As you learned in week 3, your work is not done after your interview.

Part 1

To help you remain competitive, you have to assume that everyone else that interviews for the position did well. At a minimum, you should plan on completing 6 steps after an interview:

1. Ask the interviewer about next steps and plan to follow up.

2. Thank the interviewer and express your interest in the position. (Thank you note)

3. Prepare for possible 2nd interviews: be prepared to meet and interview with other people in the organization, do your research on who else you might meet with and plan on highlighting your accomplishments, background, education, and experience.

4. Consider your salary and benefits expectations. Salary negotiation is an advanced career development skill. There are many resources that can help you practice this skill, including PayScale.com’s very detailed salary negotiation guide. You can review it here: http://www.payscale.com/salary-negotiation-guide

5. Stay positive. Don?t beat yourself up after the interview. If there were places in the interview where you felt challenges, think about how you could practice and improve on in your next interview.

5. Warm-up your references. You should inform your references about the position you interviewed for and get them ready for the reference call. In developing a list of references, please make sure you are using people that will have positive things to say. Don?t ASSUME that previous supervisors or colleagues will give you a good reference?KNOW they will give you a good reference. Consider using a ?mock? reference check with typical reference questions to see how they respond?see information on the following link:

http://www.best-job-interview.com/reference-check-questions.html

—

In a minimum of 150 words, Discuss your own post-interview experiences you?ve had (good or bad). Explain what you might do differently after having completed this course. Why? Be specific!

Have you experienced a reference gone bad? How did you find out? How did you handle it? Talk about other post-interview experiences and discuss lessons learned.

Part 2

Create a one-page general cover letter using your professor’s general resume feedback, Reading #1 (which has a template), and Reading # 2 on Keywords. For this first draft, the most important thing for you to do is create something that can easily be modified for each position that you apply for. If you are planning to apply for jobs in a specific field (accounting, education, etc), try to tailor your cover letter to match that area. To help, you may want to find a relevant job description on one of the many job search websites.

Use Arial or Times font, 12 point. Save and upload your cover letter in .doc or .docx format to this assignment.