Preparing for Your Job Search

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Preparing Your Resume or Curriculum Vitae

The foundation of your job search should be a good, solid resume (which may also be called a curriculum vitae or vita). The curriculum vitae describes in detail one’s professional career over the course of one’s life, including both work experiences and qualifications. It is primarily used when pursuing opportunities in an academic setting. Although the curriculum vitae and resume have the same function, the differences between the two are length and format. In the business world, the standard resume is usually no more than two pages in length. An effective resume gets your foot in the door and it may lead to personal interviews.

Your resume should be detailed enough to give employers the information necessary to assess your qualifications for the job opening. At the same time, it should be concise. It’s essential that your resume be word processed; if you can’t word process it yourself, hire a word processor. The few dollars you pay to have it word processed will prove to be one of the best investments you will make. You may use your resume for several different purposes:

(a) include one with a “blind”’ letter of inquiry about a job opening;
(b) send one with a cover letter in response to an advertised position;
(c) attach one to a standard job application; or
(d) take it with you on a job interview.

With the recent advances in technology, a very efficient and fast way to respond to a position is to send your resume electronically. Robbie Miller Kaplan, in her book, Resume Shortcuts: How to Quickly Communicate Your Qualifications With Powerful Words and Phrases (1997), defines an electronic resume as an unformatted resume prepared with American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text and sent via email. She cautions when using this technology to closely follow the employer’s formatting instructions to avoid technical appearance problems. She further provides tips on how to create an ASCII resume.

Handling a Job Interview

A job interview can be less nerve-wracking if you prepare yourself for it. You should start by learning something about the organization for which you wish to work. It goes without saying that being on time for your job interview is essential. Dress carefully and conservatively. To help you rehearse for your interview go over the following questions asked of new graduates by employers in our field. You may not be asked these exact questions, but they will help put you in the right frame of mind to handle an interview.

Getting What You're Worth

In this era of funding and reimbursement cutbacks, effectively negotiating a reasonable and desirable level of compensation is more challenging—and more important—than ever before.

Compensation packages not only affect personal take-home pay, but have a very real impact on one’s profession as well. Salary data become part of the larger economic picture that is used to determine "what the market will bear" in setting target salaries for a given discipline or profession.

For speech-language pathology, this was taken a step further when salary data from a variety of sources were used by the Health Care Finance Administration (HCFA) to establish interim salary equivalency rates under the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Although speech-language pathologists are understandably frustrated by the inequity of salary equivalency rates that are lower than those of occupational therapists or physical therapists, the rates established by HCFA are based on salary "data" that were in turn derived from actual salaries that speechlanguage pathologists have accepted as a condition of employment.

How then, do we maximize our earning potential? There are a number of factors that determine compensation levels on an individual and profession-wide basis. A key variable is our individual ability to understand those factors and make them work to our advantage every time an employment agreement is entered into. In considering an employment offer, it is important to remember that there is always room for negotiation. This is one venue in which the old adage "nothing ventured, nothing gained" is absolutely true.

To effectively negotiate, you must have a realistic understanding of what your services are worth in the marketplace. Although in any field there are many factors that determine compensation, the critical reasons underlying differences in pay and compensation packages relate to a number of identifiable determinants. Following is an overview of those factors, information about various components of the total compensation package, and resources and tips for successfully negotiating an optimal total compensation package.