Globetrotter Business Lady - drafting a cover letter
Milan? Hong Kong? Melbourne? The decision is tough. Luckily, I don't have to decide until after I hear back from the hiring managers. Recently, I applied for 15 international internship positions in my company. Each of the 81 positions around the globe opened on Feb 22 (a date I've had in my calendar for ages). I refreshed the Jacobs Jobs page regularly that day and then spent the weekend pouring through the requisitions. I even created a little excel table of the available positions and categorized my interest. I know what you're thinking and just chill out, ok? It's not like I put macros and interactive coding into it.
By the next week, my inbox was a barrage of "APPLY NOW!". This program gets some serious traction in my company. They provide your work visa, pay your TDA (temporary duty assignment) expenses, and relocate you to a new (billable) project elsewhere in the world. It's a phenomenal opportunity to give exposure to young people in different markets, expand your network within the company, and thereby bolster retention of the 2-5 yr staff. I knew if I were to have a competitive resume, I was going to have to spend some time fixing it up. Upwards of 20 hours kind of time.
This program is an opportunity to live in a different country for 6 months. You all know how I love traveling and love being an on-the-go business lady.
Resume types
In consulting, I am often fixing up my project resume. They go in with RFQs (request for qualifications) for new projects. My resume will be included if they are proposing to use me as a specialty technical resource or, recently, the project manager. The further you get in your consulting career, the more often you update your resume. I have a master resume which I use to track each project I've worked on (at least for the larger efforts or ones that I really want to do more of) and I use it to craft an individual project resume each time. [Sidenote: I also used it to make my resume that was needed for my professional license application. This is a good idea for you to keep on top of even if you aren't in consulting.]
The difference between a job resume and a project resume are simple:
Job Resume
No photo. Because of inclusion and diversity hiring many cannot accept a resume with a photo and it may disqualify you.
Jobs where you have been employed.
Honors, awards, sometimes even classes and GPA.
Eye for the design
Project Resume
Photos. Show those smiling professional faces! Dear clients, this friendly person will be great to work with on your project!
Projects that only relate to the type of experience needed for the work being proposed.
Can show how you've worked with the same team in the past or for a similar client which may help this client.
A big pet peeve of mine is that engineer's resumes are SO boring. Architects get cool ones, designers get cool ones, we get blue boxy font and crisp edges. Yawn. For a hot second, my company had a purple curly logo and we stood out. It was fantastic. Now we've joined the other major firms in having a...blue boxy logo font with crisp edges. Yawn. So when I get to make things look good, I get really excited. It expresses that I'm a creative problem solver. My diversity provides a different perspective that helps to round out ideas. I can apply my eye for fashion and influence to draw people in. How my resume looks is not an accident; it's quite intentional.
The internship resume I made this time is even more pizzazzy. It's a bit different than a job resume or a project resume. It's for an internal, temporary transfer position so I get to break some of the rules of the resume game. I needed to play up a few key characteristics to help me stand out from the many people applying:
Experience - this is my last year eligible so I have the most experience of anyone applying AND they don't have to worry about paying me because it still comes out of my home office (Austin, TX). My five years experience is many more if you count in the hours of overtime. See my article here about how much overtime (and pay) I've done.
Personality - I'm bubbly and loud in a crowd of engineers once I get past my initial shyness. I wanted to be someone that they were excited to help pull their teams together. Someone who will make them smile to see in the office every day.
Curiosity - I wanted to leave just enough mystery that they wanted to interview me to ask questions about my part of the business. The interviews for each position will be my time to shine.
Enthusiasm - I fall in love easily, it's true. But because I'm able to dive into each project I wanted to tout this as something that would happen with their projects. As a PM, nothing is more seductive than having employees that show up each day with 110% because they believe in the project.
Travel - I am an expert solo traveler. It takes a certain amount of flexibility and boldness, something that will be desirable for an international relocate.
Roman water infrastructure will always be some of my favorite ancient civil engineering solo travel. Esp when there is good food nearby.
Well rounded - I am organized. I can maths. I can write (previous sentence excluded). It turns out, that these aren't skills that all engineers have when they leave university. This in itself makes me a swiss army knife. It's also something that is learned and I continue to grow it with each professional opportunity.
Fast learner - This is especially important to my resume because I applied for jobs in markets that aren't water-related. If I'm going to be in a new country, a new market, and a new technology for only a short period of time, I need to prove that I can ramp up fast. Emergency project? No problem. One of the fastest growing PMs in the company? That's me.
Confidence - I wanted to show that I'm so good, I'm comfortable being this good. You can trust me. I got it.
Glamour - We all know that first impressions are everything. How you look doesn't just matter, it's currency. Engineers are just as susceptible to unconscious bias associated with how you look. I wanted to put in all the details and give it a makeover. I am an instagramer after all. I wanted to show that I can jazz something up if it'll be externally facing.
Company pride - I wanted to show them that investing in me for this opportunity, is an investment in the future of our company. I'm not going anywhere.
Marketing - I have a 10,000 person follower count. That's great advertisement for my company. I get no overhead numbers for labor hours and will continue to promote them as long as I'm engaged and believe in them. It's free marketing for Jacobs, and they are quite aware of it.
Professionalism - I included information about my online image so I needed to show that I am still a professional, even if I'm a blogger doing this on my free time. It might put off PMs that sometimes projects get airtime. I just had to prove that I'm tactful in what I place online and thoroughly read through our contracts prior to posting. Engineering has traditional sensibilities. I'm pretty risk-adverse myself so I wanted to place that out there through the clean formatting and my articulate language.
Thought leadership - I put things on the internet. People come to me because they know my strengths and know how I know the biz. I know millennials. I know engineers. I do lots of research and I have an analytical brain that optimizes even the smallest of decisions. Thought leadership is a tagline we use in the industry (a little too often) to describe how if you write the book on something, people still come to you to do exactly what you've detailed to them on how to do.
Because of all these things, my Jacobs GO! resume is intense. It has a lot of color. It's got pictures (the horror!). It's not what we'd turn in as a project resume or something I'd use as a job resume. The cover letter is long. Too long. It reads like a blog post of my past projects. And it's oozing with how much I love Jacobs. But it's sincere and interesting. And it's fun to read. And that's why it took me 20 hours to craft.
Asking for help from friends
For a few weekends, this became a part-time job for me. I spent way more hours than necessary. I really want one of these positions. I've been talking about it for over a year, since I first found out that my new company had this program but that my legacy-company (which was acquired by the new one) was not able to apply just yet. I've been making notes on the side on what to include in my cover letter for months. I've been talking to previous Jacobs GO applicants. Every time I started to feel stagnated in my current position, I'd think about this program.
Because I put so much effort into it, I almost didn't ask for help. I figured I knew it forwards and backwards by now. I was talking with one of my favorite people about how I was channeling her gift with words to finish up my letter. She offered to read through mine and I'm so glad she did. Juliana expertly edited it, not just once but twice! She has the advantage of working for my company so she knows exactly how tough it is to get a GO spot. She also is one of the most articulate people I've ever met. And she's amazing. Kisskiss.
Tate Reds unite
Even if you think that you've intricately edited your cover letter, it's a good idea to have a second pair of eyes. They always find something. They can catch an embarrassing spelling mistake or wrong spelling of "there". And they can see how it flows when it's read by someone with a different voice. My favorite word document comment I've ever gotten is from her, "I don't know what an advanced oral communicator means but I've always said this about you."
Final product
Lots of people just applied with a short cover letter. They submitted resumes they had on hand, project or job resumes. I think because this is an unusual internal transfer, that's totally an acceptable submission. But this was never going to be an afterthought for me. I don't know how many interviews I have yet (fingers crossed!) but I wanted to share my resume and cover letter so you can see what it looks like. After all, 20 hour is a lot of work. Enjoy.
Asking for feedback
In the past week I've scheduled one interview (hi Hong Kong) and had two rejections. I really wanted the one in Manchester so I messaged the hiring manager back and asked him for some feedback. I told him how great of a position it was and how it was one of the few that detailed out actual projects and responsibilities, which was able to peak my interest even more. His feedback to me was absolutely worth taking that extra step and being vulnerable in front of him. A few things he said:
They had gotten 10 applications for the position
They had two goals for the position: 1) to get help with the projects and 2) message other offices about the ITS capabilities that they have in Manchester
My experience in transportation wasn't near what the other applicants had (hi duh) so I can't take the messaging back to my home office
My cover letter was the most professional and left everyone else "in its wake"
Having all the positions detailed in one letter diluted how much I wanted that position
It's totally informative and reasonable feedback! I thought for sure he'd gotten dozens of applications. What a cool position. I was uncertain if the photos made it flashy like outside sales or unprofessional. Now I can put those worries to rest! I did know that putting all the positions in one cover letter might not be the way to talk up each position but I just didn't have time for 15 letters! And I knew that they knew people are applying for the international experience. It's not like the applicants really need jobs or aren't working in something they enjoy -- you have to have a job with my company already to apply.
So what are the standards for internal transfers? Who knows! Even though I can't apply next year (this is my last eligible year), hopefully this helps you!
Reading: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. A classic. Though I feel like by (almost) 29 years old, I know all of this. Nothing is earth-shattering. It's all much more difficult to put into practice and needs conscious, intentional effort.
Listening: The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. I've listened to all his TED talks which are very similar to the audiobook. http://www.shawnachor.com/media/
Working: One of our clients has a reservoir that has some "piping". This means that the pressure from the reservoir is forcing water out through the side in what is known as sand boils. Literally, sand and water is boiling out of the side of the reservoir. It's a dam safety emergency so we've got boots on the ground to evaluate and determine what sort of grout curtain, pressure relief wells, or filter rock placement solution we can implement. I'd forgotten that emergencies call for twice a day calls to make sure everyone has up-to-date information. It's a LOT of phone calls.