A cover letter is a powerful tool – meaning this is your chance to show that you genuinely want the job, to demonstrate that you’ve done the research on the company, and that you’ve taken the time to read the advertisement and understand what they are looking for.

Clients often ask me for a generic cover letter. My response is always – I have a template that can guide you on how to complete your cover letter, but come back to me when you find a job you really want and I will write a cover letter to target the advertisement.

This week a client did exactly that and requested me to write a cover letter to target a job. Well done to them in following my advice! I spent a lot of time carefully reading through the advertisement and their website with their mission and values, and their resume to align all three. If you take this time you can get a real sense for what the company needs beyond the detail and words, almost like reading between the lines.

My client submitted her cover letter and resume and received a phone call within 30 minutes. The employer told my client they were just about to make a decision on a candidate and she asked the Director to hold off until he saw my client on Monday. My cover letters are simple and to the point. The cover letter needs to be a teaser, hitting all the key words and directly relevant experience, to entice the employer to read on to the resume. If the cover letter has given them a good feeling, when they read on to the resume, they are already positive with what content they are about to read. Avoid story telling and getting into too much detail, mention three or four key relevant skills, experience and qualifications, and then bullet point the strengths. Bullet points are easy to scan through, usually with the first four or five words telling what is about to follow so the reader can choose to skip over the detail. After all, why read a lengthy detailed cover letter when you can go directly to the resume with all that detail! And don’t forget, employers could be reviewing potential candidates’ resumes in the hundreds, so it is important to keep it short and concise so you hit the short list pile for first review! Good luck!

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But how do you raise your profile and grab the attention of recruiters? First let us look at the facts and statistics:

• Australia has around 9 million registered LinkedIn members. 2 people join LinkedIn every second
• Peak hours – The peak hours for LinkedIn are between Monday and Thursday, with the best times for posting between 7-8am, and 5-6pm.
• A study found that 122 million people received an interview through LinkedIn, with 35.5 million having been hired by a person they connected with on the site. One good LinkedIn stat for recruiters is that employees sourced through the site are 40% less likely to leave the company within the first 6 months.
• 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates
• 40% of monthly active users use LinkedIn daily. However, LinkedIn is used sparingly, so you only have a few minutes to make an impact. Users only spend about 17 minutes on LinkedIn per month.

Now that you have the facts and know where you want to be to manage your professional reputation, here are some tips to increase your visibility online and showcase your background to prospective employers and stand out from the crowd:

1. Write an Engaging Profile Introduction
   The golden rule is to be authentic. Use this section to succinctly showcase your key skills in relation to your passions and career goals. The more you can set yourself apart from competitors through your exceptionality, the better.
2. Choose a Great Photo
   Add a professional photo (a headshot). If you have a decent camera then google some other professional profile photos or check out others on LinkedIn, and select a style that suits your professional personality. You can also consider engaging a professional.
3. Customize Your URL
   Customizing your URL will make it much easier to publicize your profile, and you can add the link on your resume and with employer and connections. If your name is available, use it. 
4. Use Your Resume to Write the Experience section
   Basically your experience section of your LinkedIn profile is your online resume. That’s exactly what section recruiters are looking for when they’re searching LinkedIn for potential candidates. It’s essential that your resume matches your profile because prospective employers will check.
5. Use Target Job Descriptions to Your Advantage
   Check out what jobs are being advertised on LinkedIn that interest you and make sure the key words and phrases are scattered throughout your summary and experience.
6. Show your Achievements
   Numbers go a long way to impress a reader – highlight projects you’ve worked on and provide the stats to show the results. “Project completed 5% under the original budget” or “Negotiated 5% savings on 50 million contract etc.”
7. Promote Yourself
   If you really want to establish yourself as a SME within your industry and field and raise your profile on LinkedIn, but don’t want to come across as big noting yourself, consider these: Share posts from the company you work for and why you’re proud to work for them, “Proud to work for an organisation that….” and look to tag your company in the post. Look for other SME’s, and follow and comment on their posts. Follow individuals, companies and organisations that have large followings and share with your own comments and thoughts on the subject. Become an Author, or add your own blog. Use existing hashtags.
8. Ask Your Connections to Recommend You
   Spend some thought on who in your network has expressed positive feedback on working with you, and reach out to ask them for a written LinkedIn recommendation. Don’t be afraid to guide them with what you’d like them to focus on, based on what strengths you want to particularly promote or a job you want to target. To a potential employer, recommendations from people you have worked with carry a lot of weight and is like a reference in advance. Offering to reciprocate will ensure your connection will be happy to oblige. Similarly, update your skills by modelling others in your field and target job descriptions, and reach out to your connections to endorse you.

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For me, the journey started with working in the recruitment industry. I landed a job with an engineering recruitment consultancy which involved me preparing candidates resumes before they were presented to clients for consideration. And to be perfectly blunt, I was shocked at the state that resumes were being sent in to our company. I mean, these are Engineers and Architects?! Well-educated individuals that are supposed to have attention to detail?

I found myself writing resumes for friends and family, giving advice on how to present their resumes in a format that is easy on the eyes and quick to scan through to pick up the important parts.

After a year in this role and no foreseeable job progression, I found myself desperate to move on to another job. I applied for many government roles without success, until I asked a friend from hockey for help. She was on the selection committee of a government department (not the one I was applying for), and gave me a few more points on my resume but a lot on my selection criteria. So I submitted my application and although I was unsuccessful, I received a call from the department to tell me my resume and application were excellent and to keep applying. I suspect the position was already filled internally, and someone was disappointed for me so they reached out to encourage me.

Over time with each success, both with my applications and others, I realised that I had some serious skills in resume and selection criteria writing, and that my passion was to help people succeed in finding a new job.

I was often worried that I would found myself stumped with a stellar CV and no value to add! But instead I was left wondering how it is that so many of us can get it so wrong when it comes to writing a CV. After all, this is a document which can change the course of our careers.

What I have learned is that even the brilliant struggle to define what they do, even as a specialist in their field, and it requires someone with a fresh pair of eyes looking from the outside. Someone who knows first hand what recruiters and hiring managers are looking for in a resume. And these are the people reading your resume, so getting someone else to help articulate it is the best step you can take.

Fast forward a few years and after taking a break to have my first baby, I decided to put an ad in the paper (yes, the paper because this was 2010 and people still looked for jobs in the paper) and just get started. I could have spent a long time preparing, creating marketing material and websites, but I decided to dive straight in and figure it out as I went along. I had 8 calls the first week! My biggest concern was worrying that I would be too busy! But I found the sweet spot with pricing and wrote over 400 resumes in the span of a few years, and had a second baby within that time.

Since then, I have helped many people perfect their CVs, prepare for job interviews and succeed in their job search process. I prefer to empower people to keep doing this for themselves, and so I have an educational approach where I explain the reasons why we are writing it the way we do. I enjoy the relief my clients express when I have given them the confidence that they WILL get that job, and I believe it’s just the edge they need to succeed.

The post How does someone end up becoming a Resume Writer? appeared first on Visible Ink.

The Third Space, as explained by Dr Adam Fraser, is the transitional gap between what we do. The ability to stay ahead is dependent on your ability to leverage this transitional gap and ‘show up’ with the right mindset, emotions and behaviour. Some of us do this well, while others struggle to adapt, carrying mindset from the previous role or environment to the next. All too often the lack of boundaries has negative consequences, most prevalent in today’s COVID-19 situation with work from home.

A lack of boundaries results in a lack of presence – presence for yourself and the people you love who you want to be present for. For some, the travel to work on the train or by car is used as the transitional gap, to dissect the morning’s events (review the success of your morning routine) and mentally prepare for the work day ahead. For elite sports people, it might be the change room or their pre-game preparation, that helps them focus and be present for the game ahead. Even our children, who go to school to get a break from home life and annoying parents that trouble them for chores and cleaning their room!

With today’s work from home enforced for many of us, we now only walk a few metres to get to work. The transitional gap between these different environments has obliterated any boundaries. The Third Space can be anything – 15 minutes in the shower, going for a walk, getting into the garden, doing a home workout, even cleaning and doing the dishes (that is definitely not my Third Space!!!). Whatever it is determines how you socialise and whether you ‘show up’, or whether you obsess and rehash the day.

What were your pre-COVID Third Space or transitional gaps, and how have you adapted? Have you changed into different Third Space habits and was this conscious or subconscious?

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