Page 49 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

What Does Each Part Mean?

Each sentence in your power proposition communicates some-
thing very important to the employer and has a potential hook
(or many hooks) to grab his attention within the first seven sec-
onds. Let’s take each sentence and section one by one, and soon
you’ll have a completed paragraph.

Sentence 1, Blank 1: Level or Years of Experience
The first sentence indicates the number of years or level of expe-
rience you have doing a certain type of job.
• Remember from the previous chapter that if you have
less than one year of experience, unpaid experience,
or no paid working experience at all, you can start
off with words like competent, knowledgeable, proficient,
volunteer, intern(ship), residency, externship, apprenticeship,
or classroom study.

For those with paid experience in the workplace, the first sen-
tence would begin with the number of years of experience you’ve
accumulated in your field. Listing anywhere from one to ten
years is fine. Ten years of experience is enough to show that you
are at the highest level of your job.
Listing more than 10 to 15 years of experience, however
temping it is to show your professionalism, may consciously or
unconsciously cause the reader to reject your résumé because of
an unfortunate epidemic in some societies called ageism.

AGEISM
What is ageism? People are wrongly convinced that a more mature
person may not stay long, may be unhealthy on the job, might get
bored, could have trouble being supervised by a younger man-
ager, or may demand higher pay.
Even though studies have proved these beliefs to be dead
wrong, many employers persist in harboring these inexcusable
and damaging myths. Until we as a society do the work of ridding
ourselves of this very wrong form of discrimination based on age,
it is wise not to risk an employer’s concluding that he does not
want to interview you because of his conscious or unconscious

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