| August 17, 2009 | Posted By: Trevor Wilson | Category: Tips |
CNNMoney posted an interesting story today called Class of 2009: Who’s Working, Who Isn’t. It is a cross-section of personal stories from this year’s graduating class. The 11 stories outline what this small subset of New Grads has been going through while looking for Entry Level Jobs.
While I probably don’t need to recap all of the stories for you (as you can read them yourself), I think it would be worthwhile to share some of the statistics:
Average Age: 24
Gender Split: 4 Men, 7 Women
Employment Numbers: 9 Employed, 2 Unemployed
Dream Job: Of the 9 that are employed, only 2 landed the job they wanted. The rest have a combination of part time jobs, unpaid internships, and zero salary positions
Payscale: 3 on salary*, 2 on hourly wage, 1 paid per personal training session, 1 paid by week (on a Fellowship).
* Note: Of the three people on salary, one was a 42 year old woman who went back to school, only to be told she was overqualified after graduating. She took a 10k/year pay cut to get back into the workforce.
So why and I sharing this with you if it is mostly doom and gloom? Because buried in the middle of all of these stories was a quote that describes how one motivated graduate got the attention of multiple companies.
Brandon Frame took a very unique approach to his job search and it paid off big time. Here is his explanation of what he did to stand out from the crowd:
I got recommendation letters tailored to each job. The work paid off, because almost every company took the time to interview me — some even paid to fly me in.
The result? Five job offers.
You read that right. Five job offers.
I’m speechless. This is not only a great idea, but also an excellent way to get yourself noticed by a potential employer. It’s almost unheard of for a company to spend the money to fly Entry Level Job candidates around the country for interviews.
The morale of this story? You need to do everything in your power to impress employers. Just handing out resumes is no longer good enough. You have to go the extra mile to get noticed. If you are willing to do this, positive results await.
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Did Brandon send the recommendation letters along with his resume via mail to companies? I’m curious to see if employers prefer this sort of thing in e-mail form.
Thanks,
Emily
I’m not sure, but sending a hard copy would be difficult to ignore…