When applying for a new job, it is essential that you study carefully the job description. What are the duties and responsibilities that the job requires? What are the required qualifications and the "preferred" requirements?
Too few people study job descriptions and they apply without adjusting their resume, cover letter, and applications accordingly.
To be a successful candidate, you need to understand exactly what the job description requires. Then you need to use certain other tools including a word cloud maker and Jobscan.co to help you make your resume a tighter fit for the job you are applying for.
When applying for a new job, it is essential that you study carefully the job description. What are the duties and responsibilities that the job requires? What are the required qualifications and the "preferred" requirements?
Too few people study job descriptions and they apply without adjusting their resume, cover letter, and applications accordingly.
To be a successful candidate, you need to understand exactly what the job description requires. Then you need to use certain other tools including a word cloud maker and Jobscan.co to help you make your resume a tighter fit for the job you are applying for.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Hi, this is Kitty Boitnott of"Teachers in Transition" and welcome back for another episode of the podcast"Teachers in Transition" and the YouTube channel. I just realized today that I have already messed up my rotation of one week of stress management strategies and another week of career transition because apparently I did the last two episodes on stress management. So. My apologies if anybody's paying attention and you were expecting career transition information last week. Um, I'm going to make up for it today with this particular episode talking about the importance of paying attention to a job description if you want to be successful in applying for a new job or making a career transition. And the reason I think this is important is that I think people often underestimate the importance of really digging deep and understanding what is it that a company is looking for in a candidate when they put out a particular job description. Now, I will be the first one to say that I think very often job descriptions are written terribly. And some times it is possible that the person writing up the job description has thrown in everything but the kitchen sink as far as what they would like to have in an ideal client. And it may be impossible for any one individual to meet and match all of the requirements and all of the um, basic things that this particular job description calls for. With that said, on the other side, I think candidates underestimate the importance of paying attention to what's in that job description, and they do that at their own peril. I think that it's really important that when you see a job that you think you might be interested in, you should study it carefully,. Pay attention to what the basic requirements are. Those required qualifications, if you will. If you don't meet those basic requirements, you might as well save your time. It's unlikely that you'll be given a serious look. On the other hand, if you have an"in" with the HR department in some way, you can get a recommendation by someone that you know, someone who works in the company and they'll cut you a little bit of slack because you're coming to them recommended, it may be that you'll slide by some of those basic requirements. You won't be able to do that. However, if you are applying through the electronic portal called the Applicant Tracking System, the Applicant Tracking System is going to, is a program that's designed to sort and manage all of the applications that come through its electronic portal on any given day and depending on the size of the company or the organization, let's say the United States government, just as an example, there may be hundreds if not thousands of applications on any given day that are uploaded from all over the world for some of the jobs that have been posted. The applicant tracking system is tasked with scanning each resume, each application, each cover letter, and determining if there are enough keywords that match the keywords in the job description to make the candidate a viable candidate or a strong fit for the particular job that it has been assigned to match. That's where you need to be paying attention to keywords that are in the job description that you want to be sure to include in your resume, your cover letter, and your application. Now you don't want to get too cute about it that that is, you don't want to just insert keywords willy-nilly, anywhere and everywhere, whether they're pertinent for you or not. That would be like shooting yourself in the foot. But anywhere that you can legitimately and honestly insert keywords that are lifted from the job description to include in your resume, cover letter, and application, you should do that. Uh, there a tool online that you can use to help you determine if you're, uh, up to an 80% match for the job, which is what they recommend. It's called Jobscan.co. Uh, I'm not an affiliate. I don't get any commissions. If you sign up for it or if you check it out that Jobscan.co uses the same type of algorithm to sort through your resonate that you would upload and, and paste into the program along with the job description that you're applying for. And it will do the work for you and tell you what's missing from your resume that you need to include in order to make yourself a tighter fit. Jobscan.co. Check it out. The other thing you need to be paying attention to is, um, you can use a, a word cloud program like"Tagcloud." What you would want to do is to copy and paste the job description and put it into the form for tag cloud or whatever, whatever word cloud forum format you might want to use--program. Most of them are free. When you run the program on that job description, what you will get within a few seconds are, would be a word cloud. You know what a word cloud as it's a bunch of words thrown in together, but the bigger the word in the word cloud, the more often that word has been used in that, that verbiage, that job description. Those big words are keywords that have been used frequently in the job description that you want to attempt, if you can, to include in your resume cover letter and application. If you can create a fit between yourself, your application, your cover letter, and your job, your resume, and that job description, you up significantly, the chances of you being called at least for a telephone interview. I'll talk in an in another episode down the road about how to prepare for a telephone interview as well as how to prepare for a face-to-face interview. But for now what you're trying to do is get your information to someone and make the case why you are a viable candidates and intrigued them enough that they want to learn more about you and they offer at least a telephone interview. You know, I frequently hear from my clients, I've applied for all these different jobs and I never even hear a word, what am I doing wrong? And more often than not, what I suspect is happening is that they aren't using the tools that are available to them and they aren't remembering that they need to tweak their resume for every job they apply for it. So here's the second thing I want you to take away from this episode. You should have a resume from which you will work and tweak for future job applications. And the one resume that you hang on to is a template. It is not the resume that you necessarily submit when you're applying for the job. It is a template that you tweak and move keywords around and delete on occasion a t ransferable skill for a different t ransferable skill that's mentioned specifically in the job description. That's what you want to do in order to increase your ability to make the case for why you are a viable candidate. In spite of perhaps not having all the experience that they may be looking for. You at least need to make the case that you have strong, hard t ransferable skills that you have developed over the course of your teaching career if you're a teacher or whatever healthcare, whatever the career is that you've been in as you look to translate those skills into a new endeavor or a new career path. Don't underestimate the importance of the Applicant Tracking System. Don't overlook the tool that TagCloud or some other word cloud program offers and helping you to identify those keywords that you need to include in your resume and don't overlook the fact that if you are applying for a job that you need to tweak the resume template that you have to work from to make it a tight fit, as tight--as possible--to the job application. I've heard recruiters say that they won't look at anyone who isn't at least 60 to 70% match, which means you need to get at least to 60% using that Jobscan program I mentioned earlier, Jobscan recommends that you try to get to an 80% match. And what's beautiful about the Jobscan program is that it will offer specific things that you can do to up your percentage fit. So is this an extremely important tool? And one that I think is indispensable when you are in the midst of making your resume a good fit for the job that you're applying for. So to sum up, don't forget to study carefully the job description. Use a word cloud program to identify the keywords that you need to include in your resume, your cover letter, and your application. And don't overlook using Jobscan.co to help you improve your viability as a candidate for the job that you're applying for. As well as not forgetting to tweak your resume for every single job you apply for. And that's it for today. If you have any questions, please send them to me either through the comments on"Teachers in Transition," the podcast or through the"Teachers in Transition" YouTube channel or email me@kittyboitnott@gmail.com. I'd love to hear from you. If you're on the podcast, please subscribe and offer a review, share with your friends so that they know that there's a is available to them, that I'm offering strategies for managing teacher stress and burnout as well as career transition from teaching or whatever career path you happen to be stuck in at the moment, transitioning into a career path that will feel more fulfilling and satisfying moving forward. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you again next week. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. Hi, I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."