Don't Send a Resume and Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job

Don't Send a Resume and Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job, by Jeffrey J. Fox. 2001. New York, N.Y.: Hyperion. 172 pages, Hard Back, $16.95

Intended Audience: A

Major Headings from Table of Contents:

Why Resumes Don't Sell; Skip the Personnel Department; The Job Seeker's Marketing Mix; Always Dollarize Yourself; How to Research a Target Company; No One Cares About Your Job Objective; The Job Interview as a Sales Call; Show Something on Every Interview; Always Ask for the Order; The Job seeker's Workday; Never Panic.

How is the book most useful for its intended audience?

It shows clear, innovative, executable action plans for targeting companies, accessing decision makers, and landing a great job.

The top five things you learned from reading this book:

1)A resume, although necessary later in the process, is not the tool of choice for job search.

2) Successful job search uses the same techniques used by sales and marketing professionals to sell products.

3) Researching targets is essential to success and must be done before writing resumes and seeking interviews.

4) Value and differentiation sell, but only when tied to the target's need.

5) The hiring manager is the customer, and it's all about the customer.

You don't need a great resume to land a great job! In fact, according to Jeffrey J. Fox, if today's job seeker conducts her job search using the same techniques that sales and marketing professionals use to conduct marketing campaigns, she may land a great job without using any resume at all.

In Don't Send a Resume and Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job, Fox asks the reader to ignore conventional wisdom and do what really works-conduct a creative, deeply researched, targeted, proactive, organized, personal marketing campaign. And he tells the reader, in brief, easy-to-grasp chapters, just how to do it. This book is not for the reader who is satisfied with the status quo, with the low-return activities of posting resumes online, answering ads, waiting for recruiters to call, and asking friends if they know who is hiring. Rather, Don't Send a Resume is a clear job search roadmap for the reader who wants more, and who is prepared to do what is needed to get it.

The Don't Send a Resume philosophy and action plan is built on a core group of sales and marketing concepts, the most important of which is that marketing and selling are business disciplines-disciplines that most people have not learned. Yet these are exactly the disciplines that create the best chance of landing a great job.

Fox, a winner of Sales and Marketing Management Magazine's "Outstanding Marketer Award," looks to the strategies used by great marketing companies: invest in innovation, create differentiated products, tailor them to fill specific customer needs, and package and promote the products with clarity.

These same concepts, translated into job-seeker terms look like this: stay ahead of the curve in terms of knowledge and thought leadership, sell bottom-line value and differentiation, tailor all communications to the very specific needs of target companies, and understand the optimal ways to deliver to decision makers a consistent and compelling message of benefit.

Fox begins this job-search-as-marketing tutorial where most job seekers begin - with the resume. He states, "Selling yourself depends on getting noticed, standing apart, being different from everybody else." He continues, "Your resume has two purposes: 1) to get you an interview; and 2) to reaffirm in a tailored way, after your interview how hiring you solves the hirer's problem."

Fox advises job seekers to stop relying on a resume as their prime job search tool and to start using a "job-getting blueprint" based on proven sales and marketing techniques:

1. Target and research organizations

2. Write impact letters (rather than resumes) to get interviews

3. Pre-plan interviews (and every subsequent interview) like sales calls

4. Dollarize potential value to the targets

5. Bring something helpful to the company to the interview

6. Conduct a needs analysis during the interview

7. Write an individual resume for each target

8. Use the resume as interview follow-up sales literature

9. Send a thank-you note within a day

Fox counsels skipping the very place where job seekers think they should connect for a job-the personnel department. Fox asserts, "The job seeker will be hired or rejected by the people for whom and with whom he or she would work" Fox suggests that job seekers avoid the gatekeepers in personnel and target the "person who will recognize and need the value you will bring to the organization."

A cornerstone of the Don't Send a Resume approach is the translation of a corporate "marketing mix" into actionable personal marketing strategies-including these terms and translations:

Advertising = Asking for word-of-mouth recommendations.

Database Marketing = Building a "people file" of articles, clippings, e-mails, phone calls, etc.

Direct Marketing = Sending a value-tailored letter to the person with the power to hire.

Lead Generation = Identifying companies; getting introductions or referrals.

Market Research = Learning everything possible about the target company, industry, and people.

Media Plan = Using the Internet for contact and response. Using a personalized website for visibility.

Pricing = Showing economic value and dollarizing impact.

Publicity = Writing and speaking in areas of expertise. Building relationships with reporters.

Segmentation = Defining and analyzing categories (e.g., location, size, industry, public, private).

Selling = Productizing and promoting one's candidacy. Studying books on selling.

Trade Shows = Visiting target companies at job fairs and tradeshows.

In chapter after chapter of powerful advice, Fox shows the job seeker how to think and work like a marketer - how to productize and dollarize value, research companies, locate and pitch to decision makers, compose interview-attracting impact letters, write resumes for individual targets, use resumes to solidify post-interview impressions, avoid the common pitfalls of interviewing, write great thank-you letters, dress and act for success, stay calm, close the sale, and substitute the word "I" with the word "you" in job search communications, because, as in sales, it's all about the customer.

The chapters on researching companies are some of the best in the book and are replete with traditional and innovative ways to uncover information about targeted companies and their products, direction, culture, and challenges. Fox suggests contacting suppliers, talking with sales people, analyzing company and competitor sales literature, and many other techniques. The job seeker's goal is to know more than most of the employees, to start thinking like an employee, and to start asking herself, "How can I improve this company? How can I grow sales, increase profits, cut costs, speed up innovation?" Her answers will help define her interview-generating impact letter and sales call (interview).

Don't Send a Resume can be used by job seekers (and their coaches) to develop actionable strategies that, when executed well, will give them the best chance for success. Job seekers who have the vision, creativity, and perseverance to use Fox' innovative methodologies will be fully prepared to outpace others in a highly competitive employment marketplace.

Reviewed by Deborah Wile Dib