Design Jobs and Tech Jobs

You could have the most qualified, awe-inspiring résumé on earth, but a boring cover letter will ensure you remain jobless.

The cover letter introduces you to the recruiter in a personal way. It briefly highlights your strengths and expresses your interest in the position.

Recruiters often discard 80% of applications based on the cover letter alone. If you want the recruiter to even glance at your résumé, your cover letter has to impress.

Put yourself inside the head of your employer. If you had a huge stack of applications in front of you, what kind of cover letter would make you place a candidate in the “maybe” pile? What mistakes would place an application straight into the trash?

Writing a stand-out cover letter employs the same techniques as writing a marketing campaign or sales letter. This time, you’re selling yourself. Here are some tips for writing professional cover letters that stand out.

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Networking. We all know it’s the key to success in the web industry. Why else would social networking sites like Twitter flourish?

And yet, despite its necessity to our continual success, most of us are afraid of networking. The word conjures up images of smarmy door-to-door salesmen and industry “mixers” where everyone knows everyone else … except you.

If you’re shy, the very thought of networking can send you running. But even shy people can learn the skills necessary to build and expand their industry network.

Nowadays, networking comes in two forms: face-to-face, at industry events, conferences, or even on the bus, and online through forums, blogs and social networking sites.

Both online and face-to-face interactions employ the same tactics: you need to find some people who you want to network with and wow them with your charming personality. It’s easier than it sounds. Here are a few tips to help you improve your networking skills:

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While we all know a good job is about more than just the money, having money is nice too, especially if there’s a lot of it.

Unlike many other sectors of the market negatively affected by the economy, salaries in the web sector remain high and may continue to rise as more companies extend their web presence.

In order to help you better target your job search to higher-paid position, we’ve reviewed some of the highest-paid jobs in the web industry.

Each of these jobs usually offers a starting salary of over $40,000 a year (based on figures from PayScale.com), and some individuals may earn over $150,000.

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Whether a choice position is about to be offered at your work or if you just want to set yourself up to be the prime candidate for when a promotion becomes available, take steps now to make sure that your name is the first one mentioned when the Higher Ups start looking for someone to promote.

Consistency is key: On Monday you feel like you can conquer the world and it shows in your work because you beat every deadline and attack every task with vigor.

By Thursday, however, you’re pretty sick of the workweek and would really rather just hang out by the snack bar and talk about how much you hate your job.

If you think your bosses are going to remember your Monday work ethic over your Thursday doldrums, think again.

Be consistent with your work because you never really know when someone who has the power to promote you will be watching over your shoulder.

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If you’re a web designer, developer, or any kind of freelancer in the web industry, you’ll need to keep an up-to-date portfolio of work online.

Creating your web portfolio need not be a huge hassle. If you’ve been in the web business a long time, you’ll already have completed a wide variety of projects (“clips” in portfolio-speak).

From these, you select the strongest examples of your work – the projects you’re most proud of.

Which pieces show off your talents or diverse skillset? Assemble several projects you might be interested in including. Later, you can chose 6-10 of the best designs.

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