You Must Have…

Red flags should go up if those words appear in a cover letter.  These sentences are from a recent graduate’s cover letter for a sales position: Please do not contact me if the position is commission based, or involves cold-calling. Also your company must have a valid website that can help me to identify what your company does. I will be following his clear orders and not contacting him.

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Degrees=Dollars

This is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): According to the U.S. Census Bureau the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree is a million dollars. Add on a master’s degree and you can expect to earn an additional half a million dollars in earnings. Those with professional degrees earn much more – about 4.4 million dollars during their working life. Jennifer Day, Chief of the Education and Social Stratification Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau says, “In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $19,000 for high school dropouts, to $26,000 for high school graduates, $45,000 for college graduates and $99,000 for the… Read More

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The Highest-Level Verb

It isn’t always clear what the exact number is, but more than 50% of jobseekers lie on embellish their resume.  Forbes offers up an article titled Overachievement Without Achievement that contains a picture of Milli Vanilli.  How perfect is that?  The article quotes 53% as the number of people who lie on embellish their resume. But check this out: Some college students are encouraged to embellish items on their résumés. “They are taught to use the highest-level verb,” says Nancy Davis, a psychology professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. For instance, an intern who ran copies of an instruction manual might say he “created” the manual on his… Read More

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