Tailor Your Call, Resume, Letter, Proposal, Follow-up, and LinkedIn Profile to Fit Any Advertised Job

This is an incredibly practical book for individuals to acquire practical strategies and techniques for applying to the advertised jobs.

Patrick Ow (of PracticalRiskTraining.com) notes that the ability to effectively sell yourself and get the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager through specifically tailored call, resume, letter, proposal, follow-up and LinkedIn profile is both a skill and an art. This is where your documentation, approaches, and strategies must be specifically customized to the requirements of the advertised job.

Being able to sell and market yourself and your skills, experience, and knowledge to a potential employer is essential for securing a job – be it through your resume, at a job interview, or networking events.

Recruiters and hiring managers aren’t mind-readers, unfortunately. Your job is to convince them that you are the best-qualified person for the job in preference over all other applicants. Unless you can effectively tell them about your skills and highlight and communicate the point that you are the best applicant, they won’t know – and will probably hire someone else.

In marketing terms, you must know your unique selling point (USP) for the advertised job and be able to communicate that USP clearly and effectively to the recruiter and hiring manager.

If you are worried about over-selling yourself, remember that you are simply providing recruiters and hiring managers with evidence or information that you are the right person for the job. That’s the most basic you can get.

Approach a job application, or even the job interview, with the attitude that you are simply the best source of useful information for recruiters and hiring managers to make an informed decision that you are the best applicant for the advertised job!

You must show and provide evidence, not just tell, or brag about how good you are. Employers buy on value and achievements, not on personal subjective unproven assertions about yourself. They want evidence to show that you can accomplish the work they need you to perform on the job in return for the salary that they are going to pay you when you are hired.

Focus on key factual achievements, specific employer keywords, and verifiable numbers on your resume, letter, proposal, and LinkedIn profile.

Write enough quantitative facts about your accomplishments to get recruiters and hiring managers to call you for more information. Don’t give them too much information to toss your resume out. This is the balance you need to navigate.

Your call, resume, letter, proposal, follow-up, and LinkedIn profile must all convey a convincing human story of who are you are as a person. It also tells your career narrative that must emotionally connect you to the organization’s vision, mission, brand product, or services.

From a cultural fit perspective, connect to your reader. When writing a disruptive cover letter, try to avoid repeating the fact-based content from your resume. Share heart-based information that will interest your reader and show your personality. Tell recruiters and hiring managers who you are in an engaging, personable way.

In this practical how-to book, you will learn how to:

1. Find your dream job and know all about that job.

2. Conduct an information interview to gather information about the job before deciding to proceed or not with the job application.

3. Tailor your resume to the specific job requirements.

4. Write a disruptive cover letter with a compelling call-to-action proposal to secure an interview.

5. Update your LinkedIn profile as your online resume.

6. Follow-up on your job application.

This book aims to help tailor your call, resume, letter, proposal, follow-up, and LinkedIn profile specifically to the requirements of the advertised job.

Contents

Preface

Know these basics

Find your dream job

Call before working on your resume and cover letter

Tailor your resume to the job posting

Write a disruptive cover letter

Follow up on your application

Update your LinkedIn profile

Why read this book?

Outside of my professional life working as a risk expert and professional in the corporate world, it has been my passion to see individuals and families manage their opportunities and risks to succeed and thrive under uncertainty.

People need work to earn an income that will enable them to buy food, pay for their accommodation, and increase their financial and personal security and health.

The ability to secure the right job becomes more crucial as there are far fewer jobs for an increasingly over-qualified workforce. This could mainly be due to automation and the changing nature of work.

Hence the need to acquire the right practical techniques to apply for a job opening become more important for any job seeker.

If you are not looking for a job right now and you still have many more years to contribute to society, then this book will help you strategize and put in place the appropriate foundations to position yourself for your next job search.

As the saying goes, people don’t plan to fail, but they fail to plan. Like anything else, act and plan for your future. Build a strong foundation that will put you in the best position to secure your future dream job now.

If you are actively looking for a job right now, the strategies and information contained in this book can help you tailor your call, resume, letter, proposal, follow-up, and LinkedIn profile to fit any professional job posting. These strategies have been gained when I was a hiring manager for many corporate roles and as a human resource or people and culture practitioner and trainer.