Creating a Cover Letter

When you look at the image to the left, what do you see? Do you see someone hard at work? A normal day at the office? Or perhaps the perfect picture you'd want to show a potential employer?

Today, we will undertake the task of creating cover letters--self-advertisements for your potential employers that will let them know instantly that they needed to have you in for an interview--yesterday.

The cover letter, which traditionally accompanies your resume is sometimes the only chance you have to make an employer an offer s/he can't refuse. The way we'll think about our cover letter today is as a self-advertisement in written form with three parts:

1. An Introduction
2. A Sales Pitch
3. A Call to Action

(Workshop) Job Searching on the Internet

When you're traveling the
Information Superhighway,
are you in hyperspeed or
the slow lane?

Last week, we reviewed using the newspaper and telephone as a way to find and research jobs. In a similar way, the internet can serve as a very useful way to search and find job openings; however, many people can get mired in the large number of search results they may find.

To make the most of our internet job hunting, there are a few pointers to take into account first. Otherwise, rather than zooming to your express exit on the information superhighway, you could end up winding along a long and uneventful detour route.

Basics of Job Searching
As we learned last week, there are a few basic things that you can do to take hold of your job hunting. The first is to know what you are looking for.

Knowing what you are looking for means more than having a salary-range in mind for a position. It means knowing what you'd be willing to do for how much, where, when, and for how long. Because when we use the internet, we are able to search through want ads based on the things we want out of a job, and to save time and energy, we should do just this so that we get straight to the jobs that apply to us and avoid dud search results.

Below is a listing of some excellent web resources for web-based job hunting. Some of the sites, including the New York Job Bank, allow you to input resume data and use these resumes to narrow down searches to jobs that appeal to your resume. The NYJB also allows you to create a "Job Scout" that will check the listings on a schedule and email you results that respond to your criteria.

New York State Job Bank (Lots of great search options)
New York State Department of Labor Site (Links to many job-related sites)
Not-for-Profit Job Listings (Lots of work, but many are not entry-level)

About Craigslist
Craigslist is another great search engine for jobs that will be even more specific to part-time or temporary work in the New York City area, but because this engine is not regulated, anyone can put a posting for anything online. Because of this, the people who are in charge of Craigslist stress that it is important for users to exercise extreme judgement when making any communication online. Many of the same things to watch for when we use the classified pages in the newspaper apply to when we use Craigslist. To summarize:

1. Never trust a potential employer that expects you to pay for training.
   This is a common trap that pyramid-schemes use to get money. They claim that you'd be perfect for their organizations, often without knowing much more about you than your name and age. Any real job wouldn't have you pay for anything but your uniform.
2. Never respond to a want ad that sounds more like an advertisement or infomercial.
   This is a sure-fire sign of a money trap.
3. Never respond to a want ad that is not clear about the job offered.
4. Don't get duped by "modeling/talent agencies."
   They make most of their money from training/head-shot fees.

Keeping these in mind, Craigslist, too, is a great resource for those with the time and patience to sift through lots of dirt for a jem of a job.

(MIYB) The Fundraiser--Part I

The next few weeks of Make It Your Business (MIYB) Fridays will be very different from the projects we have tackled until now. Through the next few weeks' worth of blood, sweat, and tears, you will create and run your own businesses in a week of fundraising frenzy! Even better, you will be able to earn a group jackpot towards your clothing stipend accounts.

The Project
1) Today you will break down into groups of 2-3 people and spend about 20-30 minutes deciding what your fundraising "business" will be. You have a choice of doing any of the following three choices:

1. Creating a fundraising pizzaria
2. Creating a Valentine's gift/photo shop
3. Creating a lunch catering business

Additionally, you may come up with your own idea for a SMALL fundraising event/business, but your idea must not require too much start-up money and resources, and it must be feasibly completed in a few hours to be approved.

2) Once you have your ideas ironed out for your businesses, you will need to come up with a list of all the supplies you need. The less supplies your business has to purchase, the better for your team's ability to raise and earn money. Once you have a complete list for your business, you need to come up with a list of prices of the items/services you will sell. Using this, we will calculate your break even point, or BEP (the point where you've earned the money you spent out for supplies).

For the purposes of our project, this number (the number of products you have to sell to break even is determined by the following formula:

BEP = (total costs for supplies) ÷ (price of most popular products/services)

You will summarize this information in a worksheet that you will turn in as one of the requirements for today's project.

3) Lastly, for the remainder of your time today, you are to write a one paragraph summary of your chosen fundraising idea that you can include as your cover sheet for the work to follow in the next few weeks. Briefly name your group members, describe your idea, and choose two dates in February that all group members (or the majority) can agree to meet. (The fundraiser day for your group will only be on one of those days.)

Summary
Today's project is the first in a series of four MIYB project days. You will keep the same groups for all days, and groups are small, so it is important that everybody maintain good project attendance for the next few weeks. Also, all stipend money that is raised for the group will be split by group decision, so unproductive members beware!

By 6:00 today, you are to (1) meet with your group; (2) decide on a fundraising business idea; (3) come up with a supply, cost, and price list, and complete the worksheet; (4) determine your BEP; and (5) write up a fundraiser proposal sheet describing your project idea, members, and proposed date.

(Workshop) Proofreading for Letter Writing

Writing is not easy. It takes lots of focus, determination, and practice to get something to come out sounding right. And usually, even if something you wrote makes sense, a little proofreading and re-writing is necessary to produce something you can be proud of.

Today we will focus on writing business letters, spotting errors in our writing, and making suggestions for revision. While the rewriting process can seem difficult if we try to do everything all at once, there are basically three things we look at when we revise something. These are listed below:

1. The way you present your writing on paper (Style)
   
   Style describes how your writing looks to someone reading it. For example, if you’re writing a letter, you might ask the following questions about your style: Is the date in the right spot? Are the paragraphs indented? Is the return address in the traditional spot?
   
   Style is probably the easiest thing to check and correct. There are many resources in the First Work office that you can use to check your style, and you may also check your style using word processing programs like Microsoft Word.
   
   
   
   
   
2. The way you put words and sentences together (Mechanics)
   
   Mechanics deals with all the writing rules you learned in school like spelling and grammar. Many of these things you can check using computer programs like Microsoft Word.
   
   
   
   
   
3. The way you express your ideas (Rhetoric)
   
   Rhetoric is how you put down your ideas into words. For example, think about having to ask a friend to borrow $50. There are some ways that you can say this that would be successful and other ways that would get you a dirty look at best. Rhetoric is how you choose your words carefully to best get across your point with the desired effect. This is the hardest thing to revise because there's no set rules for how to word things.