…lately, I’ve been running into some small issues that could make a big difference in getting interviews … so, pay attention.
Make sure your phone number is on the top of your resume, easily found next to your name and e-mail address…three or four times a day, I get a resume with a phone number of the candidate at the bottom of the resume or the bottom of the first page of the resume…twice last week, I received resumes with a phone number, name and e-mail address literally written along the side of the resume so you actually had to turn the page horizontally to read the phone number… be aware that your resume is “scanned” by the reader… if the reader sees something it likes, you want your phone number to be so accessible they can dial you up immediately… don’t make people search for your important contact information… they’ll simply quit and move on to the next resume if it’s too hard…
Your voicemail… make sure you confirm the number of your cell phone AND your name with your recorded voicemail message… you want to be sure that people know exactly who they are reaching…be sure to record your voicemail message in a quiet place…not while driving…not while in a Starbucks … not only is it unprofessional, but the caller may not call back if they can’t understand exactly who they’ve reached…(by the way, many of us keep resumes for specific types of people for many years… from my own experience, if I call a phone number that is more than two or three years old and I’m not sure the phone number is of the person I’m trying to reach, i.e. they don’t state their name in the voicemail message, I may not leave a message and simply hang up…)
Leaving a voicemail… make sure the voicemails you leave for people you’ve interviewed with are also direct, to the point and short… remember that most hiring authorities have near full voicemails and they have their finger on the delete button to eliminate as many of them as they can…while hearing your voicemail, they’re focused on either one of the ones previous to yours that is highly important or an important one they are anticipating… you need to be sure they can remember the message you leave so they can call you back…( for the best script you could use in leaving a voicemail, go to www.thejobsearchsolution.com.) Also, when leaving a message be sure to state your call back phone number twice and do it s-l-o-w-l-y so the person listening to it gets a chance to grab a pen and write it down … the reason you state it twice is because, especially from a cell phone, there’s often distortion of one or two of the digits you’re speaking … and it certainly doesn’t hurt to repeat your name twice, once in the beginning of the voice mail and again at the end … again, compensating for distortion
These are little things but they may keep you from getting interviewed.
