Targeted Cover Letters
I just edited a cover letter to add in more specifics about the position and correlate the person's past experience with their needs. Usually, those letters are more effective than the ones that simply talk about your experience.

A cover letter is a marketing tool. The goal of any marketing is to demonstrate that you understand your market's challenges and have the experience and skills to help them meet those challenges.
Thus a great cover letter will make the case for why you (the product or service) are the right person for job (solution) at the company (your market).

A great cover letter will help an inside connection make the case for you, too.From my own experience writing and editing hundreds of cover letters, two great marketing tools for a cover letter are:

* Do the analysis for the employer

* Speak the employer's language Here's a simple way to construct a targeted cover letter: take the lead responsibilities and craft sentences that blend your experience with language from the posting, to show the match between your background and their need.

For example, this is the first responsibility of a job for a facilities and space planner at a financial institution:- Understand key business and market drivers and develop workable long-term and implementation plans that support business needs and meet annual and multi-year portfolio performance targets.

For the cover letter, I take key words and write a sentence something like this:At [name] Investments, I developed and oversaw the implementation of many excellent and workable facility plans that enabled a range of internal clients to increase their business effectiveness and meet their performance goals.I used the words "implementation," "workable," "business" and "performance" from the posting to match my experience to that responsibility. Using the word "workable" was key to because it is an uncommon word that is specific to this posting.

Words like "implementation" and "performance" are likely to be picked up on a key word search. I also could have used the phrase "business and market drivers" because it is clearly a buzz term for the company. In a complete letter, I would probably insert this phrase somewhere else to reinforce that I understand their core business needs and fit in with their culture.Hope this helps!
Posted by oyedeji victor
Labels: "right fit" job, cover letter, culture, how-to, job search, key word, marketing, marketing tool, tool

Becoming a Consultant
I've worked with a few people to develop a consulting "brochure" to help them make some money while looking for work. Generating income is one big benefit of being a consultant. Another is keeping your skills current. A third is having a reason to get up in the morning and having actual work to do.

All that may be obvious. A less obvious benefit to developing a consulting brochure is that you get to look at what you really want to do, what skills you love to use and are really good at, and the value you deliver sufficiently to get paid for it. It doesn't have to be fancy and printed; in fact, it's better as an electronic PDF attachment to an e-mail. You can use it to network, announcing to people that you are launching a consulting practice and they should feel free to pass this on to people who might be interested.

In this way, your name gets out there attached to precisely the kind of work you want to do full-time. You never know what will happen. Just yesterday, one person just landed a full-time job doing exactly what she described doing in her consulting piece.Knowing what you can and want to do is the key to finding your "right fit work" whether that is working at a job or starting your own business.

Being a consultant is your own business.Often, the biggest challenge is shifting your mindset about how you get paid. Employees get a salary and usually work whatever hours they need to get the job done. Consultants get a fee, usually on a retainer or project basis, and sometimes with a daily or hourly rate. Your time and expertise both are resources, and consultants need to understand the relationship between the two. Here are some ways to start thinking about Fee Structure.1. How many hours can you give each client a week or month?

* that determines your ideal number of clients* can have a range of services, some more time intensive than others - all are valuable* no client needs to know what you do for the other

* Managers have multiple clients all the time; as long as you meet the client's needs, they don't care who else you work for (with some bizarre exceptions)2. How much client turnover do you expect? Meaning how long will clients sign up for to work with you? AND how much time off during the year do you need, are you willing to give yourself?

* rule of thumb is to figure 40 weeks of the year working (sometimes people figure 32 or 36 weeks, depending on how constant the clients are)* some of your time has to be focused on marketing your services and getting new clients* your fees are sufficient to cover all your costs; shared among several clients, you can give them a relative bargain AND make what you want to make3. What's the basis on which you want to get paid? Here are some options and what they mean.

* Monthly retainer, where over a year the client gets an average number of hours a month, with some months heavy and others lighter. This is best all around because you and they can count on regular income and expense, so it's great for budgeting. Only caveat is you must produce enough outcomes for the client to be satisfied with this monthly outlay. This is a great method when you are involved in a lot of different projects or areas with a client, including "soft" projects like advising, coaching, and strategizing with a senior person.

* Project basis, where you get paid for producing a specific outcome over a period of time. Usually there are several payments, one upfront to get started, then one or more milestone payments tied to progress, and a final payment to be paid after satisfactory completion. This is the best method for facilitating an entire strategic plan (not simply advising), writing a funding proposal (or indeed any kind of writing where there will be edits), and delivering a specific product within a specific time frame.

* Daily or hourly rate, where you are paid for your work based on an estimated time involved. This kind of payment is best when you are doing something that is pretty straightforward and it is easy to give the client an accurate estimate of how much time is needed. Examples of such services are training, word processing, facilitating a retreat, advising on strategic planning, and one-on-one coaching.So think about yourself as a consultant.
What would you do? What services would you offer? What could you do for a client that they would love to pay you for? How would you talk about what you do?

What would be your 5-second pitch description of what you can deliver to a client? Chances are that's what you want to do in a job, too. You may even discover that you love being in business for yourself.
Posted by oyedeji victor
Labels: "right fit" job, business, consultant, consulting, experience

Creating and Using the Must Have List
Here's a living example of how I guided someone through the questions in the Must Have List, to help his identify what she wants to do next in his work life.What AC WantsSay in policy & ownership

* Recognition and appreciation of her value & skill
* Authority and responsibility to determine path
* Leeway to adjust
* Shared ultimate responsibilityReasonable scheduleCombine practical tasks with relationship building* Be organized
* Talk to people
* Small things toward a much bigger goal – steps toward achieving goalPeople she respects and likesDance (but not ballet)* Possibly more than one companyWell-paid, good benefits
* $100k
* Way to make as much as she wants to afford a house and car and put some away for retirementBased on this list, and looking at where she naturally goes, a few things became apparent. First, it seems that she is very senior in her industry, and that she is the peer of many of the power players.


Second,he is sick of working for people less able than he is.

Third, she craves diverse and varied work. Fourth, he really likes having a substantial positive impact without having the entire financial responsibility for a company on him shoulders. So here's the possibility that emerged:Go into business for herself as independent producer and/or company manager with several clients at a time.

This is a way to make money and have a broader positive impact.Obviously, there is a difference between going into business for yourself and working for a salary. I'll address Becoming A Consultant in another post.