November 2005 ISSUE
That’s the Job for Me – Now What?
Editor’s Note: The following article is tailored from notes from Ginny Nicholson, CMA, APEGGA’s former Manager of Administration & Human Resources. Although Ginny has moved on to another position, we’ll continue offering her insight on job hunting as space in our Careers section permits.
You’ve read the ad and you like the position. You also think the job is particularly suited to your education and experience.
Now what?
The obvious answer is respond to the ad. And to do that, to go along with your resumé you’ll need a great cover letter.
Your letter needs to be short, snappy and to the point. Cut unnecessary words and information. It should be about three paragraphs long and fit on a single page.
If you can respond by e-mail and are asked for an e-mail version of your resumé, that’s the appropriate way to go about it. However, some potential employers may want you to entrust your resumé with Canada Post — in those cases, make sure you include a formal, hard-copy version of your covering letter.
In the covering letter, tell your potential employer
-
why you’re interested in the job, the company and the industry
-
why and how you match the job and its skill and experience requirements
-
when you’re available and what results you’ve demonstrated that apply to the position.
Do not
-
tell your potential employer that you’re a cat person and a great hang-glider or provide other irrelevant details
-
tailor your letter to suit your idea of what the job is or should be
-
tailor your letter to suit the skills you have, even though they don’t match the job.
In your resumé, your potential employer will be looking for certain information and indications.
-
An overall fit for the job and a track record of success. Specific job skills and job experience that fit the job requirements should be emphasized.
-
Concrete accomplishments and achievements.
-
A career that is stable and moving forward.
-
Information that shows you are practical. Mention your profit, cost and safety consciousness, for example, and detail the results.
-
Willingness to work hard.
-
Other signs of important soft skills, such as team playing, communicating clearly and negotiation.
Finding most of these items in a resumé tells the interviewer that you may have the behavioural and performance skills to successfully apply your technical knowledge and skills. The interview, then, should further confirm that assessment.
What resumé contents make an interviewer wary?
-
A good education is important, but stay away from lengthy descriptions of every course you ever took. These can suggest to the interviewer that you never completed anything or followed it through.
-
Avoid highlighting obvious gaps in your background.
-
Don’t litter your resumé with qualifers. Always tell the truth, but make sure you take credit for your own accomplishments. Watch out for “knowledge of,” “had exposure to,” “assisted with” and the like.
-
Keep your sour grapes to yourself. Ditch the self-righteous tone. Don’t come across as hard done by.
-
Irrelevant trivia — whether personal or job-related — is unprofessional.
-
Don’t be gimmicky. You’re not being hired for your crazy fonts or your ability to come up with kooky new words.
So, you did everything right. And sure enough, the call came. You’ve made the list of candidates proceeding to the interview stage.
Now is the time to prepare. The first step is research.
Many of you spend hours researching a car purchase. Use the same kind of due diligence — times 10 — for your potential new job. Afterall, if you accept the job, you’ll be spending eight to 10 hours of every weekday with this outfit — much longer than you spend with your Volvo.
Following are some common ways to find out more about the job and the company.
Read the job description and requirements until you know them intimately.
-
Learn about the company and possibly the job from the company website.
-
Phone the company or recruiting agency and ask for a copy of the company annual report, if there is one, and a copy of the detailed job description, if there is one.
-
Call the Better Business Bureau. It will provide standard information to the public.
-
If the company is in the engineeing, geology or geophysics business, inquire if it has an APEGGA permit to practice. If the company doesn’t have one, it is violating the right to practice provisions of the EGGP Act, and as a professional or M.I.T., you should not be party to this illegal activity.
-
Check the contacts section available on most websites, and make a call or two to see if employees will tell you what it’s like to work there. Proceed with caution here. Make sure you identify yourself, first and last name, to show you have nothing to hide. Then let the person know that you are applying for a specific job, that you got his or her name from the website, and that you were hoping he or she could tell you what the company is like to work for.
Do not push too hard if the person is reluctant, and try another one to see if there’s a pattern of reluctance. Ask one or two questions at most, but you may get someone quite happy to talk, so be prepared. Cross check an extreme answer by trying one or two more employees on list.
-
Figure out what companies are competitors and learn what you can about them too. This allows you to check how active the market is and whether the industry is robust.
-
Learn about the industry. Try the Statscan website – it keeps a huge amount of information on all sorts of happenings in Canada.