When you submit a resume to a potential employer, what do you do to distinguish yourself from the other candidates for the position? Most people use a cover letter although I have seen and heard of applicants attaching a post-it note. That’s a gutsy move. It may not always work, but it has worked in at least one case.

Why did the post-it note work? Because it was different. It was out of the ordinary and attention-grabbing. But it wasn’t the post-it note that sealed the deal. It was what the applicant wrote on the post-it note. The message. The content.

And that’s what I’m going to focus on today. Simply submitting a cover letter with your resume isn’t enough to get you an interview. Your cover letter has to be attention-grabbing. It has to be unique.

With that in mind, here are 4 essential characteristics of a good cover letter:

1. Personal, yet professional – Your resume is where you list your professional qualifications for the position to which you are applying. In your cover letter, you can get a little more personal. Not too personal, but let your personality shine through.
2. Fill the holes in your resume – No resume is perfect. A potential employer will have questions. Your cover letter should briefly cover any glaring holes in your resume. Explain them in such a way that it makes sense to the interviewer so that she picks up the phone and calls you in for the interview.
3. Introduces you to your employer – The interviewer will read your cover letter before he reads your resume. That’s your first opportunity to catch his attention. Make a big splash. If your resume does its job, the interviewer will move quickly to the resume.
4. Shows your interest in the position – A resume might be good for several jobs you want to apply for. A cover letter will apply only to one job. It should be customized for the position to which you are applying. Let the interviewer know you are really interested in that position.

A good cover letter gets your foot in the door. The resume keeps that door open. After an interviewer has read them both, he should call you in for an interview. If that happens, you know they’ve done a good job.

If you are not getting calls for interviews, you may need to review the documents and information employers are receiving from you. Those things are what employers are basing their decisions upon regarding which candidates they will hire. Usually, if you are not getting interviews, there are red flags deterring employers from considering you.

These are the resume red flags of death:

1. Gaps in your work history. Really, a few months do not matter, but more than six months is considered significant. If you can show on your resume that you were doing something during this time such as freelance work or furthering your education, you will be better off.

2. Lack of career progression. Career progression is not necessarily expected in all career fields, but in many it is expected that as the years go by, you will attain more important status by job title with increasing responsibilities. If the progression is not there, employers could assume your work is not worthy of promotion to higher levels or that you lack ambition.

3. You were formerly a business owner. One would assume that with all the capabilities required by an owner this would be a plus to your resume, but not necessarily. The reason you are no longer an owner is the issue. An alternative job title for unsuccessful ventures would be Manager or Operations Manager, and if asked why you became unemployed, you can simply state that the business closed.

4. Career changer without experience or education in the new field. Employers may think you are grabbing at straws, desperate for any job you can get or that you lack direction. The reason for the career change is best addressed in your cover letter and should show a genuine interest in the new career field and reasons why the employer should choose you over experienced or educated applicants. Don’t forget to throw in volunteer and hobby experience if appropriate.

5. Lack of clear direction. You are a jack-of-all trades but master of none. You have worked in many industries or many different types of positions that do not relate to one another. Employers look for candidates who have a real interest in their job industry and may question yours.

6. Multiple jobs of short duration. Employers call this “job hopping” and assume you will also leave them quickly, wasting the time they spent searching for, interviewing, and training you. The best type of resume format for this circumstance is a functional resume. However, when employers receive functional resumes, they often wonder what an applicant may be hiding. If you were freelancing or a contractor, list all companies or persons for whom you worked under one section with your freelance or contractor job title as the heading.

7. You never completed a high school diploma or a GED. Employers presume this is evidence of lack of ambition or laziness. If you did not complete high school, leave the education section off your resume completely.

Go through your resume carefully looking for red flags, and decide whether you need to have some re-vamping done. Then continue your job search with renewed energy and hope. Your new job is out there. It’s time to claim it.

In this day and age when employers can go online and find out virtually anything about you, it’s imperative that you think of yourself as more than just a job seeker. You might have to think of yourself as a brand and do some online reputation management.

Google – the largest search engine in the world – recently announced that they are changing the way search works. They’re calling their new product Search plus Your World.

Essentially, what it boils down to is that Google is rolling its search service into its social service, Google+, and creating a personalized experience for every searcher. Now, what’s that got to with your reputation? Everything!

By setting yourself up with a Google+ profile, you can virtually brand yourself online, which could give you a leg up on your job seeking competition. With a Google+ profile that is linked to your personal website, a Facebook page, an active LinkedIn presence, and a Twitter account, you can stretch your fingers and your mind out globally and become a personal brand. How you manage that could be the difference between a job or the unemployment line.

Furthermore, it could make a difference in your salary.

Employers today are looking for people who are Web savvy. If you understand current technology well enough to be a user, then you could be setting yourself up for the future, which is always a good thing.

Online branding is as important today for job seekers as it is for the companies who will be hiring them. Manage your online reputation and you’ll have a rewarding career.

Did you ever consider that the resume you just sent to a prospective company would have computer software that screens your resume before any human person can see it? More companies are using these types of software due to the sheer number of applicants per job opening.

Automated resume screeners or applicant tracking systems are regularly now being used to separate resumes into ones that fit the job and discarding the others. All regardless of how spiffy your resume is.

These programs work just like SEO does for websites, keywords. The screener programs will take keywords from your resume and match it to the job requirements of a position. But wait, it’s not just about keywords in general like accounting or website design.

The program is designed to watch for those generalities. You will need to get more creative about the keywords you use on your resume, even an executive resume. Use keywords that list a number of different job skills.

Make sure you have researched the job position well and if you do have the skills, be sure to list something about the job requirements on your resume.

Again, make sure your years of experience in a related field match the job requirements so you don’t have your resume kicked out.

It is also a good idea to have a resume writing service work out the details for you. They will know just what to do to get past the computer screeners and get your resume in the right hands.

With all the new technology available on the Internet today, there is absolutely no reason anyone should simply stop once a resume has been completed and sent. There is a wide world of other venues just waiting for you to use them to market your personal brand. Blogging is only part of it.

Some may think blogging and job searches are two different things. They are, but they aren’t. There has never been a better time to be able to talk to people, to get the word out about you and your skills than blogging.

Build a blog site that highlights your job skills and your previous jobs. Talk about something every day. Add links to your resume and use the social networks to retweet or repost your site.

There are numerous job boards for you to use to post your resume, whether it’s an executive resume, professional or entry level. And there are people who will retweet your blog post so others can see it. Before long, you have reached thousands of people. Before, you would have sent it to only a few. So, what’s smarter?

Twitter has a very easy way to help individuals with their blog posts and to be able to integrate both together. Facebook does as well, and LinkedIn too.

Now, you can increase your visibility and get more options available to you during your job search. Take a chance and see how much fun it is and how much it will help at the same time.

Before you send your next resume out, give blogging and social media sites a try. You just may have more opportunities than you originally thought.

If you have been out of work for a while, then you know just how stressful a job search can be. It seems as if you apply over and over for weeks on end and still not an interview in site.

One thing to remember, it is very stressful, but at the same time make sure you are doing everything you can for it to be different.

If what you are presently doing is simply not working, change it up. Sit down and think about what you could do differently. Perhaps it’s searching for jobs in a different field altogether. Or maybe for some, you are simply not applying to enough jobs in a week’s time. I know that some will not understand this but there are those who only apply to one job a week. At that rate, in these economic times, you will never find a job.

Take a look at your resume. If you are applying for an executive position, does your resume reflect that? If your resume is more generic, then you will want to spice your resume up. In other words, your resume must reflect your jobs skills. If not, hiring managers will not look twice at a generic resume for an executive position. There are a number of ways to transform a regular resume into a professional or executive resume. If necessary, look at a few resume samples for some ideas.

So, sit down and think about what you need to change. There is no telling how long the job market will stay down and you just may not have the time to wait it out.

One of the dilemmas that many people are now finding out is that maybe they took a job too fast. This is simply because so many have been out of work a long time and needed a job. While this is true, many finding out that maybe they said yes too fast. Something about the job is now a hardship for them. So, be careful and don’t say yes too fast.

It is completely understandable to take the first job offered when you have been out of work a long time. However, for those who are just wanting to get out of a present job, be careful. The grass is not always greener on the other side.

It is very easy in the early stages of job interviews to disregard the little voice in the back of your head that is saying “wait a minute, I don’t like the fact I won’t have any time off for a year,” or “I’m not very good at sales pitches.” Once you disregard your misgivings, accept the job and go to work, you just may be in the same boat or worse than the one you left.

Before you start applying for jobs, take a look at your resume. See where you can make improvements. Make sure all information is up to date. Then, be sure to apply to positions that are really interesting to you and in the field that you are looking for.

Another consideration is that there are a lot less jobs on the market today so it will be hard to use new positions as stepping stones to success. It may be better that you stay where you are, keep looking for the right one and don’t say yes too fast.

Yes, the economy is bad. Yes, jobs can be hard to find. But, what can you do about that, you are telling yourself. You can’t help the economy, but you can help yourself out by marketing yourself in the best possible light so that you will be standing above the rest when it comes to the job you are really passionate about getting.

Because jobs can be few and far between, it is important to search for the jobs that mean something to you, that fit your skills. It will actually make your job search easier when you try for something you already have experience in. Plus, you will have a lot of information to put on your executive resume.

The following are some handy tips that will guide you to success:

• Job Search – Focus only on jobs that you really want. If you mass-post your resume to a lot of sites, chances are you will get interviews but maybe not the ones you really like. Then you will psyche yourself out and take a job you may not like at all while missing the one you really wanted.
• Your Own Blog – In addition to an executive resume, build your online presence with a blog. This is an excellent way to showcase your skills. Start a blog at and write on your experience, the work you have done in the past and jobs you would like to have. You can then link that blog to your social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. This will bring recruiters to your door. Just make sure you are pulling in the right jobs for you.
• Workplace skills - Not only is it important to have the expertise that your resume reflects, you also need to make sure that your personality skills and experience shine as well. Because the job market is tough right now, it is more important than ever that your office demeanor skills are pristine. Make sure you can showcase problem solving skills, conflict resolution skills, a positive attitude and an engaging personality. And dress well for your job, too.

Dust off your resume and clean it up. Highlight the most important aspect of you and your skills. You will be surprised at how many job offers you will start receiving.

You have just seen a posting for a job that you really, really want. Your resume is ready to be emailed, you just need to fine-tune your cover letter and hit “send”. One thing is holding you up…this job is asking YOU to communicate your salary requirements. Exactly how are you going to do that? No need to worry-we offer a few tips to get you on the right track.

• Look at the job title and description of qualifications/requirements. First, do you meet all of the requirements they are asking for? Even if you only have a portion of the qualifications listed in the job description, as long as you have the majority of them, you should still apply for the job.

• Research similar positions that are out there and see what salary ranges are being offered. There are hundreds of job sites (glassdoor.com is a good one) on the internet that post salary ranges for specific positions, and some will even show what those positions make in different geographic areas. If you are able to get compensation information, that would help you as well.

• What are you making at your current job? If you are making $55,000 per year now, it wouldn’t look good to demand $85,000 for the same type of position (unless the new position has more requirements and/or is a managerial role). Yes, you will want to up the ante from what you are making, but you still need to be realistic.

• If the salary range is not listed on the job posting, contact the employer and ask what the range is. If you have a lot of experience, put your salary requirements toward the top of the range. If you are basically new to the field or only have a few years of experience, go mid-range or a little lower. You can always move up the scale once you get your foot in the door and show them what you can do.

• Never list your salary requirements at the beginning of your cover letter! Draw them in with your qualifications and achievements, then end with your salary requirements.

• Once you have done all of your research and have established the salary requirements you’re going to ask for, list those requirements, as well as the compensation package in your current position toward the bottom of your cover letter. You can even let them know that you are willing to negotiate based on your qualifications, benefit structure, job responsibilities, and advancement opportunities.

If you do land an interview, revisit your facts and research and be prepared to discuss your salary requirements during the interview. While communicating your salary requirements may seem awkward at first, presenting your information in a professional manner based on facts and research will impress the employer and hopefully get you the job you are trying for.

Beginning a career, or changing careers might not come as easily to you as it did to your friend/colleague. Having the education for a career, or even the skills needed is one thing—but getting out there and using them is another. Many people know they want a change, but just aren’t sure doing what.

This is the point where knowing how to find a career coach will help you to find the best job for you, period. Finding a career coach is not as hard as it is made out to be.

There are career coaches for all different stages in your life: high school, college, career transition, executive level, and more. On the other hand, there are people who are out of high school and college, or who have never attended school at all and need help analyzing the skills they already have. These folks need to know how to find a career coach in order to have an equal chance at succeeding. People whose education hasn’t progressed to finishing high school, or they have just finished, will need to go to the local employment office in their respective state. Each state employment office will give out the basics that are needed in terms of how to begin the search for a career coach. However, once the state employment office has gotten you started, they will help you find a career coach. This career coach may be someone who simply gets you on the path to a good job, and stays around to help for a while.

Once that career coach is gone, and moving on is something that you want to do, look around through various means to find one. Ask around—people that you know that might currently be using one should be able to guide you. Look on the Internet. Take some time to do a search—and use the term career advisor as well. There are plenty of career coaches—even executive career coaches—available.

Determining the cost that you may pay will be dependent on the materials that you find. Most career coaches now have websites. Look at their website.

Learning how to find a career coach is really not difficult. It simply takes a little bit of thought, and planning. So take the time to do your research, and ask for the help that you need. The effort will be worth it—you will have a better job, and a career that you really want.