03 September 2009

Today I spent 5 hours polishing my resume and cover letter some more. It seems like a never ending process. I'm a bit of a perfectionist so it's a little frustration to not be 'done-done' with something. However there comes a time to just launch. I did.

My strategy with job postings is to at least get a foot in the door. So an admin job is okay by me. Of course I would prefer the CRAssistant or CRC position directly.

Over the last year I have signed up with some job search engines and at particular company sites while I was going to school. Today I went to PAIRE and Biospace and updated things. I applied to some administrative assistant positions at PAIRE and had to modify each cover letter to the position. It felt good to get things officially rolling. I have started a spread sheet to track which sites and job postings I am applying to. Already it seems a little blurry and I like to keep things straight so I don't waste time down the road. Keeping track of logins and passwords will be necessary to. I change things up regularly.

Today I did a quick job at these two sites just to have some progress, but I will go back tomorrow and get into serious detail with the search agents. For instance the Abbott Labs site has an incredible number of locations. There are a lot of options for the search agent. I intend to create several agents so that when I get a notification I will have a good idea where and what it's about.

One of my instructors gave me a list of people to contact and keep my little network growing. I'll dig into that list soon, but I will get all my current sites updated and logged in. Then it's on to growing my network.

In my existing network I emailed people in the industry (and a couple outside) my new resume' and cover letter. It's a great feeling when people volunteer to help out with such a major project. No guarantees of course, but the support feels great!

I already have a small library of cover letters, but they need to be updated now. That's for tomorrow.