Winners – Submit your best resume or job hunting tip

Thanks to everyone who entered our recent competition by sending through their best resume or job hunting tip.

We had heaps of useful tips come through. We’ve gone through them all and picked out the five winners, they are Tim, Peter, Alvin, Simon and Yi. Congratulations! They’ve each won a handy Google notebook.
You can see the highlights from each of these winning tipsters after the jump, or go to the original post to see all the entries in full.
Tim – broke it down Lifehacker style by writing a step by step guide to preparing your CV/resume, and for engineering a good first impression at the interview. Our favourite tip?

“Take a risk.
Have a look around the office and try to spot something of interest
that you can talk about. Take note of any pictures, sporting items or
anything you have in common with the interviewer. Generally,
interviewers like to employ people that they get along with. If this
technique does not seem to be working stop the tactic immediately.”

Peter – Gave a great tip for how to make a proactive followup call:

“Most employers get a number of calls after the initial interviews and
to put it bluntly it sounds very lame saying ‘how did i go?’, imagine
calling a date to ask that after a nice dinner…? You are much better
off calling and offering something else, think WIIFM (Whats In It For
Me) since this type of thinking will appeal to the employers mindset. I
call and introduce my self and say ‘I just wanted to get in touch as i
have two additional references since i saw you.’ Make sure you actually
have them, but it will show that you have been actively thinking about
their company and about your prospective job (in most cases over the
weekend) and for the curious you will usually find out how your
interview went anyway, without sounding lame. 9/10 times this will be
the tilter in getting a second interview anyway so regardless of how
you went, none of the other candidates will have pulled this trump card!”

Alvin – had a great tip which will be especially useful for freelance or contracting Lifehackers:

“Always request written referrals. If you’re like me and most of your
jobs are short term consultations (even if they aren’t!) make it clear
that you would like a written referral before you close up your current
job and move on to the next one. Pick the best one (or two, no more)
and attach them to your resume. Keep the rest for use in the interview.
Your ex-boss might not remember you, but the written words will ensure
that your good work and effort is preserved for all to see.”

Simon – appealed to the caffeine addict in us all – very sneaky:

“I have also created a customised coffee coaster that invites the
recipient to “have a coffee on me” and includes my contact details in
order to encourage a face to face meeting rather than just email or
phone conversations.”

Yi – offered up a few tips, I liked this one the best because it’s about how to make your cover letter stand out and make sure that it does a different job to your resume:

“Don’t repeat what you have in your resume in the cover letter. Your
cover letter should reveal more about your personality, why you’re
interested in the job and most importantly, why you’re interested in
the company. If you’re applying to a recruitment agency and don’t know
which company it is, simply talk about why you’re interested in the
industry (such as banking, IT, law etc).”

Thanks to everyone who entered!