Joyce Lain Kennedy - Job Search Letters For Dummies

Job Search Letters For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2013 by Joyce Lain Kennedy

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013938102

ISBN 978-1-118-43641-7 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-43640-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-43642-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-43643-1 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Introduction

R ight now, you hold in your hands a key to todays successful job search. Hint: Your challenge isnt like it was even five years ago.

Communications and technology are two gigantic change factors that are rapidly transforming both the materials and the methods of finding and nailing down a job. The two factors are connected.

Communications. Joining resumes as staples of employment tools, an explosion of job search messaging is emerging to benefit job seekers everywhere in any career field or industry.

For brevity, I use the term job search letters in this work to mean all messaging that promotes job finding and career health. I identify many categories of job search letters that you can write to get what you want. Key messaging formats include the following:

Technology. An almost unimaginable amount of technological innovation is reshaping how messaging moves in the marketplace of jobs.

Most of it is digital, ranging from social media networking and public profile posting, to mobile job app responses and information intended to automatically match jobs and candidates.

Despite mind-blowing change now and tomorrow, bear in mind that technology does not and cannot replace human interaction at every turn of the employment process. For that reason, a number of the sample job search letters in these pages are intended to be passed by hand, depending on the circumstances.

About This Book

This guide to modern job search communications wouldnt have been possible without the outstanding collaboration of 42 top-shelf professional career messaging writers who provided the message samples throughout its pages.

The professional writers name is credited beneath each sample. Find the writers contact information in the Directory of Job Letter Writers, which is printed in the appendix of this book.

Job Search Letters For Dummies replaces three editions of Cover Letters For Dummies.

Foolish Assumptions

I assume that you chose this book because your job search is on your mind, perhaps as a new graduate fresh from college with scant working experience, or as a career changer seeking to make a leap into a different field, or as a seasoned worker wondering how to get ready for the next future challenge.

More specifically, Im also making these assumptions:

You may feel as though good things never seem to happen in your job world. Have you considered the possibility that you dont market your abilities robustly enough in a tight economy?

The arsenal of messaging samples in these pages offers new ideas about how to communicate your true worth.

Youre job hunting, but youve never written any kind of job search letter that landed you an interview. (Putting recruiters to sleep, are you?)

Now youre ready to step up your game and learn from samples of how todays writing pros do it. You sense that this is the right guidebook to help you pick up the know-how to look job perfect to employers stuck in hiring paralysis.

Youre employed but concerned about or dissatisfied with your current work situation. Youre looking for escape routes if push comes to shove but you need the right message tools to look vibrant in modern times.

Youre ready to move up in rank and money, but all is quiet on the management front. Youve heard a story about an audacious soul who won a nice promotion by writing a request justifying it, and of another individual who fired up her keyboard to ask for a pay bump, and the money flowed. Youre ready to learn how to write letters like that.

Icons Used in This Book

For Dummies signature icons are the little round pictures you see in the margins of the book. I use them to call your attention to key bits of information. Heres a list of the icons you find in this book and what they mean.