This past week Mike Brown, the recruiter from Lord & Taylor and Erica Pfeffer, the campus recruiter, from Lord & Taylor, came to FIT and gave a comprehensive resume workshop. This event was sponsored through BRAG, so there wasn’t a ton of people which made the event intimate and personalized to our questions.
Mike Brown is a friendly, but no nonsense type of guy. As a recruiter, he doesn’t sugarcoat his thoughts. He knows what it takes to get it hired. Here a few tips he suggested when he spoke the other day.
He suggest putting concrete numbers. They don’t want to hear a bunch of fluff. Recruiters that have been doing it for a while can see directly through all the flowery and decorative language ( much like this) and suggest leaving it out, and putting in real information. They want to see hard numbers, if you helped your company decrease costs by 1% or helped to raise sells by .5% that’s what they want to know.
All students should have business cards, even if they with just say your name and that you’re a student. Or, what you aspire to be. It’s an easy way to exchange information when networking. You come off as much more professional, plus who doesn’t want to feel like a boss? Business cards make you feel 100x more fancy.
Once, you land an interview, do your research. If there is a phone interview first, make sure it’s scheduled for a time you’re actually free. They spoke about when they’ve called candidates, who set the interview time, who were out and about and had to reschedule. If you make it past the phone interview, make sure you inquire about who the interviewer is and approximately how long the interview will run. All of this preliminary makes you seem attentive and that way you can research them on LinkedIn (which you should have). They will get a notification when you check out their profile, and be impressed. You will also have talking points when you go in for the interview.
These seminars are so informative for several reasons, they give insider tidbits on how to be successful and it can the catalyst for forming relationships with the people already in the industry. Even if you’re not interested in the corporate world right now, it’s importnat to know some resume/ industry pointers in general, because the skills can be expanded into other fields. Take advantage of these opportunities when they arise.
All things Color, Love & Fashion,
Ayanna L.