Evenings are the perfect time to do your research. Spend an hour or so every evening reading and researching your field. The sooner you get into the habit of digesting all the news in your industry on a regular basis, the sooner you'll be able to make important insights into how that industry works. That, of course, is very impressive to contacts.
So be creative and realistic in your time management. You'll probably find that you have much more time to pursue your job search than you imagined. And because you'll be presenting yourself as a productive, happily employed candidate, you will actually get further than you will if you quit your current job to facilitate contacting people during the day. It bears repeating: do not quit your job unless it is absolutely necessary.
Letter Writing
A well written cover letter (usually included with a resume) can make a significant difference in your success in arranging meetings with potential employers. Fortunately, most job hunters spend little time on their letters; your presentation, therefore, will stand out, because it will look much better!
There is a certain knack to writing a good cover letter. You can develop that knack with a little practice. The key here is to approach the letter as though you were reading it as an employer.
You may ask at this point, "What about the resume?!Shouldn't we be talking about that first?" In one word, no.
Most people consider the resume the most important written element of their job search. They're wrong. Most employers read resumes to screen out prospective candidates. In other words, they try to find things they don't like about your background so they can put your application in the "circular file" and reduce the huge pile of job inquiries on their desks. With a cover letter, on the other hand, an employer is usually trying to answer a couple of questions quickly. Who is this person? What can they offer me?" at do they want?
That's the mindset you'd like to encourage. Not the one that wants to shrink a big stack of unwanted paperwork. The resume is very important: but the reason it's important is that it's a formal documentation of experiences that supports what you've written in your letter. So we're going to deal with the cover letter first.
Most job hunters write cover letters that are concerned with what they want. They ramble on and on about how qualified they are, what kind of position they feel they deserve, and how wonderful their recommendations from their teachers are. Leaving aside for the moment the huge difficulty that all such letters tend to sound the same, ask yourself Why does the employer care? What problem of the employer's does such a letter solve? How is he or she going to be convinced that the five minutes it takes to read the letter will be time well spent?
The trick to writing a successful cover letter is to say something that the prospective employer wants to hear, with a direct application to his or her department or the company itself. And you must come straight to the point in doing so. Keep in mind that even if an employer is looking for someone to hire, time is a very valuable commodity. You can't make someone wade through a sheaf of supporting documents, trying to determine which detail is the most important one. You have to make a strong point quickly and (ready for the shocker?) that point does not have to be "I want a job!"
If you can entertain or impress the person reading your letter, you will be surprised at how well you will be received when you follow the letter with a phone call. If you bore the reader, or convince him or her that you've frittered away time they could have spent solving pressing problems, you'll get the cold shoulder.
As a general rule, you might try to begin your letter with a reference to an interesting business related tidbit that pertains to something your reader will recognize immediately as important. If you are faithful about following the relevant trade magazines (or, at the very least, The Wall) you should have access to some piece of industry news that will stand out. (Even though your future employer is "in the business," he or she may not always have time to keep up with the industry as a whole.) Make a solid impression!
There are several specific formats you can use to write a good letter to a prospective employer. The one you choose will depend upon what the situation is at the time of your contact. Are you just beginning your search and primarily seeking advice? Are you well on your way and looking for more than just a handshake and good wishes? Is there an actual job opening you've found and wish to pursue? Or are you trying to make points with someone you've already spoken with by way of a memorable "thank you" note?
Therefore, you must grab the reader's attention from the very first sentence you write. You must make yourself sound like a person worth meeting. You want your reader to stop what he or she is doing and think, "Gee here's someone who's a notch or two above the rest. Might make sense to get together with them."
Begin with an unusual first paragraph. And by unusual, I mean unusual. Do not begin with the words "I am a..." under any circumstances. No matter what you follow these or similar words with ("senior graduating from Northern South Shore College"; "promising undiscovered novelist"; "former junior vice president of Megacorp International") you'll be talking about your perspective and your needs instead of the employer's. Don't let that happen.
