WELCOME 2012

Hello! Welcome to this new year of adventure and excitement.
I hope I'm finding you well, fully refreshed from the festive season. Perhaps you had some time off work, if not maybe you just got to take some time out and relax for a while. I certainly did and I enjoyed myself very much. I almost feel ready to tackle this brand new year. Almost.

Who am I kidding, I'm totally ready! I'm excited that "next year" is here and I can now surge forward and actually do things!

UPDATE: I have now officially applied for 3 whole jobs! Wowowowowowowow. I sent off an application yesterday for a copy-writing position after days of fretting over this stupid cover letter. A friend of mine is going through a similar process at the moment and we have been lamenting how terrible writing cover letters is. So I thought I'd take a bit of time out to have a think about cover letters and what they mean in this whole exercise.

The hardest part (as so often is the case in these instances) is starting. "I have recently graduated from Edith Cowan University with a communications degree majoring in journalism and broadcasting." BOOORRIIINGGG. I mean, what I'm saying is the truth, but it's tremendously boring truth.

Usually it takes me about 20-30 cumulative minutes before I reach that "ohhhh yeahhhh" moment when I realise I'm starting to hit the nail on the head in terms of my appropriateness for the job. I'll write a few sentences that I just think 'yeh man you're killing this' and soon I'll be reading the whole letter and know that this is the best it's going to get. There's something innately upsetting about summing yourself up in a few sentences and hoping someone you don't even know likes the sound of it. I know this is all part of the job-seeking process, but they never set you up for this at uni. There's never any classes on how much writing cover letters sucks, or how to not freak out about your own self-worth before going to a job interview.

But one thing at a time, and I'm finding that now that my resume is as good as it's going to get for the time being, the cover letters I write are going to be the be all and end all of actually obtaining full time, meaningful employment.

I don't really have any advice, other than to read the job description closely. Firstly it will tell you if you're going to have any sort of chance at actually obtaining said job, but it also will make it much clearer what sort of stuff you should be saying in your letter. Ultimately your letter just needs to lay out the basics, who are you, what are your qualifications and why are you going to be good at this specific job. That's the reason I write a new cover letter for every job I apply for. If you regurgitate the same stock standard letter it is really obvious, and you probably won't write anything that will be position-specific. If you at least attempt to write a new one, you'll probably find yourself enjoying the process a bit more. Or maybe you'll just be like me and end up watching Secret Diary of a Call Girl instead of focusing.


Things I've done in the last few weeks which will help:
1: Set up the Zealous Chang Facebook page/Twitter/Myspace. Zealous Chang is my housemate/his mates band and Jimmy, the brains of the band, has kindly let me be 'administrator' of their social media pages.

Things I've done in the last few weeks which won't help:
1. Everything.