Three Habits Which Will Ruin Your Chances Of Being Hired

Are you struggling to find a job and unsure of the reason why? Perhaps, you are using some archaic habits which are being looked down upon by potential employers. Stay current, with the best practices for job searching and ensure that you are on the top of every employers list!

“Is it still correct to use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ in a cover letter?” a reader asked in an e-mail.

“That isn’t such a great idea,” I wrote back. “No one uses ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ anymore, unless they’re actually writing to a madam, such as Heidi Fleiss.” I’m not sure my e-mail correspondent caught the joke.

It’s not that using out-of-date job-search approaches brands you as older. Rather, it’s that using no-longer-in-fashion job search techniques marks you as out of touch.

Employers pay us, in part, to be aware of trends and phenomena that affect the workplace. Working people (and job-seekers) should follow the news, keep a bead on our changing world, and stay abreast of changes in business, technology, politics, and cultural shifts. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation. If a job-seeker isn’t curious and perceptive enough to notice that the last time he saw “Dear Sir or Madam” on a letter was around the time Chevy Chase impersonated Gerald Ford falling down the stairs, how will he notice what’s changing in his field?

Here are three formerly useful, now dangerous job-search approaches that hark back to an earlier age. Get them out of your job-search repertoire, pronto.

1. Dedicated Résumé Paper and Envelopes. Don’t use nubbly beige or pink or stone-greyrésumé paper, or any other kind of special paper or matching envelopes, in your job search. Dedicated-use résumé paper is a 1980s artifact. Most of your résumés will reach employers electronically, in which case the employer will print it out. For résumés you print on your own, use plain white bond paper. (If you want to use a heavier stock than usual, do it.) Keep résumé formatting simple. You don’t need horizontal lines or curlicues, unless you are yourself a creative person, in which case you can go hog-wild with artistic expression. What matters in your résumé is its content. You won’t win any points with a résumé or cover letter on fancy paper that whispers, “I have a stack of Christopher Cross cassettes in my car.”

2. Creaky Cover Letter Language. When I read “Dear Sir or Madam,” I instantly get a picture of a person wearing white gloves and carrying tiny mother-of-pearl opera glasses in her handbag. Don’t get me wrong—I have opera glasses and I wish white gloves were still in style. They’re not. Never use “Dear Sir or Madam”—or its cousin, “To Whom It May Concern”—in a cover letter for the same reason. In 2012, companies are porous. We can find our hiring manager’s name in two seconds using LinkedIn. We are obliged to try: Correspondence that begins “To Whom It May Concern” means death to a job search. “Dear Hiring Manager” is just as bad. Find the name of the relevant person or lob a résumé into the Black Hole and skip the cover letter altogether.

3. Here’s Why You Should Hire Me. People get hired when a hiring manager believes, intellectually and emotionally, that the person sitting in front of him or her can do the job. It isn’t a linear process. That’s not great news to people who believe that power comes from their degrees and certifications because those folks are often more comfortable pushing their skills out in front of them than sitting and talking with a manager in a way that inspires confidence and trust. But tons of job-search books and articles nonetheless encourage job-seekers to grovel and beg, as though any manager has ever been convinced of an applicant’s heft and power by hearing the applicant say: “Please hire me—I’ll do anything you want!”

Groveling doesn’t work, which is why compiling and mailing goofy lists such as “here are 10 reasons you should hire me” are terrible things to do. When we write a post-interview thank-you note or e-mail, we should use it to continue the substantive conversation that started during a job interview, not to mewl and beg for a job. We never, ever want to construct lists of reasons an employer should hire us. We won’t convince anyone of our value that way. If the reasons to hire don’t come through in an interview, you’ve already missed the boat.

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