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This site is getting an increasing number of hits from people searching for advice on CVs and Cover Letters.

Please read my article on putting a CV / Resume together and comment if you agree or disagree with my advice.

In regards to cover letters, I will put my list of Do’s and Don’t’s below and add some links to examples of what I think are going to give you a better chance.

Do’s

• Always attach a cover letter to your CV or Resume
• Make sure you address it to the relevant person in the business
• Use key words from the advertisement in your letter
• Address both the Skills and Experience Requirements identified in the Ad
• Put the most convenient and accessible ways to contact you ie Mobile and Email
• Space it out and make it easy to read
• Differentiate between sending it to a recruiter or the company itself
• Make it one page
• Make it unique to you and what you can offer
• Include call to action – Request an Interview, Tell them you will call to follow up in 2-3 days
• Be confident

Don’t’s

• Make spelling mistakes
• Address it to a different role or company or person by mistake
• Send a generic cover letter
• Make it more than one page
• Include unnecessary filler such as “Please find my resume enclosed”
• Explain why the role will be good for you
• Waste the first paragraph with filler, make an impact so they keep reading

So here are some example templates I have put together;

Cover Letter No 1

Cover Letter No 2

Please tell me if there are any mistakes and email me any improved versions.

Thanks

Tim

Posted under Jobs

SEEK announced a profit of $32M profit for the Six months to Dec 08 on a turnover of $109M. What a business! Wish I had some shares as they rose 15% on the announcement as the market feared much worse.

It is plain to see that SEEK has a dominant place in the online Job space with their competitors MyCareer and Career One an increasingly distant 2nd and 3rd.

Joint chief executive Paul Bassat made some interesting comments;

“One thing we are seeing with the downturn in the economy is further acceleration of the migration from print to online, with online now capturing 79 per cent of all job ads.”

As a long term investment, I see some problems with the SEEK business model, primarily, barriers to entry and secondarily, Web 2.0 and 3.0.

These are discussions for another time though.

Tim

Posted under Jobs, News, Uncategorized

SEEK is undoubtedly Australia’s biggest Job Site with a claim of 207,472 jobs online. With less than 50,000 jobs, MyCareer is a distant second.

But how reliable is the number of individual jobs posted on SEEK and how closely does this number equate to actual individual positions within individual companies?

There are thousands of ads on SEEK that fall into the duplicate or phantom categories;

• Multiple listings of the same role by the same company or recruiter
• One role being listed by the company and a recruiter
• One role being listed by more than one recruiter
• CV collecting general listings ie “Calling all Brand Managers” etc.

Now SEEK loves this because it increases their revenues. As the competition for Talent intensifies and the lack of a strong alternative the candidates will continue to go to SEEK as the first option. Unfortunately they will have to sift through this maze of duplicate roles and opportunities.

Posted under Jobs