Here Comes Monday again. Are you ready?

Last week was a real bummer for me. I sent out about twenty resumes, drove about 500 miles, knocked on about thirty doors and applied for six entry level positions. Have I gotten any interviews? Not yet, but I will. Why, you ask. Simple, because I refuse to give up. Last week was more about identifying companies that are hiring more that applying for jobs. Yes, getting my resume in to these companies is important. It needs to be there for the next phase of my marketing plan. (Remember, this is all sales. A good salesman always has a marketing plan, it is his roadmap to success.) See, I keep notes on all the companies I visited, sent resumes to, applied at, or walked into. I look at it this way, I can leave it to fate that the hiring manager gets far enough down the stack of resumes sitting on his desk that he sees mine. But I am going be honest with you, if the stack gets to big, at least half of those resumes are going into the circular file without ever a glance. Believe me that this happens all the time. Managers have many things on their plates, reading resumes is the last thing a manager wants to do. So that manager is going to minimize this task as best he can. My job is to make sure that I am in the half that stays on his desk, preferably in the top three or four resumes.

How do I do it?

I could tell you all my secrets, but then I would have to kill you. OK, not really. Honestly, the last time I told someone that they needed to write letters and make phone calls to the hiring managers that had their resumes, two guys in black suits showed up and he has not been heard or seen since. When I told someone to drop off a short letter to the hiring manager at a company saying I know you have my resume but did you know I did this or that for this company or that, she was seen being dragged into a SWAT van and sent to a re-education camp in Cuba. So, I really can’t explain to you how I do this or what I will be doing this week. You can guess all you want, but I won’t tell you that I will be writing letters and making calls to keep my name and resume at the top of the short stack.