Job Search

Ah, the dreaded cover letter. Many people cringe writing it but truth be told, a recruiter and hiring manager probably won’t spend too much time on it anyway. The key to standing out during their limited attention is to know your audience.

So, in the media realm depending on the tone of the outlet you’re targeting, your letter can be punchy and succinct or a bit more serious; technically it’s not unlike a freelance pitch for a story. David Noble, Ph.D., and author of Gallery of Best Cover Letters, advises, “The more you know about the reader of your cover letter, the better you can tailor its content to appeal to that person.”

While his book provides more than 300 samples of cover letters, the author says to make the letter as personal as possible. That is, avoid the “To Whom It May Concern” salutation and instead address it to a specific person.

His advice? “If you have not been able to make a personal contact, at least do everything possible to find out the name of the person who will read your letter and resume, and then address the letter to that person.” Athough a magazine’s masthead may make it easier for us in the print world, digital outlets may make the name hunting a little bit more challenging. Therefore, cold calling the receptionist is a place to start.

As for how to handle it if a contact suggested you forward it to his or her contact, be sure to “say this in the first sentence of your cover letter.” Mention the mutual contact’s name so you can get past a gatekeeper who may be sorting through the letters.

In addition to the basics like researching the company and tossing in some information like a recent positive news blurb to show you’re keeping abreast of them, end it on a light note. Noble explains, “Toward the end of the cover letter, consider repeating the recipient’s name to convey friendliness and to provide a personal touch.”

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Monster updated its jobs board a few days ago when it added a “friends” connection. Essentially, this allows its members to view who they know at companies who post jobs on the site.

As in, keeping your job search a secret may be a challenge but it’s well worth it.

We know the situation all too well. You’re done. Burned out and ready to move on, in a rut with nowhere to go. Sure, it may be tempting to commiserate with colleagues but according to a piece published by the Harvard Business Review, it’s wise to resist that temptation.

Regardless of how close you feel you are with coworkers, chances are the best kept secret is simply with yourself. Assume it will be leaked if you’re the one who first leaks it!

Second, as pointed out in the piece, it’s important to conduct stealth networking. Do you really need to tell people outright that you’re looking? Not quite. Instead of being blunt and saying you’re looking for a new job you can tactfully state you’re “open to hearing about new opportunities.” Or that you’re not actively looking but always entertaining your options to see what’s out there.

Lastly, and this is a big one, wait for the offer and wait until you sign on the dotted line to confirm your employment. Only then should you tell your manager you’ve resigned.

So, you wanna be EIC, huh? Depending on the size of the publication and the stability of the market — which, let’s face it, has not been that kind to print publications lately — the magazine masthead is not the playground of overnight sensations. You can, however, climb the editorial ladder with a little strategy and lots of hard work. For example…

Sign up for the un-spectacular.

You know those grunt assignments that nobody else wants? Take ‘em. They’re like little learning boot camps, said Marie Claire features director Lea Goldman, who found unique value in a notoriously tedious task.

“When I started out, transcripts and fact checking were the most useful things I did because they taught me how to put together a story,” she remembered. “I often just copied the source with the head of an organization and add that name and number to my Rolodex like, ‘OK, that’s a source. Now, I know if I’m ever working on a story like this, I can call that person.’ So they’re very useful and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just scut work.”

To find out how other magazine veterans got promoted, read How To Become an Editor-in-Chief.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

 

Sure, with the IPO news splashed across all the headlines, the question is, can you leverage Facebook to find a job and/or connect with decision makers who extend job offers?

According to buzz in recruiter land, the answer is weak. As in no, for the most part, it’s not prevalent. In a post today on ERE, John Zappe points out The CareerXroads survey asked recruiting leaders from various companies who have a strong social media presence what impact Facebook, Twitter and social media in general have on their recruitment efforts.

He writes, “The short answer is: not much, when it comes to Facebook and Twitter. In fact, Twitter actually fared better than Facebook for direct sourcing. The full results in the accompanying charts plainly show that with the exception of the company profiles, Facebook otherwise doesn’t deliver a whole lot.”

While he’s not suggesting recruiters abandon having a presence on Facebook, Zappe recommends both job seekers and employers alike should plan on having a presence and striking up an online dialogue.

As creator of The Real World and Road Rules and producer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Project Runway, Jonathan Murray gets asked one question an awful lot:

How do I get a job in reality TV?

In mediabistro.com’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, Murray said it’s all about getting that first gig — any gig — in the business.

“I think we hire 20 to 30 young people each year to start out as PAs and loggers and all these different entry-level jobs. And I always tell them that you really need to work in it to understand it. Get a good liberal arts education,” he explained. “I’m always looking for people who think well, who are curious, who can write well, who are well-read, who understand story, and then we can teach them most of the rest of the stuff as a company.”

Murray also discussed how he was able to get MTV to take a chance on the genre and whether Kim Kardashian‘s 72-day marriage was really a sham for the cameras. Read the full interview.

Not fair! A new study by Millennial Branding has found that while most companies think new graduates should have one or two internships, at least three months long each, they’re not hiring their own interns into full-time jobs. (In other words, they want someone else’s interns, maybe because their own weren’t impressive enough.)

This gap between employer expectations and employer actions is one of the reasons half of all recent grads are jobless or underemployed, Millennial Branding says.

Another interesting gap comes when looking at the types of majors that get jobs versus the skills employers say they’re looking for. In short, 34 percent of companies say they’re hiring engineering and CS majors (and 75 percent of companies that hire STEM talent say it’s hard to compete against other brands for talent). The market is tight. Yet nearly all companies surveyed (98 percent) say that communication skills are the most important and 91 percent say that not only is communication important, but it’s hard to find in a recent grad. Yet all 225 companies surveyed believe that college adequately prepares graduates for the working world. Who on earth is filling out these surveys? Bosses with multiple personality disorder?

At any rate, the “someone else’s intern” phenomenon puzzles us, but it is likely to stick around. And people wonder why the job market is so messed up for millennials.

Infographic is below, click here for a larger one.

Even if we say all the right things on a job interview, it won’t matter if you don’t have the enthusiasm to back it up.

Adam Lyons who, as the founder of Insurance Zebra, has interviewed “hundreds of applicants” said, “If you don’t care, I don’t care. Sell yourself and get me excited to work with you. Sometimes people come off like they are sleeping — no excitement, no passion — and it’s a big turn-off.”

Find out how to fix eight more pet peeves of hiring managers in 9 Things You Should Never Do on a Job Interview.

This article is one of several mediabistro.com features exclusively available to AvantGuild subscribers. If you’re not a member yet, you can register for as little as $55 a year and get access to these articles, discounts on seminars and workshops, and more.

Ok, it’s not time to cue the hysterics just yet. But there’s this new site out there for job seekers and employers called ShinyNeedle (as in, in a haystack, we presume). It’s a job board with a twist. In order to apply for any job on ShinyNeedle, you must complete a “challenge” associated with the job.

So for an interactive marketing manager position, the challenge is:

Demonstrate how you would most effectively use technology partners and vendors to drive the success of an interactive campaign targeting an early 20 year old demographic. For the purposes of this challenge consider the demographic both male and female and recent college graduates with new jobs.

For a social media manager position at ShinyNeedle itself, your scheduling capability will be challenged as you’re asked to “Demonstrate through a written statement and an example document that displays how you would improve and manage several [social media] channels.”

Applying without completing the challenge is forbidden. Posting a job without a challenge is (supposedly) forbidden (though we found a few that sneaked through). It’s an interesting idea, we admit. Giving a job applicant with an otherwise blah resume (perhaps because he is a new graduate or has been out of the workforce) a chance to prove himself is an appealing thought. And often, those who take the initiative to solve a company’s problem before being asked to in an application process end up being the ones who get jobs. But formalizing this process? Count us as undecided for now.

Besides, how would a jobseeker be assured that her brilliant idea wouldn’t just be stolen by the company? As ShinyNeedle’s FAQ says, “While there is some risk your idea might be shared in some way other than for the job post our website terms of use and privacy policy prohibit use of the responses for anything other than hiring. Anything written by an individual is also protected by US copyright law automatically.”

Doesn’t inspire exactly the most confidence. Hopefully Shinyneedle can figure out how to create trust between its employer clients and jobseeker users in order to create a product that really truly improves hiring.