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I'm at the onset of looking for my next opportunity and wanted to get the thoughts of the MT community regarding sending out resumes and following up.

1) How effective is it to send a direct mail cover letter / resume to a hiring manager? (is it frowned upon to do so via e-mail?) Is either medium more effective than the other?

2) Follow-up via phone or email or both?

Background:

I've been working my way through John Lucht's Rites of Passage and was curious as to what the MT community thought about his recommendation to send out 1,000+ direct mail cover letters and resumes to your top companies. In this day, why not use email? Is hiring manager more likely to read a hard copy document than something they receive electronically?

To the second part, I can only imagine how strapped for time decision-makers are at the companies I'm contacting and as I see it, a phone call has the possibility to be really disrupting. I suppose what I'm ultimately searching for is how to get myself in front of someone with the authority to hire me without interrupting or otherwise stalking them.

Care to provide your thoughts or words of advice?

asteriskrntt1's picture

I am guessing you are a high S and don't like to make waves and tries to accommodate everyone, which can't happen.  Some people like letters, some like email, some like phone calls, some love rules and won't look at anything unless it comes from an official HR system.  You have no way of knowing until you try.  Thus, the recommendation of 1000 contacts.  Be it letters, faxes, email or whatever, the key component here is taking action.  Do 1000 of some combination of the above and you will likely get some bites.  Is it hard work? You betcha.  Is anything easy in this economy?

jasondgross's picture

I haven't taken the DISC profile test yet, but it sounds like I may be a high S. At any rate I think your suggestion is right on in that it doesn't necessarily matter how you do it, but that you start. I think it's time I started.