The thank you letter is an overlooked part of the interview process, likely because it comes after what people think is the most important part of the job search: the application and the interview.

But underestimating the value of a well-written thank you letter could jeopardize all the hard work you put into the resume, application and interview. (Click here to tweet this thought.)

Don’t make the mistake of sabotaging your interview by not following up with a polite thank you note. Follow these tips to get it right.

DO take 10 minutes to sit down and write a brief thank you to your interviewer

It’s best to do this the next day, as the longer you wait, the less of an the impact of the letter or email will have. This can be especially important if you attended a career fair, and the interviewer met dozens of other applicants.

DON’T be careless in your composition

Addressing the recipient as a generic “Dear Sir or Madam” shows you didn’t bother to remember his or her name. “Thank you for your time” doesn’t help the interviewer to remember you or leave a positive impression.

DO address the person who interviewed you by name and bring up a high point from your interview

Remind him or her of your skills and strengths in your thank you letter to keep them thinking about why you’d be the right hire.

DON’T ramble on

Your letter will probably receive more time than your resume did, but only because the hiring manager has already invested time and energy into screening and interviewing you. Don’t abuse their patience by writing more than one page.

DO keep it brief

Optimally, you want three or four short paragraphs saying thank you, reviewing the key points and asking to follow up. Thank you letters should always be one page, never longer.

DON’T conclude your thank you letter by simply saying “Thank you”

Sure, saying thank you will definitely be appreciated, but being passive and waiting for the interviewer to contact you again to follow up is not optimal.

DO end your thank you letter with a call to action

This is a sentence or two that pushes (politely) for the reader to take action. In this case, the action should be to get in contact and follow up with your interview/application.

DON’T send one thank you letter

Most people make the mistake of only sending one thank you letter to the interview that they felt went the best, but this might limit your opportunities with other potential employers.

DO send a thank you letter to everyone you interviewed with, even if they decided not to hire you

This will leave a positive impression should they look to hire more people in the future, or if the first choice doesn’t work out. Hiring managers usually have a first, second and third choice for any given vacancy, so following up may bump you up to second or third choice.

DON’T drop the ball when checking for spelling errors, incorrect grammar or poor formatting

Ugly mistakes could actually be detrimental to your application, so take the time to thoroughly go through your thank you letter. Check for any errors and make sure it’s formatted properly to match both your resume and your interview in terms of professionalism.

Remember, in an ever-competitive job market, it’s vital to take advantage of any opportunity to stand out as a job seeker. Following up with a well-written thank you letter could just be the boost your interview needed to leave a lasting impression with your interviewer.

Erik Bowitz is a professional resume consultant for the web’s leading online resume building company, Resume Genius and is also a freeform career enthusiast. He eats, sleeps and breathes resumes and particularly enjoys looking at the world of employment from unique and unexplored perspectives.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post How to Write the Perfect Thank You Letter After Your Job Interview appeared first on Brazen Life.

Finding jobs via friends, friends of friends or your old college roommate is ideal, but unfortunately for many, connections are something you either have or you don’t.

Meanwhile, senior-level executives or employees with notable achievements are often recruited or headhunted for open positions.

If you don’t fall into any of these categories, online job search engines will likely be your key to finding a new place of employment. But in the age of digital information overload, where is the enthusiastic job seeker to start?

Well, luckily for most of us, there are job search engines to suit every employee in every industry at every career level. (Click here to Tweet this thought.) From industry-specific engines like those for healthcare and retail to background-specific job sites like those for veterans or people with disabilities, the choices are endless.

Too many choices can sometimes be overwhelming, so it’s worth understanding the most popular job search engines and how they stack up to one another.

Below are overviews of the most popular job search engines of 2013, including details about each company, its size and the demographics they tend to cater to, as well as their unique selling point (or USP).

You may just be surprised at how different — and how similar — some of the mainstream job search engines actually are.

TheLadders

Established: 2003, New York

Size: 6 million unique monthly users

Estimated Revenue: $11.5 million

USP: Originally designed to cater to executive-level job seekers

Who’s it for?

Senior or executive-level candidates or candidates with unique skill sets will get the most use out of TheLadders. Recruitment agencies, headhunters and executive search companies visit the site the most.

Be ready to spend money if you want full access to immediately apply to jobs through the site. A premium membership ranges $25 for one month to $149 for a year.

Free membership only allows you to preview job titles. Ultimately, TheLadders is best for experienced professionals willing to invest money into their job hunt; however, it also includes listings for job hunters with varying degrees of experience.

Snagajob

Established: 1999, Virginia

Size: 4.2 million unique monthly users

Estimated Revenue: $9.1 million

USP: Marketed for primarily part-time and full-time hourly rate jobs

Who’s it for?

Snagajob was developed for hourly rate job placement and still leads this employment niche. The search engine is perfect for recent graduates, teenagers and blue and white collar hourly workers, as well as director and executive-level positions.

Some of the country’s largest retailers and consumer-oriented corporations advertise heavily on Snagajob, so it’s perfect for the inexperienced looking to find work quickly.

Indeed

Established: 2004, Connecticut

Size: 12.3 million unique monthly visitors

Estimated Revenue: 3.5 million

USP: Surpassing Monster to become the most-visited job aggregator site in the U.S.

Who’s it for?

Because Indeed has sponsored listings, it crawls external job postings from thousands of other websites and aggregates all postings in a Google-like fashion. This makes Indeed suitable for job seekers of all experience levels and industries and in any geographic location.

Indeed displays interesting and diverse job search results, both domestically and internationally. You could call it the Google of job search engines. In the spring of 2013, Indeed began allowing users to upload their resumes directly to the site, making job applications even easier.

SimplyHired

Established: 2003, California

Size: 30 million monthly visitors

Estimated Revenue: $5 million

USP: Powers Myspace Careers and The Washington Post site job listings.

Who’s it for?

SimplyHired was the first major job aggregator to integrate Facebook into its search engine. Through their Facebook accounts, users can search for jobs at friends’ companies and send messages about those openings.

This unique combination of social and professional networking means SimplyHired is ideal for the connected individual looking to capitalize on their established social network.

SimplyHired’s clean, user-friendly layout and vast job scraping make it a very close competitor to Indeed. No matter what your career level or industry of interest, SimplyHired has opportunities for you.

Monster

Established: 1999, New York

Size: 12.1 million unique monthly visitors

Estimated Revenue: $890 million

USP: Used to match job seekers with job openings based on skills and location.

Who’s it for?

Since its birth after the merger of The Monster Board (TMB) and Online Career Center (OCC), Monster has been the largest employment site in the world, only recently eclipsed by Indeed. Monster was originally designed to match people to job openings based on their skills and location, so if you have unique skills or are targeting a particular location, Monster may be your best bet.

In terms of variety of search results, when searching for the same title and in the same location, Monster returns only a fraction of results compared to the other job search engines. The layout is also not as clean or straightforward as sites such as SimplyHired or Indeed, and with advertisements across the top, side and bottom of the page, it feels a bit spammy.

CareerBuilder

Established: 1995, Chicago

Size: 11.3 million unique monthly visitors

Estimated Revenue: $40.6 million

USP: Large partner network including 140+ newspapers and sites such as AOL and MSN.

Who’s it for?

CareerBuilder has a wide selection of local jobs thanks to their close partnership with newspapers across the country. AOL and MSN also contribute to CareerBuilder’s extensive sources of job postings, covering all types of industries and career levels. Because of its newspaper network, CareerBuilder may be preferable for the applicant seeking to find local employment vs. international.

The usability is top-notch, with a handy “rate this job” function that allows you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to postings. CareerBuilder uses this feedback to customize your job search and serve you more relevant job postings. Like Monster, CareerBuilder relies heavily on advertising that will bombard your search. But the more interactive search results make CareerBuilder a great overall contender and alternative to traditional sites like Monster.

So which is the best job search engine of 2013?

Well, as you’ve probably realized by now, that depends entirely upon the applicant. While most of the major job search engines cover broad industries and overlapping career levels, some are more focused than others and all offer unique user experiences in terms of design and interface.

Ultimately, for the most effective job search, you’d be wise to browse job postings on a couple different sites. Then you’ll get a feel for more of what’s out there.

Do you have a favorite job search engine that outperforms the above sites and think the world should know about it? Share it in the comments below.

When not scrutinizing job search engines, Senior Resume Consultant Erik Bowitz works for Resume Companion. He also spends time vertically and horizontally aligning his desktop folders; this overarching efficiency boosts Erik’s effectiveness and life outlook.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post The Best Job Search Engines for Finding Your Ideal Position appeared first on Brazen Life.

So if you’re considering paying a designer to make a flashy infographic resume for you, consider these two points first:

1. Statistically speaking, infographic resumes are not for you

Most careers are not creative. You may enjoy dressing your cat in a hat at home, but once you get to your cubicle, you’re all spreadsheets and invoices, and that’s just fine.

Creative industries comprise four percent of all businesses and two percent of all employees, according to Americans for the Arts. That means that only two percent of you could probably benefit from a funky infographic resume.

Some careers lend themselves quite naturally to infographic resumes, such as those in graphic design, art or even interior design. But for the rest of us, it makes more sense to stick to the tried-and-true print resume format. A subtle dash of color in section titles or a colored paper as background is about as artistic as most of us should get with our professional documents.

Consider not only your position but the company you’re applying to. Would hiring managers there really appreciate an infographic? Some design companies are surprisingly utilitarian in their operations, even if they’re cutting-edge in their designs.

Even if you’re submitting a creative resume for an appropriate industry like graphic design, consider including a standard formatted resume as well, because it might be more suited for official purposes like recordkeeping.

2. Do it well, or don’t do it at all

Don’t bother with an infographic resume unless you’re going to design it yourself. Using a software service or designer just won’t be worth the money or time.

Why? Because if you’re offering an infographic resume, it’s to display your talents as an artist, not your outsourcing abilities. By paying someone else or using software, you could look lazy.

Worse, you might even end up with a subpar final product. As they say, if you want it done right, do it yourself.

The big lesson

Don’t make an infographic resume just because you’ve heard it’s a popular trend. Remember, this is the document that’s supposed to sell you and your skills to a potential employer. The only time you should venture into infographic territory is when you’re 100 percent positive it will work to your advantage.

Have you ever tried an infographic resume? How did it work out?

Erik Bowitz is a professional resume consultant for a leading online resume builder company and is also a freeform career enthusiast. He eats, sleeps and breathes resumes and particularly enjoys looking at the world of employment from unique and unexplored perspectives.

Get our best career advice delivered to your inbox. Sign up today!

The post Why You Should Think Twice About That Infographic Resume appeared first on Brazen Life.