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Life After Business School

Life After Business School

An MBA carries with it a great deal of power. Perhaps that's one of the reasons that you chose an MBA program to begin with. The skills that you've developed in your studies are a highly marketable tool once you graduate. Now, persuading a prospective employer to hire you is not unlike trying to impress the admissions board at your college. The business world is extremely competitive. It's time for you to distinguish yourself from your fellow graduates and land that dream job. And, like preparing a good MBA essay is to impressing a college admissions board, so is writing a stellar cover letter to accompany your resume.

Think back, if you can, to that MBA essay. What was it about what you said that persuaded the college admissions board that you deserved a seat in their program? That's likely what will also persuade a prospective employer to hire you. That's what you need to express in your cover letter.

Your resume is something like your business school primary application. It is the place to list all of your educational, work, and volunteer experiences. Your resume needs to be a concise list, and there isn't much room to expand on your qualifications. If you did, many prospective employers wouldn't take the time to read it anyway. After all, dozens or even hundreds of resumes may land on the desks of company executives monthly. This is where the cover letter becomes important. While your resume is somewhat generic, the cover letter will target the specific company from which you are seeking employment.

The contents of your cover letter should include these basic elements:

* Customized greeting. Avoid using "To Whom it May Concern" when addressing a prospective employer, if possible. If you are responding to an ad for a particular position, address it to the name of the executive who placed it or is doing the hiring. If there isn't a name on the ad, do some sleuthing to find out who in a particular company is in charge of receiving resumes and short-listing candidates.

* Know the company you are applying to. Do not send a resume to a company simply because you are desperate for work and you happen to see an ad for employment. Research the company. Get to know exactly what it does and what its philosophy is. Find out what its annual earnings are. Much of this information can be found by Googling the company's name. Check out the company's own website, as well as any other information on the web about it. Read its annual earnings report. If it's a public company, find out what its stocks are currently trading at. This information will help you write a cover letter that is tailored to that company. It shows that you have initiative, and it will give you a chance to share why your skills will benefit that particular company.

* Choose words that are concise but powerful. A good rule of thumb is to limit your cover letter to no more than two pages. More than that, a busy executive may decide he or she simply doesn't have the time to read it. That means choosing your words carefully. Use as few words as you can and still get your point across. Choose language which is descriptive and packs a punch. Say what you need to say, no more and no less.

* Observe the rules of grammar. By now you should have a good grasp of grammar, even if it wasn't your strongest subject in college. Few things come off as unprofessional as poor spelling or sentence structure.

* Follow any requests as set out by the employment advertisement. For example, some companies request a hand-written cover letter. If that's what they want, don't second guess them.

Remember, your resume is like your college application; your cover letter is like your essay. Your resume, like your application, is a list of your experiences. Your cover letter, like your essay, gives a prospective employer insight into who you are as a person and why you'd make the best employee.





Life After Business School - To learn more about this author, visit Michael Fleischner's Website.

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Cheryl Matthynssens

Cheryl is a life skills coach, licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor and a 20 year entrepreneur.  Cheryl's dedication to achieving a life of balance led to her expanding her teaching from the simple managing of life's daily challenges to adding financial well being as well.  A direct marketer with DrinkACT, she is gaining ground in the online community with her concepts of making sure business owners, entreprenuers and employees have well rounded life styles.  She opened up a small affiliate site - The Balance Guide-  to help others find resources for mental and emotional well being.  Visit Cheryl's blog to see more of the diversity beyond business she has began offering online at www.thebalanceguide.blogspot.com

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Stephanie Robey
Stephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals.

She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com   Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences.  Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

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Linda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website

Dave Kurlan
Dave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website

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(Visit Michael's Website) Michael Fleischner is an Internet Marketing Expert with more than 12 years of marketing experience. He has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other Major media. You can learn more about Michaels SEO experience by reading the Marketing Blog or by picking up his tell guide on how to improve search engine ranking at http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets. com

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