Your edge, then, comes in "how well you can communicate" your job credentials. When you are ready to apply for jobs, your ability to persuade prospective employers through effective written and oral communications becomes the means for selling yourself successfully.
Job-Screening Procedures
In many cases, your first contact with a firm will be in writing. For example, to follow up on an advertised job announcement, you must first send the firm a copy of your job resume and a letter of introduction, called the application letter. The ultimate or long-range goal of this written packet is, obviously, to land the job. However, the immediate or short-range goal is to win a live face-to-face interview with a company representative.
Generally speaking, most applicants for announced positions are screened out by companies on the sole basis of evaluation of resumes and letters. These people, unfortunately, never get the opportunity to sell themselves in person during interviews. This may seem somewhat unfair, especially to those who make a favorable personal impression and speak well but write rather poorly. Yet, from the company's point of view, the job of screening and selecting personnel is a matter that must be dealt with in highly practical terms.
In the current job market, very few jobs are available for many highly qualified job seekers, and the hundreds of applicants who apply in response to an advertised job opening must be evaluated by limited screening resources of personnel and time. The majority of job applicants interested in an advertised position are being screened out on the basis of written communications alone. A relatively small number of applicants are called in for initial interviews. Those who do take initial interviews and impress company representatives are often called for second screening interviews, and less often for third.
According to the diagram, written job communications are critical for getting you placed in the running. Once you have qualified for an interview, your skills of oral communications and interview-taking play a key role in helping you get the job. But even then, writing skills continue to play an important role in helping you move forward to the job you desire.
Job-Getting Campaign
Job-getting requires active and organized selling. A job-getting campaign is a preplanned procedure of written and oral communications for selling yourself effectively to company representatives. The goal of the campaign is, of course, to land a job, with each step bringing you closer to your goal.
Strange as it may seem, few people, including professional sales people, can independently launch a successful job-getting campaign without some training or preparation. The advice given in this article will certainly take you a long way in helping you design and conduct your own successful job campaigns.
Job-Search Master Plan
Before beginning your active job search, you should have the ability to design a master plan for the intelligent selection, design, and coordination of various job-getting campaigns. With a master plan you can monitor your efforts, beef up high payoff campaigns, curtail or terminate low payoff campaigns, and even add new campaigns as needed. The point here is that to maximize the effectiveness of your job search, you must be an effective manager; and effective management requires an appropriate master plan.
Below given are eleven job-getting campaigns that could be used in constructing your master plan:
- Company-Announced Job Campaign
- Walk-in Sales Campaign
- Walk-in Exploratory Campaign
- Call-in Sales Campaign
- Prospecting Campaign
- Unsolicited Sales Campaign
- Direct-Mail Job Campaign
- Advertising Campaign
- Third-Party Campaign
- Conference and Convention Campaign
- Word-of-Mouth Campaign
By personally planning and conducting a successful job search, the fruits of your labor are much more tasteful. Furthermore, the experiences gained from this important effort provide a valuable education that stays with you and aids you throughout your working career. The job-getting skills acquired can help you to successfully navigate carefully charted waters that unskilled job seekers could never hope to sail alone.
The practical job-search master plan can be constructed by careful selection of a number of different job-getting campaigns. Eleven such campaigns are presented to provide you with the knowledge for developing a master plan, extending from a single campaign conducted on a small scale to multiple campaigns conducted on a grand scale. The extensiveness of your job search depends upon your knowledge of these materials, the time you can spend, and the enthusiasm you can muster.
Before you begin launching your campaigns, however, you must first do some basic job research and learn how to prepare certain vital job communications, including the job resume, application letters, and follow-up letters. In addition, you must learn the important strategies and techniques for taking effective job interviews. If a career change is being considered, you must learn how to successfully shift your occupational direction. This article is devoted to helping you develop these critical job-getting skills.
