Q TIPS:
Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
Job-hunting tips from the April 23, 2001 issue of QuintZine.
Follow-up should occur at more than one stage of the job
search. Here's a tip for following up an
e-mailed resume submission to a company's Web site. In their
syndicated column, Kate Wendleton and Dale Dauten advise
mailing a hard-copy version of your resume and cover letter
as a follow up to an online submission through the employer's
site.
"As it nears the time to actually make the decision
about whom to interview," Dauten writes, "paper has the
advantages: Managers can easily take a stack of resumes
to lunch or on a bus; they can circle items of interest or make
notes right on the resume; the person leading the hiring
can sit with colleagues and look together at the candidates'
qualifications; and finally, many hiring managers will use
resumes in interviews." Dauten adds that mailing a paper version ensures
that the resume will arrive looking the way you intended, "while
having both versions circulating can only improve your chances
of your resume ending up in front of the right pair of eyes."
Another follow-up tip from the Kate & Dale files: Responding
to a reader who received a rejection letter after an interview
but then saw the same job advertised again, Dauten and Wendleton
suggested the reader again contact the employer. The jobseeker,
Dauten notes, could say something like this: "I saw your ad, and I
still think I could make a contribution in that position. I guess
I failed to make that clear when we spoke before. I'd like to start
over and apply again."
Wendleton adds that if the response is
positive, you should ask probing questions to get at exactly
what type of person the company wants to hire. That way you
can plan an approach to a second-chance interview that targets
what the employer wants.
Most Fortune 1000 companies allow
telecommuting but very few employees work from
home, and even fewer do so on a full-time basis.
Cutter Consortium reports that 87 percent of the
companies it surveyed allowed telecommuting, but
53 percent said fewer than 5 percent of their
employees worked from home. None of the
respondents said that more than half of their
employees worked from home.
Two thirds of those polled also said that their
telecommuting employees only work from home for
one day each week. Cutter says that most
employees telecommute only if they cannot travel
to work because of bad weather or a personal or
family emergency.
The respondents said the biggest advantages of
telecommuting were that workers had more
flexibility, companies could hire workers that might
not otherwise be available, and that less time and
money is spent on commuting.
The biggest disadvantages cited were the belief of
managers that workers need supervision, security
concerns, and the conflicts that can arise between
an employee's work and home life.
Follow-up should occur at more than one stage of the job
search. Here's a tip for following up an
e-mailed resume submission to a company's Web site. In their
syndicated column, Kate Wendleton and Dale Dauten advise
mailing a hard-copy version of your resume and cover letter
as a follow up to an online submission through the employer's
site.
