It reminded me of a few years ago when working as a Materials Mgr. for a manufacturer in central Oklahoma. Each manager was expected to be his own “personnel manager”. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but the rural area’s applicant pool for various jobs was ghastly. To be cliche, it was the proverbial cesspool. You’d pick the best candidate you could find, they would work faithfully for roughly 3 weeks, go on a drinking binge for three days – repeat once, and then get terminated.
So be glad that you at least have some candidates that can use a computer, read, use spell check…
I wish you all the luck and thank you for the much needed trip down memory lane.

Dave

You’re wrong word is #8 in bold… I was trying to be ironic. Obviously it should read “Your wrong word is #8 in bold” as she had written “Your hired.” It’s my attempt at humour and wordplay – too much tongue in my cheek perhaps.

@ Lisa

I agree with everything you said. A lot of the ads, and I’m not talking about the $1-2 per post ads, lack in details to the extent that it’s a shot in the dark. It’s the equivalent of one of my students giving me a paper lacking in details – they knew what they meant, they had all the details in their head, it just never made it to the paper. I’m not referring to Spike or Deb’s ads, since I never saw them.

When I answer ads online I go out of my way to make sure I follow directions, but perhaps I need to include more information then the potential employer asks for?
Usually my reply is short and to the point; if I have experience in a certain area, I mention that and I include a sample and/or links to my blog and a resume if needed. I try to sound excited about the possibility of getting the gig even though there may be 100s of people applying.

So far, I get many more writing gigs then blogging gigs and I’m not sure why.

“Two blogs per day at 200-300 words” is a great start, but are you saying that I just write and post? Or do you expect research and interviews? Will you be reviewing, editing, and expecting revisions? It could take me anywhere from 1 hour to 4+ hours to achieve the same goal, depending upon those “small details.”

I hesitate to suggest even an hourly rate, since the reader doesn’t know how quickly I work. My $50 per hour may translate to exactly the same actual fee as another person’s $20 per hour. But no one is going to know that based on a casual review of a cover note!

Lisa

Thanks for the post here, as it may save me from making a horses’ rear out of myself by ranting over at my own blog. For a while, at least.

Steven: as for the negative aspect, that’s true. It’s hard to come up with a “what to do to get the job” because every employer is different (as you can see from Deb’s and my criteria). It is a lot easier to show how avoiding some simple errors will help a lot, though.

I think we both summed it up pretty well. What to do to get the job? Follow instructions!

“And, you might want to proofread this article. You’re wrong word is at #8 in bold.”

Unless Deb has already corrected a typo or I’m misunderstanding Steven, this is what I’m seeing on my screen:

“The “You’re hired!” pitch”

This seems like the correct use of “you’re” to me. “You’re” is the contraction for “you are,” as in “You are hired.”

When I was doing sales, I got into a slump. I started asking myself, “What am I doing wrong?” So, I decided to make a list. When you do sales long enough, you know when you ‘have’ and ‘have lost’ a potential transaction. Before long, my slump started going from bad to worse, and for the first time in my sales career I started making the hourly wage rather than the commission.

I then made a turnabout decision: I wouldn’t log every error I made, rather I logged every positive thing that I did which resulted in a sale. The end result was that my two week sales drought ended, and I was back in the game.

What’s my point? My point is that I noticed in both the Scrawlbug and this post is that you’re both focused on what people did wrong, albeit with a few asides which mention in passing, and lacking in detail, of those few who made it on the short list.

A good way to go about giving positive advice would be to elaborate a bit (or a lot) more extensively on #8. In fact, a whole article on the issue of how to apply successfully for the blob jog would be infinitely more useful to your blogs’ followers. For example, you could possibly think of 8 things that they did and how they did it.

And, you might want to proofread this article. You’re wrong word is at #8 in bold. And for the record, someone who is good at applying for a job is not necessarily the best person for the job. Conversely, the best person for the job is not necessarily the one who is good at applying for the job. Another piece of advice, take it or leave it obviously, is never to hire a friend. A friend will always see him or herself as a peer rather than an employee, as you also will. So, making those Machiavellian decisions about what’s best for the company in terms of their employment will be hampered by your relationship with them.

Cheers.

I have to say that number 5 is the biggest killer for me: people who don’t follow instructions make it incredibly difficult to even give them an equal chance. Combine that with the first (providing a URL or vague info that I have to go and check, rather than an in-mail sample) and you’ve got a single-click response. Delete.

It’s strange being on the other side of the mirror, isn’t it?

(By the way, that’s “You’re hired”)
(And if you want to compare notes, mine was here (don’t like linking in-lkine, always think it makes me look pushy).)