Applying in LAUSD: Distributing Your Resume
July 3rd, 2008 · Category: GuidesI haven’t posted content in forever since I’m busy switching careers from the information technology sector to education. Oh who am I kidding… the reason I didn’t post is I got lazy. Actually, I’m posting now because I’m busy. I’m in Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) District Internship program so I can get a teaching credential. Meanwhile, I have to find my own teaching job, which means– yep… I’m back in the jobhunting game.
With new adventures come new experiences, which means I learn more. And, since this site is about things I learn, that means more content! Woohoo! However, comics are still on hold because of laziness. :oP :o) Sorry!
I’m trying to find a job teaching either physics or computers at one of LAUSD’s high schools or middle schools. My first step is to find schools I’m interested in teaching at, then distribute my resumes to them. If you’re also doing the jobhunt thing, you may find some of the tips below helpful, even though you’re not applying for a teaching job in LAUSD.
This guide is geared toward beginner and intermediate computer users, but like my other guides, I try to include at least something for everyone. My goal now is to efficiently fax a personalized cover letter and resume to each school I’m interested in teaching at. Your goal may be different (”Huh? Fax?”), but again, you may still find some of my steps common with yours. Breaking it down, here’s an overview of the steps we’ll go through:
- Create a list/database of places we’re applying to
- Write a cover letter template
- Merge the template with our database
- Convert our documents to PDFs
- Fax our cover letters and resumes
“Merge” is in bold because this is one of the key shortcuts we’ll be taking. To be honest, for this case I’m not sure you’ll save that much time going through all this, but the important thing is you’ll be learning new skills that may help you in the future. Let’s start.
The problem
Okay, just kidding about starting. First, let’s look at the problem. Assuming we’re sending a standard cover letter that includes the recipient’s name, title, school, address, and greeting line, we’ll be typing the same information into each cover letter we want to send. Then, we’ll have to print out each letter, sign them, find a fax machine, and sit by the fax machine punching in fax numbers and waiting for the letters to go through. If this is a fax machine we’re paying to use, we’re probably paying a lot.
So what do we do instead?
Create a list/database of places we’re applying to
You may think of this as a table or spreadsheet, but I’ll refer to it as a database. Basically we want a central resource with contact information of all the places we’re applying to. This needs to include the information we’ll be putting on each cover letter. I recommend using Excel, and create separate columns for school name, principal’s first name, principal’s last name, school street address, zip code, and fax number. Other options are to add each school as a contact in Outlook or to create a real database using Microsoft Access (advanced, possibly overkill).
Write a cover letter template
Using Microsoft Word, we’ll write our cover letter as we normally would. We can personalize the body of the letter according to the recipient later.
Merge the template with your database
Here’s the magic many people don’t know about. If you already know, good for you. Microsoft Word has a “mail merge” feature, where you can take entries from a database and plug the info into a template. For example, you can automatically create addressed envelopes by pointing Word to an Excel spreadsheet containing that information. No need to copy/paste fifty times for fifty recipients. I’m not going to teach you how to use the mail merge feature, but you can learn on your own with using Microsoft’s online mail merge tutorial.
Convert your documents to PDFs
Microsoft Word documents don’t appear consistently across everyone’s computers. However, PDFs do (more or less). To avoid unpredictable faxing results later (such as what was a one-page document on your computer end up as two pages over fax), we convert our Word documents (.doc) to PDFs. Even if we don’t fax our cover letter and resume, attaching the resume to an email as a PDF beats attaching it as a DOC (or goodness, the new DOCX).
“Um… cool… but… how do I do that?” You can “print” almost any document to PDF using the free, simple software, CutePDF Writer. Be sure to click “Free Download” and “Free Converter” on the left. You’ll need to install both.
Fax your cover letters and resumes
Unfortunately, this part costs money. If you have free access to a fax machine, then yay. Otherwise, another choice would be to go somewhere that charges you to fax things per page. The cost is often high, which is definitely what you don’t want, especially when you’re trying to blanket an entire district with your resume. :oP :o)
Instead, I went with TrustFax, which allows you to upload a document, type in the fax number, and the document gets sent as a fax. I’m not pushing this service in particular, but I’m just saying it’s one of the better services I found, and it worked for me. If you have better suggestions, please leave a comment!
There are different plans, but I went with the $9.95/month plan, that allows you to send 125 pages a month. If for each school you sent a fax cover page, a cover letter, and a resume, that’s three pages, so 41 schools. :oP :o) I would consider it just $9.95 flat since you’re only sending out your resume once, and most likely would not need this as a monthly service. Yes, it’s like $10, but compare that to your other options and if you think $10 is not worth it, then don’t do it.
“Wait wait… if it goes straight from the electronic version to fax, how do I get my signature on there?” It’s probably not a huge deal you don’t sign the thing, but if you want, you’ll have to do a bit of handiwork. I signed a blank paper, scanned it to a JPG, then inserted it into the Word document as part of the cover letter template. If you don’t know how to do all that, ask someone who does. :oP Don’t worry too much about the signature’s image quality, since sending the document through fax will degrade the quality of the whole thing anyway.
Why not email?
I initially considered going all electronic, and that might work with most other jobs. However, not all the schools provided email addresses, whereas LAUSD’s directory shows the fax numbers for all schools. I also figured the schools weren’t very on top of technology and still somewhat rely on faxes. Another option is to fax your documents and if you can find an email address, send them an email with your resume attached as a PDF.
Hey, that didn’t save me time
You might have noticed that even though you didn’t have to type the schools’ information into each cover letter, you still had to type it into the database, so how did the mail merge save you time? In that respect, it probably didn’t. However, I personally prefer having the schools’ contact info in one place anyway, so I don’t consider the time creating the database as time wasted. In addition, you can add more columns to your database to track other things, such as the date you faxed your resume, when/if you heard back from the school, possible interview dates, etc.
Again, if you didn’t know about the mail merge feature before, I felt this was a good time to learn and apply it since most likely it will come in handy in the future.
This isn’t necessarily the “best” way to get your resume out to schools, but it’s the way I chose to do it and I hope you found certain parts helpful. I’m also intentionally dealing with just resume distribution, as I know there’s much more one can do to get a teaching job in LAUSD, such as getting your foot in the door with substitute teaching jobs, or attending LAUSD’s job placement fairs. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
One has to be really smart and persistent to apply for a job. It’s all about technology now days. I have been filling out applications online, and it’s exhausting!