new faces, more voices sessions 4 & 5 (career development advice)

Just wanted to share some of the information I gleaned from last week’s New Faces, More Voices session, which was a salary negotiation and resume workshop with Pamela O’Leary, executive director of the Public Leadership Education Network, successful D.C. career coach Alyssa Best and members of the executive committee of the Women’s Information Network (of which I’ve recently become a proud member!).

Some of Pam’s resume advice:

• Put your educational background at the bottom of your resume, not the top! Your work experience (paid and unpaid) is most important, especially when applying in DC.
• Don’t put references on your resume
• Send all attachments as PDFs
• Use months for time periods, not semesters – you’re not a student any more!
• Make your resume about accomplishments and skills, not responsibilities. Quantify your accomplishments as much as possible.
• Use a local mailing address, even if you have to “borrow” one from someone else. Your resume might be thrown out if you don’t seem easily accessible to potential employers. For legislative positions, use a DC mailing address but mention your constituency in the state of office you’re applying to in your cover letter.
• Resumes and cover letters should be only one page for a young professional! One resume page to every seven years of experience. (After the workshop, I resolved to work on shortening mine significantly!)
• In cover letters: SHOW, don’t TELL. Instead of, “I’m highly organized,” mention that you coordinated 200 volunteers, email correspondence for a membership list of 10,000, etc.

This week, NFMV coordinator Ashley of the National Council for Women’s Organizations, suggested that we ask DC professionals for informational interviews (a.k.a. “meet me for coffee!”) while we’re here in the city and have the special status of interns. These short 15-20-minute meetings give interns the opportunity to ask questions that aren’t appropriate for job interviews – questions about entry-level salaries and personal information about folks’ career paths. Ashley said it was acceptable to send cold emails to people asking for these kinds of meetings. We’ll see if I can identify some people with interesting jobs within the feminist community and convince them to meet up with me before I head back to Chapel Hill! Let me know if you happen to know anyone who might be a good resource!

Soon I’ll be writing a post about salary negotiation, the gender wage gap and pay secrecy, which was addressed at last week’s session but really deserves its own discussion! I’ve continued to develop a lot of opinions on equal pay (and pay secrecy in particular) since I’ve been in DC at IWPR, time that also coincides with the Wal-Mart v. Dukes Supreme Court decision. But props to Sheila, former assistant director at NC Hillel back home, for originally sparking my interest in this topic!