outstanding track record. However, if you hope for a sizable increase, it is usually better to hold back. Many industries are reluctant to offer large increases, even if it is to their advantage and you are underpaid.
Why Sales Letters Are Still the Best Way of Getting Interviews
If you have read this chapter carefully and worked the exercise successfully, you have become something of an expert in responding to advertisements. But keep in mind that this technique is limited. Sales letters are still your primary means of getting interviews. You should not answer advertisements and forgo sales letters.
Once your sales letter is written and printed, you can probably send out 300 per day. A 3 percent response not an unusually high rate will net you nine interviews per day. Of course, you will be limited by the number of PEs who satisfy your job requirements. But 1,000 sales letters should result in at least 30 interviews if you've written your letter properly and followed my other instructions.
In contrast, if you spend all your time answering ads, at most you can respond to ten per day; your average will be much lower. To be "on target" with your response, you must spend some time gathering additional intelligence and answering each ad individually. If you generate one interview for every ten of your responses, you will be doing extremely well. Remember, your competitors for each ad can number in the hundreds. And even if you could answer ten ads per day, every day, you would be limited by the number of ads for the kind of job you are seeking. As a result, you may average answering only one ad per day or less. So even though the response to interview ratio is much higher for advertisements than for sales letters, you are far better off concentrating on sales letters. Get them in the mail, and then you can start answering ads.
With sales letters, you will generate 30 interviews after about two weeks of work. It will take you a full month to get as many interviews by answering advertisements, even assuming you can respond to ten ads per day, every day, and have a 10 percent success rate in getting invited in for interviews. These assumptions are highly unlikely.
To get thirty interviews by answering ads will probably take you a good deal longer.
It is a fact that only 10 to 15 percent of job openings are advertised. This is one reason why advertised positions are so competitive. They are the most visible and are therefore sought after by the majority of job hunters. The remaining 85 to 90 percent of the openings must be reached by some other means, and your main tool is the personal sales letter.
This does not mean you should not answer advertisements. Ads are an important means of generating interviews, and if you use the techniques outlined in this chapter you can achieve a very respectable success rate. But do not become so enamored of this method that you forget that sales letters are the mainstay of your campaign. Sales letters and other means must be used to reach the unadvertised 85 to 90 percent of job openings.
How Bob F. Won Out Over 300 Competitors for a Job Described in an Ad
Bob F. responded to an ad for an engineer for the Internal Revenue Service. Two weeks later he called to find out what happened.
By the sheerest of accidents he spoke with a personnel manager who knew all about the job. Because Bob was courteous and tactful, the manager was willing to spend some time talking with him. He told Bob that the IRS had received more than 300 responses to the advertisement and that none of the respondents appeared to be fully qualified. As a result, no decision had been made on interviews.
Bob asked the right questions and discovered exactly what the IRS was seeking. He found out a lot of information that was not in the advertisement. Armed with this knowledge. Bob rewrote his qualifications and accomplishments, tailoring them specifically to the IRS requirements. Within a week after sending out this information, Bob was invited in for an interview and was ultimately hired. Of the 300 respondents, he was the only engineer that interviewed. He learned later that his first, "I can do everything" resume hadn't even made the semifinals and had been relegated to the "circular file." For Bob, learning everything he could about the job before responding (the second time) made the difference between being offered a superior job and preparing material for the wastepaper basket.
