• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Send out 100 of these and you’ll generate around 20 interviews. A big boost to your interview inventory!

Follow Up on the Follow-Up

Assume that even though you followed up on the letter, you haven’t had a return call. No sign of an offeror anywhere. That’s no reflection on you or the letter.

Your letter may simply not be received at the right time. You may hear back some time in the future when the company needs you even more than it does now. You aren’t going to wait around worrying about it. Oodles of offerors await!

Keep track of when you sent the letter, then follow up with a phone call in a week. Do this every week for a month. Then just file it for a month or so and try again.

But with a high-bandwidth broadcast letter as I’ve suggested, it’s likely you won’t be doing a lot of tickler filing.

Because you’ll instantly be getting interview invitations!

Do 10: Faxmailing for Nofailing

While you’re out on the jobjungle trail personally interviewing, your cover letter and resume will be beating two paths to offeror doors!

We call the instant procedure faxmailing. Since we started it, hundreds of jobseekers received interview invitations who wouldn’t have even been considered otherwise.

If you’ve ever been inside a business that has more than one person (and some that have only one), you know what happens. Resumes get piled, filed, written on, spilled on, forwarded to, turned over, separated from, crumpled up, torn up, and thrown out. And those are the ones that arrive!

While I was working at one supposedly well-run company, I bought a three-foot-high traffic signal from a toy store and placed it beside my desk. Some manager would run in breathlessly and say, “Hurry and place this ad in the Sunday Times before the deadline!” Then after the deadline passed, he’d saunter back and say, “Cancel the ad. We’re placing the req on hold.” I’d bend down and turn the signal from green to red. A loud bell would ring.

Faxmailing instantly doubles your chances of having the cover letter and resume result in an interview. If the package is received by the same offeror, you’ve had the benefit of powerful direct-mail repetition. If it’s received by a different offeror, you’re being considered again by someone with totally separate criteria.

If an ad says “mail resume,” call and find out the full name, title, and fax number of the offeror. If it says “fax resume,” call and find out the offeror’s full name, exact address, title, and fax number.

Obvious. Yet nobody else will faxmail but I.I.’s.

Designing the Fax Cover Sheet

Always use a cover sheet for your transmittal. You’re a pro and you’re sending personal information.

It should be on the same letterhead as your cover letter and resume. This will restate your contact info and your image. Be consistent, and the similarity will reduce the chances of the sheet becoming separated from the rest of the transmittal. Include the number of pages so the offeror can verify receipt of all four (including the cover letter and no more than a two-page resume).

The body should say only:

Please deliver immediately. Thank you.

At the bottom, the following words should appear in smaller print:

This transmission is intended for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed and may contain information that is confidential, privileged, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you receive this transmission in error, please return it to the sender via the United States Postal Service. Thank you.

Assembling the Mail Package

Don’t include a copy of your cover sheet with the mailed package. The idea is to have someone else read the contents.

Even though it’s easily folded and stuffed into a Number 10 business-sized envelope, it’s far more likely to be read if placed without folding in a 9 × 12-inch full-sized one. A real subtlety, but even the better letter (Do 8) and best resume (Do 5) are DOA if they’re not read. People pay bills with regular envelopes. Oversized