I sent out 300 resumes last month, and I had only two responses and no interviews. What’s wrong?

The Career Coach responds: What’s wrong is that you’re trying to take the easy way out - one resume, one mail-merge cover letter and 300 stamps. No big deal - also no results!

This is the age of customisation, my friend, where you’ll have to make every letter and resume different to match the particular culture and needs of each organisation.

The key element is research: you should be doing everything you can to find out all about an organisation and the job it has open - through the Web, people who might know people there, newspaper articles, hot tips from the competition, etc. Your resume is not only about you. Well, who is it about? It’s got to be half about you and half about the people and the organisation to whom it’s being sent.

So save your stamps and your ego - do your research and send out 10% of that number. They will, of course, be well researched and perfectly tailored to each position. It’s painstaking, but it gets much better results ! And that’s what you’re after, yes?