On 10/26/05, Mike Hord wrote: > I'm not fishing for job offers, here (but if you want > to make one, or see my resume, I certainly won't > refuse! ;-) ), but more asking what others' recent > experiences have been (particularly in that part > of the US), what they might have done differently, > where they found the listing for their jobs, etc. > Especially new grads, since my 2.5 years of > oddball research lab experience probably won't > count for much. I've found the following to be very helpful in a job search I perfromed in 2001 and one performed over the last year as I graduated with a bachelors degree: Cover letter: Take a look at the listing. Find out as much as you can about the job position and offer (sometimes the printed offer is less informative than the online version). Choose 3 requirements of that offer that you can show, through examples, that you are qualified for. Write a short paragraph about each item, perhaps 2-3 sentences. Now research the company. Find out what they do: services, products, etc. Find out about their market position, find their competitors, learn about the company organization. Find out who the hiring manager is for this position (HR may be the one tending the offer, but ultimately a manager put in a request and the manager gets to organize the technical interviews) Compose the actual cover letter: The first paragraph should introduce you, the job you're applying for, and how you found out about the job. The middle three paragraphs show three strong skills that you possess that apply directly to the job offer. The last paragraph demonstrates your knowledge of the company and its mission. I usually indicate that I am looking forward to meeting them in an interview. Send the resume attached in an email, with the cover letter as the body of the email. Send it directly to the hiring manager. If the offer indicates that it should be sent to HR or someone other than the hiring manager, send it to both and indicate clearly at the bottom of the email who got copies (cc: someone@company.com, someoneelse@company.com). Follow up: You will need to follow up by phone. Depending on the company and its hiring process the resume may not be "in the system" for a week or more. Before you call, think of a few questions you have about the position or company. Call the hiring manager directly. Introduce yourself, indicate that you are applying for a position and sent a resume - ask if they recieved it. Ask a few questions about the position and the company, have a short discussion, and ask when you can come in for an interview. This may be the first time they are really looking at your cover letter or resume, so expect them to indicate that it may be several days before they start interviewing or some other reason not to commit to an interview. Be prepared to set one up immediately as well. Unless they specifically say they are not interested in you as a candidate for this position, ask when you can follow up again, and write that down. Follow up again. You may find that for some companies this process will take weeks, while others are able to react very quickly. Keep following up on a regular basis until they indicate the position is closed, or you have a job. If they indicate they are not interested in interviewing you, then ask them what makes you incompatible with the offer, and in what ways could you improve yourself (resume, presentation, skills, etc) so that you would be a more attractive candidate. They may be willing to discuss this (make it short), or they may not, but either way you've got nothing to lose, and something to gain. In my experience the follow up is the most important task. This may be because I don't have a great resume - this last time during the follow up the company owner (the job offer had resumes go to the owner) asked me several questions and we were able to have an on-the-spot mini-interview. At the end of the call he indicated that the resume didn't adequately represent my qualifications and that he would now act on it, rather than throw it away as originally intended. During my job search several years ago, after hiring, the manager explained that he had 300 reumes to go through. It was easy to simply set a bar (bachelors degree in CS, which I didn't have) and throw everything else away. The follow up is what got me the interview, and ultimately the job. Also, look in unconventional places for job offers. My current job was found in an article in a local business weekly newspaper. It indicated a company, whose name I recognized, was opening a design center in my area and hiring senior design engineers. I am, at best, a junior design engineer, just graduated with a some recent consulting experience. I applied anyway, and had the previously mentioned conversation with the company owner. This is a rather tedious task to do for hundreds of companies, so instead try to focus on only a few companies. At most I would prepare cover letters and customize resumes for up to 5 companies per week. This also spreads out the response so you're not trying to deal with too many follow-ups at once. It also enables you to change your letters and resumes over time - mistakes you make the first round will show up as you talk to people and your next round will improve. I saved the experience cover letter material (three middle paragraphs) since a lot of it was similar between jobs and I ended up with about 15 skills and demonstrations of experience that I could quickly pull from to generate most of the cover letter. While it is tempting to email hundreds of resumes since, statistically you will only get a 1-5% response rate. I've found, however, that it's better to spend time applying to only those companies and for those jobs that I'm truly interested in. You will still be a needle in the haystack of resumes the manager has to get through, but you will also be following up. You get to be the 1-5% of applicants that actively pursue the job. It's easy to find a needle in the haystack if it keeps stabbing you. There's a lot more that you can do, but these activities have worked for me: In the early job hunt (no degree) I sent out 50 or so generic resumes using online job services without followup and netted 0 responses. I sent out 10 customized cover letters and resumes with follow up outside of the job websites, and netted 3 face to face interviews. In this latest job hunt (new bachelors in computer engineering) I used the college's job system ( http://career.engin.umich.edu , if you are interested in looking at how they do things) and requested interviews with 10-20 companies. I received about 5 interviews, mostly for jobs I could do but wasn't terribly interested in. I sent out 2-3 customized cover letters and resumes, followed up, and received 1 interview for a job I knew I would love, and am now performing. As far as the job market in the midwest is concerned, I believe there's a lot of opportunity, but it takes a lot of looking. While I interviewed with large companies I felt more comfortable with smaller companies, and it seems like there's a lot of little companies hiring. In many large companies you have to choose between hardware engineering or firmware design, but in a small to moderate size company I get to visit both sides of the design. In regards to your current location, Digi International is a company you might want to look into. They have their headquarters in Minnetonka, MN 55343. They are a largish, publicly traded company, but they typically purchase smaller companies and keep them intact as subsidiaries of Digi. This gives you a lot of the benefits of a large company, with a lot of the benefits of a small company (and disadvantages of both). It also means that you'll have to visit each of the subsidiary websites (linked from the main website, http://www.digi.com/ ) to find job openings. Many of these subsidiaries are located elsewhere (CA, TX, etc) so make sure the job you want is still in MN. Lastly, don't be discouraged if you find a company you like that either has no openings, or has none that you are interested in. Go ahead and apply for the non-existant position under the manager you're interested in working for. Most managers want more resources to complete their projects. Many are in the process of trying to convince their managers to hire another person. A job search can cost the company $10,000. If the manager has the perfect applicant before the job search is started, they've saved a large portion of that initial cost, and that may be the only thing preventing them from starting an official opening. Good luck! -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist