The first steps to getting a job is to be ‘remembered’ in your job search. Here is how.

Hiring managers hear the same things every day from every candidate. How can you get noticed? How can you be different?

It is easy.

Make the effort to do things other people (your competition) won’t do.

With the internet and email it is harder and harder to present yourself to potential employers in a way that will make you get noticed especially if you act like and do the same things everyone else does.

If your plan is to just send your resumé to a potential employer and wait for a response… ‘good luck!’.

Your job search is a marketing problem. You are really marketing yourself to the world you are trying to enter. The first principle of marketing is ‘awareness’. Awareness and to be remembered is your challenge.

Here are 13 simple ideas that take no effort to make you stand out and be remembered.

Why will they work? Because your competition probably won’t do them.

1. Always send a cover letter with your resumé.
2. Always send your resumé and cover letter addressed to a real person, not, ‘to whom it may concern’.
3. Send a hard-copy of your resumé and cover letter. It is easier to delete an email than it is to throw away paper.
4. Send your resumé and cover letter by courier…it makes it look important and it will get opened.
5. Always call a few days after you have send your resumé and cover letter to confirm receipt. This will give you your first opportunity to speak to a real person or to leave a professional, courteous message.
6. If you don’t get an interview or you get a rejection letter, alway respond with a thank-you letter asking them to keep you in mind.
7. If you do get an interview, always call the day before to confirm the interview.
8. When you enter the interview be sure to make the appropriate handshake and thank the interviewer right away for their time and the opportunity to meet with them.
9. Be prepared to answer all the obvious interview questions and have some appropriate questions to ask the interviewer about the job and the company. If you don’t ask any questions you can be certain you are not going to get the job.
10. At the end of the interview always thank the interviewer and tell them that you ‘want the job’. If you don’t tell them this, their conclusion may be that you don’t.
11. Follow up each and every interview with a thank-you letter or email. Again, if you don’t, they may conclude you are not interested in the job.
12. If you do get the job, be sure to tell everyone you have met during your job search that you have been successful.
13. If you don’t get the job, always send a note expressing your disappointment but that you hope they will keep you in mind for future opportunity.

Every one of these points will make you stand out and be remembered which is the key to job-search success.

If you are asked specifically to send your resumé by email …

1. Make sure you have an intelligent email address showing your full name if possible.
2. Put your name in the ‘subject’ line.
3. Make certain your resumé file attachment has your full name.
4. Put your cover letter in the body of your email or the first page of your resumé. Do not send your cover letter as a separate attachment…it will never get read.

Common knowledge? Of course.

Common practise?

If you want to be remembered you need to be better than your competition.