Job Hunt Tips 3: The First 2.5 hours and $27
My brother is wondering whether he’ll have to launch a job search after 20 years with his employer. Then yesterday, I met another fellow looking for work who is looking for tips.
As a consultant, I look for work constantly. Here’s my advice for the first few hours after you realize you might leave your current employment.
RESUME MASTER FILE - 2 hours plus many hours over time
Here are several of my own resumes, using a template I especially like as a hiring manager, and my own master resume. Download these files and look at the differences:
You’ll see there are differences in each resume, tailored for the specific opportunity for which I was proposing. I would recommend that you begin by creating a “master resume” from which you can pull paragraphs for each job you seek. This way, you have one place where you put all the things you remember along the way, so they are available the next time you write a resume.
I’m a consultant, so I have to send a new resume with each new proposal for work. If you find work quickly, your master resume will be tucked away and waiting for your next job search. If this job search takes longer than you would like, having a master resume file will save you lots of time as you respond to opportunities.
As you go along, you’ll remember tidbits that help qualify you for a specific opportunity and which should be added FIRST to your master resume, and second to the resume which triggered the memory. Your master resume grows over time. The guideline I use is that you should have almost one page for every year of your career in your master resume.
A few months ago, I lost an opportunity because I was on deadline for a client and couldn’t respond with a proposal within 24 hours. Another person answered with a full proposal and got the contract. If I’d been more hungry, I could have sent a resume right away, with the promise of sending a proposal the following week. The market is swift, and you need to make preparations that allow you to send a tailored resume out within a very short period of time.
No one prints a stack of resumes anymore.
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