The Story of Renee: Don't Underestimate the Homework

For those of you who read my blog, articles, newsletter and all that, you know that the one point I continually drive home is doing your homework prior to your job search. Because the usual way that a job search is undertaken is the resume is done, posted on job boards, sent out with some cover letters, and then the waiting begins. And people are often disappointed, and frequently stunned, when nothing much happens. They don't understand why.

In fact, I've had people submit very poor resumes to me, and ask me for help. I'd love to do it for free, but since I'm not a trust fund baby, and my time is valuable, I charge for my services. Not every one wants to pay to have their resume fixed, and that's okay. But when I follow up with some of these people, and still nothing is happening, and they tell me their tales of woe, it's clear to me why there are no results. But okay, some people lose the forest for the trees or apparently don't want something bad enough to find the problem, fix it, and reap the rewards. I don't mean use my services, I mean buy a book from Barnes & Noble, search on line, anything. Just attend to the situation.

The point of this next story isn't to highlight me, although it does that. But let's face it - this is what I do for a living. I am the company, and to illustrate my points to others, I sometimes use examples of what I've been doing with my clients. So it's kind of hard to keep myself out of the story. Please excuse what may seem like narcissism! What I really want to do is illustrate how much work, sweat, thought, processing, remembering, practice phrasing, etc goes into finding a new job. And this was just one application. There's at least this much involved when I work with clients (start to finish) on a general job search - and much of it is done before they even begin the job hunting process.

But like Abraham Lincoln said, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe." It's all about the prep - that's what determines the outcome.

Yesterday I finished with an emergency client. She was a joy to work with. She was submitting an application for Exective Assistant to the Clerk of the Cour for the federal judiciary board of one of the states, and had just 5 days to put everything together. She really wanted to make the cut for in-person interviews so she came to me seeking professional guidance in the preparation.

I don't think she anticipated how much work would be involved - for both of us. And because it was so important to her, she dug in and did it. Here's how much homework was involved.

She sent me the application, which detailed the requirements and the job description, and her resume. I went through the application and interpreted the phrases so she knew the meaning and subtext of what they were looking for. This was important because she needed to know it wasn't just about their phrasing, it was about what the phrasing meant. Her resume was very bland and boring, as many are. No accomplishments, no indication of her capabilities, that were obviously there....somewhere. Plus as a JD, her education was in the wrong place.

I sent her a plan and a timeline, and a huge list of questions regarding her resume, which took her quite a while to answer. I also sent her the Special Report on Cover Letters and directed her to write a draft based on what she learned in the report. The application also included 4 supplemental questions - not easy ones - and her additional homework assignment was to answer the questions. On Friday, we had a phone chat of about 45 minutes, which gave me an idea of her personality, her thinking process and where her head was. I counselled her on a bunch of stuff to help her write the answers to the questions.

When all this came back to me, I could tell even more specifically where her head was by the way she phrased her answers to the supplemental questions. So we worked on that to reframe her thinking, using some examples from her work. I factored in her answers to the questions for the resume, but since her answers were very long and very legal, we sent the resume back and forth a few times. We needed to make sure her knowledge of legal phrasing worked in conjunction with my expertise on crafting a professional and effective resume. Her background was excellent and dovetailed perfectly with the job requirements, and now her resume was beginning to show that.

Additionally I showed her how to tie what they were looking for - the text and subtext of the application requirements - to her resume and cover letter, so that one mirrored the other. She fine tuned the cover letter based on my edits, but it was a bit long, and we still needed to put salary history in there. So more editing on my part, more working it on hers.

I edited her supplemental questions. She redid some of the questions, and incorporated a few paragraphs that I'd highlighted from her narrative of resume answers, paragraphs which needed to be brought to the attention of the application review, because that information perfectly demonstrated what they wanted, and also fleshed out some of her resume points.

She was surprised to find how much she'd forgotten about her previous employment. She'd forgotten how much she contributed to those organizations, and what she'd accomplished there. So all that was brought to the forefront of her mind, and she learned how to phrase it in a feature/benefit manner, so that she could communicate effectively to the court why she was the best candidate for the job and deserved an interview. She gained a great deal of confidence and strength in herself and in her chances as a candidate.

We did all this basically between Thursday and Monday, and all in all, she probably put in about 7 or 8 hours at least. She was phenomenal. It was obviously important to her, and she made it a priority. Both of us were very pleased with the finished products. Her answers were real, honest, well crafted - but not contrived. Her resume showcased her skills and accomplishments superbly, and mirrored the job requirements almost exactly. Her cover letter was a great blend of professionalism and her own voice, and read as a cover letter should.

The moral of this story is don't undersestimate what's needed to find your perfect job. The result equals the foundation. If you slap together your resume, do a lousy cover letter (and most of them are horrible), and then post it on job boards and blast it out to thousands of companies for $80, you'll get nothing. But then you put nothing into it. And when you finally end up with something, it will be less than satisfactory, because your paperwork didn't make the grade with the top companies - but it got seen by the ones who were desperate for a hire.

Please let me be clear that she did the work, not me. I only guided her. She turns it in today, so we don't know the result, but I'll be surprised if she doesn't make the cut. I'll keep you posted.