A Thorough Job Search
on April 17, 2009
at 6:00 am
I’ve heard this stupid advice over and over again, and what I’ve discovered in my real-life job search is that you can’t afford to waste time focusing like a laser on just one or two companies every week. Customizing your cover letter (and maybe your resume) is fine, but you can’t let that get in the way of contacting as many employers as humanly possible — by phone, mail, or whatever means necessary. You honestly don’t know where the right job will be until you make that connection, and if you waste all your time tweaking your resume for each and every potential employer, you’ll miss out.
in my experience, the only things you need to /really/ focus on are the /types/ of workplaces you’re shooting for, in this case, Print/prepress, graphic design, etc. hell, even signwriters are generally up one’s alley, it’s often good karma to not only have a fair few resumes & cover letters (give that printer all she’s got c’pn!) but it’s also handy to have numerous copies of previous work, or one’s portfolio. it’s always nice to not only have proof that you’ve done the work, but have something to show for it as well.
the jobsearch folks here (seriously, look up australia’s job network), taught me that a general resume for what you’re going for should suffice (a general resume, an IT resume, and a Graphics-design resume, for example) then go for sheer volume cold-canvassing anybody with so much as an inkling of a job vacancy.