Out-of-date tactics can hurt job search

Awoman wrote me to ask “Is it still correct to use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ in a cover letter?” “That isn’t a great idea,” I wrote back. “No one uses ‘Dear Sir orMadam’ anymore, unless they’re actually writing to a madam, such as Heidi Fleiss.”

I’m not sure my e-mail correspondent caught the joke.

It’s not that using out-of-date jobsearch approaches marks you as older. I’m 54, and I’m having a ball and (obviously) don’t care who knows my age. Rather, it’s that using old-school, nolonger-in-fashion job-search techniques marks you as out of touch.

It’s not a big deal to be over 50, or over 60. It’s a big deal at any age to show an employer that you’re out of sync with the culture.

After all, one of the biggest things employers pay us to do at work is to stay aware of our surroundings.

You don’t have to be ace at Facebook to get a good job (unless the job is in social media) but you do have to know what Facebook is, and why it’s significant. The same goes for Twitter, LinkedIn, crowdsourcing, Skype, and a host of other tools, trends and phenomena that impact the workplace.

Working people and job-seekers are expected to followthe news, have a bead on our changingworld and keep abreast of changes in business, technology, politics and culture. That isn’t an unreasonable expectation.

If a job-seeker isn’t curious and perceptive enough to notice that the last time he saw “Dear Sir orMadam” on a letter was during Jimmy Carter’s term in office, how will he notice what’s changing in his field?

Here are formerly useful, now dangerous, job-search approaches that hark back to an earlier age. Get them out of your job-search repertoire, pronto!

Dedicated résumé paper and envelopes.

Don’t use special résumé paper with matching envelopes in your job search. Dedicated-use résumé paper is a 1980s artifact. Most of your résumés will reach employers electronically, in which case the paper will be the employer’s headache (if the résumé gets printed at all) and the résumés you prepare on your own can be printed on plain white bond paper.

What’s important in your résumé is its content. You won’t win any points with special résumé paper, which screams “I have a stack of Christopher Cross 8-tracks in my car.”

Creaky résumé language.

We used to write “co-operation” until one day, we dropped the hyphen. We also used to call e-mail “electronic mail.”

English changes all the time, and there’s no need these days to use an accent on theword “resume.” (Denver Post style is to use the accent marks). When I see correspondencewith the word “resume” accented in it, I instantly get a picture of a personwearing white gloves and carrying tiny motherof-pearl opera glasses in her handbag. Don’t getmewrong— I’ve got opera glassesmyself, and Iwishwhite gloves were still in style, but they’re not. Leave the accent off theword “resume” and avoid dating yourself.

It used to be the thing to create long lists of bullets in your résumé. Nowadays, time and attention are in short supply. Two or three bullets for each of your past jobs are plenty. A short storytelling bullet that tells the reader what you’ve gotten done in your career so far, and how you roll— like “When our two biggest rivals merged, I launched a grassroots e-mail marketing campaign that ramped sales 20 percent”— beats the heck out of long lists of tasks and duties, or general statements like, “Solved tricky customer service issues.” Use your résumé to tell your story.

I warn eager job-seekers about the tendency to try to win gold stars from hiring managers for their teacher’s-pet-type preparation, research and general submissiveness.

It’s always appropriate to learn about the companies you’re targeting for your job search, and LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Glassdoor.com and other company-research sites make that task easier.

What’s unfortunate is thewaymany job-seekers view their research task less as a way to learnwhat’s important and relevant about the companies they’re pursuing than as a way to win points for their good-girl/good-boy style. It’s a terrible idea to compile your employer research in order to say “Look how hard I’ve been researching your company!”

Your research has value forwhat it tells you about your next employer’s business situation, recent changes and competitive challenges. The last thing youwant to do as a job-seeker is seek brownie points bywhipping out a file folder full of clippings at an interviewor by saying “I spent theweekend researching your company.” That’s groveling.

You’re a business adviser during a job search. Do whatever research you need to do, and keep quiet about it.

If you ask a pithy, research-fueled question like “What’s your take on the Acme Explosives-ToontownMotors merger? That’s got to be having some ripple effects for your firm,” you’re asking it in order to advance a business conversation, not to get a pat on the head.

Watch out for these destructive jobsearch practices, and you’ll be unstoppable. Get out of your head, show up on a job search to experience the moment, and see what great things result.

Endless bullets.

Gratuitous research.