How to Clinch a Killer Resume Cover Letter

Experts say keep resume cover letters short, sweet and memorable.

By Kristina Cowan

Do you enjoy writing resume cover letters about as much as you relish root canals? Dread isn't uncommon when it comes to resume cover letters.

"It's an area where job-seekers could do the most to improve, because it does require a certain amount of heavy lifting," said Anna Ivey, a career counselor based in the Boston area. "Most people just write generic resume cover letters, and it's the resume cover letter that's really going to open or close that door, that will decide whether they [employers] bother to read on and look at your resume."

But dread shouldn't get the best of you. Instead, try thinking of resume cover letters as jalapeno peppers-small, but packing a wallop-and heed the following tips on how to write a cover letter from career experts Ivey, Laura DeCarlo, Bernadette Kenny and Deborah DeCamp.

How to Write A Cover Letter

1. Keep it short. Ivey suggests resume cover letters stick to one page, with about three paragraphs total. "Once you roll over onto a second page you're really taking a risk," Ivey said. DeCarlo, executive director of Career Directors International in Melbourne, Fla., said writing should be punchy and crisp. "Resume cover letters are a form of marketing. Make it easy for recipients to be interested and find what they're looking for, and easy for them to find reasons to keep going," DeCarlo said.

2. Draw the reader in immediately. The first paragraph of a resume cover letter should be an attention-grabber, DeCarlo said: Use an interesting fact, ask a question, or mention a personal connection to someone at the company. Learn how to write a cover letter that engages the reader.

3. Pack it with a "wow" factor. DeCamp, a Chicago-based regional director for Manpower Professional, said you create the wow factor by highlighting accomplishments on your resume cover letter. "You're not just stating what you did in your last job, but what you achieved, created, that you saved the company money, blew out a budget, exceeded expectations," she said.

4. Write well! Resume cover letters are a prime place to demonstrate that you have strong grammar, writing and communication skills, said Kenny, the Melville, Long Island-based chief career officer at Adecco Group North America.

5. Don't recreate your resume. You might underscore one or two points on your resume, but be selective and don't turn the resume cover letter into a laundry list, Ivey said. Learn how to write a cover letter that is unique.

6. Have someone else read it. A second set of eyes is always a good idea, Kenny said, and after someone reads your letter, ask if he or she thinks it's effective.

7. What about responding to ads that ask for salary history? While this is a difficult question to address in a resume cover letter, DeCarlo said it's best not to ignore it. Be broad and vague, giving a general salary range, and stress that you're negotiable.

8. Finish with a statement that keeps the conversation rolling. "A good resume cover letter has an action close, that asks to take the next step," DeCarlo said. She explained that many job-seekers aren't interested in coming on too strong, so she suggests a phrase such as "I look forward to hearing from you."

9. Follow up! Ivey encourages job-seekers to follow-up. "I think when it comes to your own job search you need to take more control," she said. If you're hesitant because an ad reads "No phone calls," Ivey suggests sending an e-mail to follow up your resume cover letter.

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Increase Your Salary: 10 Expert Tips

By Kristina Cowan

Increasesalary01 Determined to increase your salary? Follow these tips from Reesa Staten, vice president of communications and director of research at recruiting firm Robert Half International and Anna Ivey, a Boston-based career and admissions counselor, to increase your salary this year:

1. Get comfortable negotiating salary raises.
"Women fall behind here, because they generally aren’t as aggressive and fall farther and farther behind with their salaries. You can’t be shy about asking to be paid what you’re worth," Ivey said. Along these lines, she said, it’s important to keep detailed documentation of your achievements.

2. Research and compare your salary.
Staten urges workers to make sure they know how much their skills are worth before they pursue a different position or a promotion. Compare your salary.

3. Become an indispensable expert.
Continue to learn about your line of work, so that you stay current with trends and developments. Your strategy might include going to industry conferences, reading industry publications or setting up regular lunch meetings with others in your field to exchange information and ideas. This is a key to increasing your salary.

4. Make yourself visible.
Network and mingle, making sure you are continually visible to others in your industry and your workplace. At work, take on difficult challenges and make sure that management is aware of your contributions.

5. Update your skills.
Consider training or certifications that could lead to a promotion. "In some companies, if you don’t have a bachelor’s degree, you can’t advance to the next level. Some jobs require an MBA; get as much education as possible," Staten said. Search for online learning that could help increase your salary.

6. If you return to school, make sure that it will pay off.
Ivey said it’s important to investigate degree programs before launching into one that might not increase your salary — and could end up costing you more in the long-run. Also, find out what continuing education benefits are offered by your employer. You may be able to "earn more" by getting your employer to cover tuition costs. Research the best college degrees for higher earnings.

7. Absorb and adapt to new methods.
"Things are changing quickly; what is state of the art now will be obsolete 10 years from now," Staten said. When things change at work instead of getting grumpy, be the first to jump on board. Your enthusiasm for change and adaptability to new systems and ideas are to how your employer values you and could lead to a salary increase.

8. Be receptive to criticism.
Constructive criticism can help you improve your performance, Ivey said. Not only is it important to be able to gracefully accept criticism from your coworkers and boss, but integrating that feedback into your work can win you points and opportunities for promotion.

9. Sharpen your communication skills.
"I don’t care what role you’re in. If you can read and speak well, you are way ahead of the pack," Ivey said.

10. Get comfortable with math.
"A lot of people coast through college without number knowledge — just basic knowledge, like how to read a financial statement. We live in a Sarbanes-Oxley [SOX] now. If you work in a publicly traded company, you will be affected by SOX. Accounting is a great skill to have in your tool set," Ivey said, referring to the federal law that tightened corporate governance standards.

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How to Be More Popular

Source : Tipsforsucces. org

Many people believe the route to success is to be interesting—to show off or act like someone else. For example, many teenagers can’t understand why they are unpopular. They learned as children that to get attention they should act up a little; to be as interesting as possible. Yet acting interesting does not make a teenager popular. To handle their unpopularity, they might decide to despise people or become loners. Or they try harmful acts to gain respect: smoking, drinking, graffiti, shoplifting, drugs, sex, guns and so on.

Acting interesting can ruin your adult life as well. Show-off employees, self-centered managers and pompous business owners rarely do well for long.

The secret to popularity is not to be interesting, but to be interested.

"When a person becomes terribly interesting he has lots of problems, believe me. That is the chasm which is crossed by all of your celebrities, anybody who is foolish enough to become famous. He crosses over from being interested in life to being interesting. And people who are interesting are really no longer interested in life. It’s very baffling to some young fellow why he can’t make some beautiful girl interested in him. Well, she is not interested, she is interesting." — L. Ron Hubbard

If you are an actor on stage, you are interesting while acting. Seminar speakers are interesting. Comedians, models and magicians are interesting.

Yet in real life, on a one-on-one basis, interesting people are irritating. They only do things to get your attention and admiration. They believe they are on stage acting for an audience of one.

If you want people to cooperate with you, to like you or to open up to you, you must be interested.

Instead of focusing on yourself, you start to focus on others. You notice what makes them happy or unhappy. Your attention comes off of you and onto others.

When your thoughts are more on others than on yourself, you feel little stress. You act and respond with more intelligence. Your production level increases and you have more fun.

When you are interested, people love your interest in them. They want to be around you. You are popular.

Five Ways to Be More Interested

• Strive to shift your attention from yourself onto other people or objects. This is a great stress reliever.
• Find things about people that interest you. Force yourself to look for interesting things. Soon you will automatically take interest in people without thinking about it.
• If you catch yourself acting like someone else, you are being interesting. Simply get interested in the person in front of you and you’ll feel more natural. You are most effective when you are simply being yourself.
• When someone makes you nervous or shy, get interested in them. Take your attention off of yourself and on to others. With practice, you will be calm, even bold.
• Focus on how you can help others. Let your interest in helping people replace your tendency to act interesting. Your effectiveness and popularity will soar.

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How to Negotiate Salary: 5 Expert Tips

By Kristina Cowan

Need help fashioning a to-do list on how to negotiate salary with a current or future employer? Give the following salary negotiating tips a try, from Laura DeCarlo, executive director of Career Directors International in Melbourne, Fla.

1. Do your homework. This includes researching the current market value for the position and carrying that knowledge with you into the talks. Creating a PayScale Salary Profile and keeping it updated helps you to always know the median value for your skill set. Learn how to negotiate salary from a position strength by having the most current salary information for your job.

2. Know your needs and wants. "You have a range in mind of what you'd really like. Otherwise, if you are out in left field-you are never going to be successful. [For example] a woman who wants to make $55,000 a year and decides she's changing careers and wants to be a typist-I don't know many $55,000-a-year typists," DeCarlo said.

3. Learn a methodology for handling the questions, "What are you looking for?" and "What kind of salary do you want?" According to DeCarlo, the bottom line is, "I'm negotiable." If it's too soon to talk about money, she encourages applicants to change the discussion topic to job requirements or expectations. Learn how to negotiate salary by being prepared for salary questions during the interview.

4. Know your options and ask, ask, ask. Be familiar with possible perks and benefits, and ways to increase your salary; brainstorming and making lists can be useful here. "I've seen people turn it into mileage allowances for driving. Anything is potentially negotiable unless you don't ask about it," she said.

5. Always negotiate in person. "You can't read an expression, show a presentation, or have convincing reasons quite as well on the phone as you can when you engage them [employers] face-to-face," DeCarlo said. Learning how to negotiate salary in person is a key to higher earnings.

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Being Too Serious Can Ruin Your Success

Source : Tipsforsucces. org


Are you having fun? Do you get a thrill from your work? Do you enjoy waking up each morning?

Myths about work can hurt your progress. "Work is not supposed to be fun." "You must buckle down and get serious."

Perhaps the biggest myth of all: "People will think I’m important if I act seriously." Yet getting serious creates problems: stress, worry, anxiety, emotional pain, drudgery and failure.

Resolving problems by getting more serious is like fixing a computer with a hammer. The harder you try, the worse the problem becomes.

"When life becomes serious, a man becomes less cause and greater effect. If life gets really serious, his value drops to practically zero. Driving a car can become such serious business that one can wreck the car. Running a business can become so serious as to make it fail. There is a direct connection between insanity and seriousness." "It is only when an individual progresses in life to a point where much seriousness is attached to things that he begins to have a hard time. The ancient Italian really knew what he was about when he considered that the only psychotherapy was laughter." — L. Ron Hubbard


12 Ways to Lighten Up

Approaching your life with a non-serious attitude gives you a clearheaded view of difficulties and the energy to deal with them. Problems are easier to solve, people are more cooperative and you feel more relaxed. You probably live longer and more successfully, as well.

Try these ideas until you find one that lightens you up.

• Deliberately turn a molehill into a mountain. Make a big deal out of a little problem. "I would feel much better if these papers were stacked exactly like this! Not like that! Like this! Not this! This!"
• Ask yourself, "Is getting serious about this situation really going to improve it?"
• Focusing on the positives. "What is right about this situation?" "What else is right?" "What else?"
• Consider a complete, major change. For example, go back to school, move to the ocean, start a new career.
• Ask yourself, "When I’m on my deathbed, will I be glad I was so serious about _______?"
• A challenging game is much better than no game at all. So consider losing all aspects of the problem. Examples: You feel serious about family problems. You ask yourself, "Well, what if I had no family at all?" You feel serious about your investments. You ask yourself, "What if I had no money to invest?"
• The size of your problem may match the size of your game. So get a bigger game. For example, if you get uptight about paper clips being in the wrong drawer, your game size is tiny. Double your amount of responsibility. Set some huge goals. Succeed by thinking much, much bigger.
• Stop trying to solve the problem that is making you so serious. Certain types of problems solve themselves if you leave them alone. Your problem may be one of those.
• Compare what you are doing to other careers. Imagine being a septic tank drainer or a tax collector.
• Make everyone around you lighten up.
• Look at bizarre solutions. What is the craziest way you could solve your problem? What solution, if it worked, would make you laugh out loud?
• Act stupid for a minute. Let down your hair. Stop being so darn important for a while. Be a goof!

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10 Tips for Improving Your Career - for long term change! (with exercise, nutrition, travel and learning)

Careers can improve or completely change direction over time, but long term changes don't just happen overnight - you need to work at it! When new opportunities arise - sometimes popping up without notice - will you be ready for them? There are many things you can do to increase you chances of being prepared for these opportunities when they appear.

1 - Re-evaluate Your Priorities

Take some time to stop and think about what your priorities are in your career and your life in general. Don't be side tracked by something that sounds good on the surface but won't take you where you want to be with you career. Just because someone else may do this, that or the other thing to develop their career path, doesn't mean you need to. Do what is best for you.

2 - Read

Read books, magazines, and trade journals related to the industry of either the job you have now, or from an industry you would like to be employed in. Reading will help you acquire a better perspective of the industry and your place in it.

3 - Do Volunteer Work

Volunteer to do work for a charity or other non-profit organization. Volunteering is a great way to network with both other volunteers and with the people working at the organization. This can especially be helpful if you can do volunteer work in an industry you would like to get a job in. You will not only have the opportunity to network but will gain experience in that industry and well as learn more about what a job in that field would be like on a day to day basis.

4 - Exercise Regularly

Exercise will make you feel better and be healthier later in your life. It will help you increase your stamina when working long hours or taking weekend or evening classes - or just getting through a typical work day! Right or wrong, healthier looking people are more likely to get promotions and raises too.

5 - Eat Right

Along with proper exercise, eating right can have the same positive effects mentioned above. If you have kids, proper diet for yourself is essential for teaching your kids good eating habits.

6 - Take Computer Classes

In almost all jobs in every industry basic computer skills are becoming more and more necessary. Classes in MS Word, Power Point or Excel could really help boost your career. If you are already familiar with these software packages, you could take an introductory programming class such as Basic, Perl or Visual Basic or whatever language is typically used in your workplace applications. Taking classes is a great way to meet new friends and network too! And if taking classes isn't your thing, or if you can't afford it, many books and online tutorials are available to teach yourself.

7 - Develop Your Communication Skills

Good communication skills are essential for all endeavors in life, especially for careers. This includes verbal, written and body language communication. Consider joining a local Toastmasters Club to increase your public speaking ability. These clubs are great even if public speaking really makes you nervous - the club members are very supportive! You will learn a lot from listening to other members speak also. Many books are available to help with writing skills and good body language. Remember, people who appear relaxed and composed, and can communicate their ideas clearly are more likely to get promotions and raises.

8 - Learn a Foreign Language

Learning a foreign language can be quite a challenge, but rewarding as well! Studying the culture and language native to a different country can help make you more aware of alternate ways of doing things - to think outside the box! Many companies have offices in other countries, knowing the language of one of these countries could help make you more qualified for positions opening there. Spanish would likely be the most helpful foreign language to learn for those in the US.

9 - Travel

If you can afford to take vacation - do it! Travel, much like learning a foreign language, can help open your mind up to new possibilies. Of course it's great fun and relaxing too!

10 - Challenge Yourself

Always challenge yourself - step outside your comfort zone! This is the only way you can grow both personally and in your career. Don't be afraid of trying something difficult, even if you fail at achieving what you originally intended to accomplish - you will still learn something new from the experience - and this will help your career!

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How to Kill the Green-eyed Monster

Source : Tipsfor succes. org


Nothing can ruin a relationship or marriage faster than jealously. Jealousy creates anxiety, anger, loneliness, hate, fear. No one thinks clearly when jealous.

Having a relationship with a jealous person is tough. The jealous person acts untrusting or unworthy. Jealousy makes the person unattractive, even repulsive.

No one wants a jealous mate and no one likes being jealous. So what causes jealousy?

"Jealousy is the largest factor in breaking up marriages. Jealousy comes about because of the insecurity of the jealous person and the jealousy may or may not have foundation. This person is afraid of hidden communication lines and will do anything to try to uncover them." — L. Ron Hubbard

When you are jealous, a line of communication is going on with your spouse or lover that is hidden from you. The mystery causes the pain. If you witnessed your spouse’s communication line, so it was not hidden from you, you would not feel jealous.

Hidden communication lines or mysteries make you think of questions. "Will she find someone she likes better than me?" "Is he having an affair?" "Is she going to leave me?" "Does he think I’m unattractive?"

When you are jealous, the mystery makes you assume the worst. "Maybe he’ll fall in love with his cute receptionist and leave me." "She’s going to lunch with her old boyfriend because she’s still attracted to him." "He’ll come home and tell me he wants a divorce."

So how do you handle your feelings of jealousy? How do you deal with a spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend who is jealous?

Solutions

"Communication is the root of marital success from which a strong union can grow, and non-communication is the rock on which the ship will bash out her keel*." — L. Ron Hubbard (*Keel: The main structural part of a ship that goes from bow to stern—front to back.)

If you are jealous, you need to communicate. You need to stop assuming the worst and ask questions. Communicate your feelings so you can work out solutions.

Bob says to his wife, "I don’t want to feel this jealously. I want to get rid of it by asking you a question, okay? Good. So are you attracted to Joe?"

His wife says, "Heavens no! Joe just wanted some help with his son. I love YOU like crazy!"

Bang! The hidden communication is revealed. The mystery is resolved. Bob feels much better.

If Bob doesn’t communicate, his wife’s communication with Joe makes Bob jealous, afraid and angry. Their marriage suffers.

If your mate is jealous, make sure you have no hidden lines of communication. "Would you like to read this letter from Jill?" "Can you meet with Joe to help with his son?"

Use communication to resolve the problem. For example, you notice Marcia is acting upset and not talking. You ask yourself, "What communication line might be hidden from Marcia?" You realize she’s been acting annoyed ever since you started working for an attractive female boss.

"Marcia, have I told you about my new boss?" Marcia jumps up and now wants to talk. You communicate the facts and remove the mystery. Marcia is cheerful and wants to go to a movie.

As well as using communication to resolve mysteries, communicate your feelings for your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend. Tell him or her how you feel. Express your love. Show your affection.

Resolve the mysteries of the past. Discuss your feelings in the present. Make plans for the future. Because of communication, your relationship will be a big success.


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