Writing a Professional Thank You Letter Part 1

One of the key parts of making connections is after meeting them from an event where they were speaking or giving advice, a great way to have them help remember you is by writing a thank you letter. After asking them a question and addressing your name, the third and final part is to write a thank you letter after they came. That generally should let the speaker remember who you are. When you write these letters they need to be sincere and not just a generic letter and specific. So I am going to go over some key things that compose a professional thank you letter.

Salutation/Closing the letter

This may seem overlooked at times, but how the person is addressed at the beginning based on what kind of relationship you have with the speaker. If is is informal then you can address them by their first name, but if you are trying to be formal I would suggest using "Dear, Mrs,/Mr., speaker's last name". If they have a title I would use that as well if they are a professor have a P.H.D After beginning the letter, one should close the letter with either a Best Regards, Thank again, warmly, or Best wishes for example. Just keep in mind what kind of relationship you have with this person, because if you write, "Hugs n Kisses, or XOXO, then that could not be professional or appropriate.  

Sincerity

When you are writing this letter, these are usually short and to the point. So right away you should be thanking the person, and be specific on what you are grateful for. If you received a gift you should describe the gift and make it clear what you thought about it and that you cherish it. Now if it was a guest speaker who came, you need to be very specific about things that they talked about and points they made specifically and how that will help you.  After just thanking them, you need to include how much that meant to you if it was advice or a gift, or etc. Also one might want to include is sharing an update about your life of where you are heading and include, if you know the person well maybe, some personal questions about how they are doing since you last were in contact with them. 

So right now I have gone over what type of content should be in the letter, in the next post, I will go over what type of formatting and different ways to compose a letter to make it more personal. Hope everyone enjoyed their break!

5 Tweaks to make that Resume Chirp

One thing I wish I did in my earlier college years was to have already had a resume where I could just add more jobs, experiences, and internships along the way. For me I didn't know where to start and had to get professional help with drafting one up. For me I didn't know what information I should put on there or if it is important or not. I would also think maybe mine is too long or maybe too short. I would recommend taking one of the career development classes like GS 300 here at Purdue to help build your own portfolio and how to effectively get a job. So what I have here today is just some things for what to do.If I were you I would run over to the CCO to get your resumes tweaked or made from scratch in time for the next round of career fairs coming to Purdue if you never went to any this Fall.


- Make your career objective focused towards the employer

By this I mean, you should explain how valuable you are to their company and what kind of things you can offer to them to help build leverage among the competition. You want them to feel good about the decision of hiring you.

-Achievements

In the meat of the resume, one needs to explain what results they have gotten from their experiences. Try to use statistics when possible to support your claims and try also not to write multiple sentences on how you achieved something.

-Verbs

Use words in your resume as actions like "Lead, built, or increases" for you leading bullets. This helps make you stand out as someone who gets things done

- Make it simple and quick for the reader

By this I mean that one should keep in mind that a recruiter reads lots of resumes and when they skim a huge resume from end to end of the page, they won't know where to start and will probably move over it quickly. One should leave white spaces on the page. This means that by efficiency in wording and keeping things at a high level, you will allow them to see the key titles you have had along with your accomplishments and other attributes that make you special. Less is more in terms of having too much on a resume where it looks like a term paper almost.

-Formatting

Another unique way to help your resume stand out is by getting a little creative with how your resume looks. An example would be using a font other than Times New Roman and using navy ink on an off white sheet of paper. Now as long as it stays professional, it can help you stand out. Who knows, maybe you are trying to be hired for a job that wants creativity.


I hope these five simple tips can help you get where you need to get. Sometimes it is just the little things that separate you among the rest and make big differences and can impact what companies think of you in the professional world. Just by explaining how you benefit a company and using verbs could be the deciding factor between you and the guy after you in that interview.

Use Your Resources Given to You

After school is complete for a Purdue student, some people just don’t know where to start to help them look at opportunities. Purdue has lots or resources available to students. In most cases most of the stuff is free. I am going to go over just a few things on campus available to students that can help them with their resumes, careers, or networking. Some of these might be obvious, and some might come as a surprise.

CCO

The CCO is the Career Center which is located in Young Hall. They can critique your resume, give mock interviews, educate you on good LinkedIn profiles, and more. They give career advice to students as well from their advisers. They can help you choose when switching majors possible. They do personality tests. They even post events on their calendar for companies that come to Purdue for career fairs or information sessions.  If I was you, I would create a “myCCO” account and post your resume on there and create a profile with your academic information on there. With your resume on file, they can distribute it to other companies.

OWL

Purdue has an online writing lab (owl) that is a wealth of information. They are located in Heavilon Hall. Besides tutoring, they also have more services. They have information for how to site papers in MLA, APA, and other types of formatting. They also have information for business writing like Memos, job-search writing, and even how to do a written or video resume. They even have a place to submit a paper for peer reviews online which might take several days, but worth the critique.

LYNDA.com

This is free for Purdue students to use.  They have lots of online tutorials and videos for a wide range of things. They have courses online which can help with anything on your computer. They have courses for all levels cover technical skills, creative techniques, business strategies, and more. They also have over three thousand videos! They just have lots of variety for instruction from design, business, and even photography. These people are experts and post valuable content.

Advisers/Enrolled College

Purdue students should not just visit their advisers just once a semester for registering for classes. They can be utilized to help a student find out what more things are available to a student. They can write you a letter of recommendation, help you with other services on campus, and even send you emails for any school information from companies coming, internships being available, to clubs that could benefit you. There are advisors that can help with study abroad questions for academic progress which is good for your resume. Advisers send newsletters; so next time you might want to read more carefully this time.

Also from your college, they have separate departments just for student’s careers. There is a Liberal Arts Career Development Office and website (http://www.cla.purdue.edu/careers/). This is strictly for sending your resume electronically to be reviewed, and as well as posting up anything and everything about careers. They have a calendar for career fairs, internship postings, and send emails for events on campus. These emails get sent to students to help raise awareness, but should definitely get taken a closer look at. Other parts of the College of Liberal Arts deals with setting up special events for alumni. They come to Purdue to help network with students and give advice. Also newsletters get sent to students with tips and advice for careers and also have a calendar posted of events.

I hope that after reading this blog post that you can try to use these resources and to not be intimated by all of this information. The faculty at Purdue love to help and get you onto the right path.

It Pays to Dress Part 2

Last time I talked about how statistically by dressing the part can have benefits and even boosts one salaries. I showed statistics about women, but now I have some for men. I hope that by the end of this article that it can show both men and women that looks do matter.

This article looks at CEO’s and what attributes they have. They found that if they were six feet tall or at least three inches taller than their peers. Another factor is their weight, which resulted in less income, which surprisingly only affected woman in this category. They also looked at the overweight employees and found that twenty percent have low morale which is twice of healthy employees. 

Armoour, S. (2005). Your Appearance, good or bad, can affect size of your paycheck. Growing Research shows how you look is influential while lawsuits raise awareness. USA Today. Pp. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/educate/college/business/articles/20050724.htm

This article explains why people eat diets and why they are focused on their appearance and what motivates them. Some factors are readiness to take action and factors that hinder action, like being health and having no disease and give a sense of control when being healthy in their lives. They found that two types of motivation are appearance and health that affect the way people eat. 

 Hayes, D. & Ross, C.E.. (2013). Concern with Appearance, Health Beliefs, and Eating Habits. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 28 No. 2, 120-130.

This paper looks at physical appearance and how people are treated with these differences.  It looks at skin tone, weight, height, and overall attractiveness. White men with darker skin and who are taller with normal weight are rated more attractive.

Hersch, J. (2011). Skin color, physical appearance, and perceived discriminatory treatment. The          Journal of Socio-Economics, 40, 671-678. 

This article as well describes factors of appearance that affect your pay check. It gives examples from research like being six feet tall, men with mature faces, a woman who is three inches taller than her peers. It gives examples for both men and woman. Another example is if you smile a lot or even have no facial hair.

Shontell, A. (2011). If You Like This, Your Pay Check will be Higher than Average. Business Insider. Pp. http://www.businessinsider.com/if-you-have-any-of-these-20-physical-features-your-pay-check-will-probably-be-higher-2011-2?op=1

Being an attractive person affects a person when applying for a job. However being an attractive woman can have a disadvantage when seeking jobs that are more intended for masculine traits. They found that gender and the idea of appearance influences affects personal decisions in the job application process. Women had the most pressure when seeking jobs.

Heilman, M.E. & Saruwatari L.R. (1979). When Beauty is Beastly: The Effects of Appearance and Sex on Evaluations of Job Applicants For Managerial and Nonmanagerial Jobs. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 360-372.

This talks about factor son appearance that affects salary. Some examples is being tall, being skinny, and even being blonde. It talks about how looking successful can make you successful. It shows how important it is to maintain body image and why to dress well.

Kiisel, T. (2013). You are Judged by your Appearance. Forbes. Pp. http://www.forbes.com/sites/tykiisel/2013/03/20/you-are-judged-by-your-appearance/

It Pays to Dress the Part

Last time I talked about women dressing well for the business environment and how it can have benefits. Looking professional has its perks. These next few passages are some statistics on women who dress well. I have highlights of each article on how looking the part literally pays off.

This article talks about how a professor of Psychology and Neuroscience from Princeton looks at stereotypes on appearance. They used examples like Susan Boyle. She also talks about how people of lower status register differently in the brain. She also explains why people use stereotypes and how age plays a role in forging stereotypes and for women being attractive.

Belluck, P. (2009). Yes, Looks Do Matter. New York Times,

pp.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/fashion/26looks.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Being an attractive person affects a person when applying for a job. However being an attractive woman can have a disadvantage when seeking jobs that are more intended for masculine traits. They found that gender and the idea of appearance influences affects personal decisions in the job application process. Women had the most pressure when seeking jobs.

Heilman, M.E. & Saruwatari L.R. (1979). When Beauty is Beastly: The Effects of Appearance and Sex on Evaluations of Job Applicants For Managerial and Nonmanagerial Jobs. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 360-372.

They looked at how appearances affect their practice. Being healthy and working out makes your performance better. They state that weight and appearance are very strongly correlated, and that they have more authority on their health. Appearance is also connected with social life and gives a sense of willpower.

Hutson, D. J. (2013). “Your body is your business card”: Bodily capital and health authority in the fitness industry. Social Science & Medicine, 90, 63-71.

This article looks at income of women and compares it to their husband’s wages on physical characteristics of being blonde. They looked at white women. They also found that blonde women are considered more attractive especially in the media. Blonde women end up getting paid to an equivalent to one more year of extra schooling.

Johnston, D. W. (2010). Physical appearance and wages: Do blondes have more fun?. Economic Letters, 108, 10/12.

This article uses research from Cornell University on how the way you look can affect a person’s income. For example if a female gains an additional sixty-four pounds can make her wages go down nine percent. Being Obese can make a person’s wages do down twelve percent. A woman who is five feet seven inches will make $5,250 more a year vs someone who was five inches shorter. The average height of a CEO is six feet tall vs the average five feet nine American male.

Sindberg, L. (2009). Think Looks Don’t Matter? Think Again. Forbes,pp. http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/05/appearance-work-pay-forbes-woman-leadership-body-weight.html

So as one can see by reading these articles in detail, appearances do have an affect on salary. I hope this article enlightens you that buy how you look in an interview can already determine how much your salary could already be affected before the interview starts.

15 Going on 25

VS.

Last time I talked about the benefits of why dressing up is important. Today I am devoting this writing to the women. I have illustrated here that there is a difference with how women act and dress from high school like the picture of girls from the movie Mean Girls and then the women from Sex and the City. Here you can already tell that the women on the right act and dress more appropriate and have traits on what it means to be a lady and how that can carry that into the working, professional world. 

 1. Introducing people.

If you are in a conversation with a person and another person is approaching, you should introduce the person you were initially talking to to the person who just came."In the business world, the order in which introductions are made depends on a person’s level of “importance". Make sure to also use titles of people if they have one. This is another thoughtful detail in which one could 

     2. Read up on issues.

     

      A woman is a professional and needs to stay informed on what is going on in the world. This means by being up to date on current events. This is also beneficial, so one can know what is going on in their own professional field and help a lady interact in that field with other important people. 

     

3. Have good posture.

Besides being good for your back, it also is a sign of a professional woman. A lady who is sitting up straight vs. slouching, already gives signs. If you are up tall and straight, it can send off signals of being put together and being confident. 

4. Maintain your personal hygiene. 

By maintaining hygiene, a lady is looking and smelling her best. This can also help one's overall health and help prevent illnesses. Women and men in the work place, are expected to look and be presentable everyday ready to work.

5. Dress appropriately. 

This means that one should dress accordingly to the occasion like going out on a weekend, or going to a formal event, or to church. 

Try to wear clothes that fit you and that aren't tight.

Simplicity is a good thing. Wearing a simple dress or skirt instead of pants, can bring out your lady side. 

Wear pants or jeans. Jeans are not as dressed for the occasion for work as pants are. 

Don't wear workout clothes. If you wear exercising clothes all day besides just for working out, this can suggest that you pay little attention to your appearance.  

6. Keep your clothing clean and pressed. 

Please keep your clothes rid of any wrinkles and also make sure stains are removed and that your clothes are washed. 

7. Don't wear excessive makeup or revealing clothing.

Wearing shirts to show cleavage, or wearing makeup to cover up things, or wearing leggings and showing your curves, are not the modern attributes of a professional lady. Wearing makeup is meant to add beauty and not to hide things. By wearing too much it might take away from being simple. Also at work by dressing inappropriately it can be distracting to others and attract men.

I hope some of these seven tips can help further young professional women. My goal today is not to be the fashion police, but rather coach girls coming into college to start thinking about their upcoming future and to be prepared. 

 Left Picture:   http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/04/30/13-things-you-didn-t-know-about-mean-girls/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1398883423645.cached.jpg 

(Right Picture )   http://corporette.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ep77_4women_street.jpg

Dress to Impress: Looks do matter!

Being a CEO and looking like a CEO go hand in hand. College is where the man you are meets the man you will be. By how a person portrays themselves by their appearance, others will perceive that person by assigning them a status. I am going to help give some basic tips for a college student on how to up his appearance as a college man who wants to get an internship or apply for jobs. Today I am going to explain some benefits of dressing up and go in further detail on why it’s important. From this blog I hope the reader gains an understanding on why dressing properly and how actually appearances do matter. 

1. Dressing properly gives you and edge mentally. 

          

When you dress seriously, you begin to think seriously. Universities are considered a serious business and work place. Education is very important for a young person's career, and it should be reflected by how one is dressed in school. 

2. Dressing properly shows that you respect others and that you also demand respect in return.

By dressing well in the classroom, professors will begin to take notice of you in class. You will be giving a good impression and have a greater likability. You will stand out among your peers and by doing so, he will respect you, and down the road the professor could write you a letter of recommendation. The professor will remember how you presented yourself in class. 

3. Dressing properly helps prepare you for people you haven't met or known before.

At a university, it is the best and easiest time to meet women to find Mrs. Smith, or possibly an alumnus that is stopping by for the day who might help you get a job or give you his business card, or even your family stops by to surprise you to go out somewhere. Will you be ready? A young professional does not wear slippers, pajama pants, a t shirt, and have messy hair to classes or when around campus. 

4. Dressing properly helps transform you into being a grown man.

This may seem silly, but college is a time where a young person grows and begins a new phase in their life. One way to help portray one's manhood/womanhood is to start changing the way one dresses. One good way to help give you a start is by looking at pictures of your grandfather if you are a man. The clothes he wore back then would still look good today. You can follow on what he did throughout his life and help get tips on what suits he wore and etc. 

Some great websites to help get a man started thinking about how he portrays himself, are

1. realmenrealstyle.com

Antonio Centeno is a sharp man. He has great articles and even a book. He posts videos on youtube.com regularly. 

2. Dappered.com 

This is a great website to up a man's wardrobe and also gives great advice on all aspects from shoes, to hair, and prices of things. They always post up deals and affordable items to get that classic look. 

3. Artofmanliness.com

This website has great articles as well with information on classic products on how to be a man.

4. GQ.com

This is a magazine company called Gentleman’s Quarterly. They have all kinds of tips on men’s fashion and trending topics in a man’s world.  

5. Lovelyish.com

This is a great general website for women on all the basics on how to up their appearance in college.

I hope this can help give you all a fresh start for the beginning of the new school year. For women there are many outlets online, magazines, and even television shows for women’s fashion. I just wanted to help the men out specifically in this blog because it is harder to find tips and advice on appearances, but I will have information for women throughout the year. 

Written by: Kyle Negley

(This image above is Donald Draper who is a CEO from the Television show Mad Men. http://clicktempus.com/mad-men-donald-draper-watch/)