Your

resume is the number one most power job search tool in your

arsenal. It has the power to make you successful beyond your

wildest dreams. But if you screw it up, it also has the power

to stop you dead in your tracks.

1. Overuse of "blasting" to

distribute your resume. Mailing or emailing hundreds or even

thousands of resumes to employers and recruiters can be

counter-productive. For one thing, you are limited to a

weakened, general, all-purpose version of your resume. Your

cover letter, if you have one, addressed to "Whom It May

Concern" will be meaningless. Your submission will be lumped

with the spam and junk email. You will have no opportunity to

move the process forward by following up with a meaningful

phone call, letter, or email.

And if that isn't bad enough, if

a recruiter or employer reads your resume, they are smart

enough to know that everyone else has a copy of it. If you are

a recruiter and you know a thousand other recruiters have the

same resume, you would know the tough time you would have

earning a commission on the placement. Plus, you might figure

that all the local employers have the resume and could cut you

out of the loop. If employers know that all the other employers

have your resume they may not be interested in competing with

them.

Indiscriminate blasting reduces

your market value. Don't expect quality interviews; expect

interviews for hard-to-fill or high-turnover positions. Some

commission hungry agents will be forgiving and may take a

chance on you, higher class agents and employers will

not.

2. Applying for jobs you are not

qualified for. What is the harm? The job looks interesting, the

"apply" link is right there, what is the worse that could

happen? All they can do is say, "no".

If you are unqualified and waste

a recruiter's or employer's time, they will ignore you in the

future. And when their time is wasted, they suddenly have a

memory like an elephant. That is not the way you want to be

remembered in a job search. Plus, how smart does it make you

look?

3. Not customizing your resume

and cover letter for each employer. The Internet makes it so

much easier to investigate companies. Corporate websites will

tell you exactly what they are looking for in employees.

Leverage these resources. The resume and cover letter are the

most powerful marketing tools in your arsenal. And with today's

technology, sending a generic resume and cover letter is

inexcusable.

4. Giving up control of your job

search. The "Hand Over" job seeker, one that places his or her

job search in the hands of one or more online professionals,

usually headhunters, recruiters, employment agencies, or

outplacement firms, thinks all he or she has to do is show up

for the interviews.

The cliche that job hunting is a

full time job is true. The Internet does not make a job search

easier, it makes it more complicated.

No one is going to be as

passionate about your future as you are; no one is going to

understand what you want like you do. Professional help is just

that - help. Passive job seekers get left behind.

5. Ignoring privacy when posting

your resume. There are any number of bad things that can happen

if you do not limit your contact information.

• Your employer could find your

resume online, accuse you of disloyalty and fire

you.

• Someone could steal your

identity. This has become an alarmingly common crime. Protect

yourself.

• You could be buried in spam and

bugged by telemarketers. They scan the Internet looking for

email addresses and phone numbers to harvest. It may not be the

worse thing in the world, but it can be a real pain in the

neck.

• Unscrupulous recruiters,

fishing for a commission, may take your resume and shop you

around to employers without your permission. This can harm you

in any number of ways. Just a note: An ethical recruiter would

never dream of doing this.

6. Limiting yourself to big name

job sites. Most of the big name sites are great sites. They are

expensive for employers to use and they tend to be general -

all things for all people. Ironically, that means they are not

for everybody. Many employers have found their needs met by

advertising in smaller, localized, less expensive, niche sites.

Don't limit your options by ignoring these valuable

resources.

7. Limiting yourself to Internet

only. The Internet is so ubiquitous it is easy to feel like

everything that is out there shows up on the Web. The so-called

hidden job market is a very real phenomenon. The majority of

jobs are never advertised on the Web or anywhere else. They are

often filled word of mouth. By the time you see jobs on the

Internet much of the cream is skimmed off. It is often the jobs

that cannot be filled by word of mouth that get

advertised.

8. Ignoring the threat of

viruses. Of course if you send an email to an employer that

contains a virus it will be quarantined and deleted. Your

message will not be read and you will not look good to the

company. Your future messages will likely be

blocked.

The problem for you, the job

hunter, is not so much actually sending a virus. Most of you, I

hope, scan your incoming and outgoing emails for viruses (if

you don't, start NOW!). The problem is that employers take

precaution against potential threats of viruses. Many companies

will not open email attachments. That is certainly

understandable with Microsoft Word documents, often a virus

carrier. But many companies have taken a scorched earth policy

and have banned all attachments.

How does this effect you? If you

want your resume and cover letter read, send it in the body of

the email. You may have some formatting limitations, but better

than having your message deleted.

9. Using email as your only

source of contact. I ran into this one recently. I called a

business meeting by contacting everyone by email. A key

individual did not show up. Turns out my email didn't make it

past his spam filter.

Since 75% of email is "junk,"

most companies have a spam filter. If your message looks like

spam to the spam filter you are filtered out and deleted. Call

first to let them know your email is coming, call afterwards to

confirm they got it, and send a hard copy by regular mail as a

back up.

10. This last one is not so much

a mistake as a tip. Many job hunters have the mistaken belief

that in an online job search cover letters don't carry any

weight and allow them to be generic and impersonal. Many job

hunters have been leaving the cover letter out entirely. This

is a huge mistake.