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STEP 4: Look for Legal Secretary Jobs and Apply

Now that you have decided this field is for you and have the smarts to back it up, you are ready to show yourself off to employers, right? Wrong. Be sure you have a standout resume, an impeccable cover letter, and have brushed up on your interview skills. Follow our expert advice on honing your job search, applying for, and landing the job.

Your Cover Letter and Resume

An employer typically gives each applicant’s resume and cover letter a 30-second look before deciding to consider it or throw it in the trash. Be sure your offering conveys your skills, talents, and background so that you don’t end up in the garbage.

Cover Letter

Your cover letter is an essential part of your application. You want to make it memorable while straightforward and to the point. Remember: you have to fit a lot of important and captive information in ONE PAGE, including your mailing address. See an example of a general administrative assistant cover letter here.

Remember, you need to tailor your cover letter to your reader. Visit your potential employer’s web site or read the company’s annual report to learn more about it, and then use your cover letter to demonstrate how your skills and experience can benefit the organization.

Also, highlight your biggest accomplishments and skills. Sell yourself – don’t be shy! For a legal secretary job, it is important to point out any office skills, your teamwork attitude, previous administrative experience, education, etc. Make your points stand out by using active verbs and descriptive adjectives. For example, instead of just saying “I know Microsoft Excel from my previous job” state “I developed a strong background in Microsoft Excel from working three years in a multi-million dollar sales firm.” Use this comprehensive list of action and power verbs when writing your resume and cover letter.

For more suggestions, read our expert advice on “Opening Lines for Your Admin Cover Letter”

and

“10 Cover Letter Dos and Don’ts”

Resume

If you want your resume to have a good chance of being read by prospective employers, you must invest time and energy not only in its content, but also in its look. First, it needs to be aesthetically pleasing and well organized, with no more than two fonts and at least two-inch margins. Read “Your Resume’s Look Is as Important as Its Content” for more details on making it look perfect.

When writing your resume, avoid these five key mistakes:

1)Typos and Grammatical Errors: Legal secretaries are supposed to be detail oriented with good writing and Word skills. No one will hire you if you have typos in your application. Read it out loud to catch these errors, perform a spelling and grammar check in Word and have someone else competent read it over. Never hurts to check it twice (or three or four or five times!)

2)One-Size-Does-Not-Fit-All: Whenever you try to develop a one-size-fits-all resume to send to all employers, you almost always end up with something employers will toss in the recycle bin. Employers want you to write a resume specifically for them. They expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position in a specific organization.

3)Going on Too Long or Cutting Things Too Short: Despite what you may read or hear, there are no real rules governing the length of your resume. Why? Because human beings, who have different preferences and expectations where resumes are concerned, will be reading it. That doesn’t mean you should start sending out five-page resumes, of course. Generally speaking, you usually need to limit yourself to a maximum of two pages. But don’t feel you have to use two pages if one will do. Conversely, don’t cut the meat out of your resume simply to make it conform to an arbitrary one-page standard. One page, however, is highly recommended.

4)Visually Too Busy: If your resume is wall-to-wall text featuring five different fonts, it will most likely give the employer a headache. So show your resume to several other people before sending it out. Do they find it visually attractive? If what you have is hard on the eyes, revise.

5)Incorrect Contact Information: Another downer to both you and an employer. The phone number and address on your resume should be correct for two reasons. One, you must prove you are conscious of even the most minute details and two, once the employer contacts you to offer you a job, they’ll have the wrong number!

So much for the “Don’ts.” For the “Do’s,” be sure you follow these five guidelines in your resume:

1)Be Specific: Employers need to understand what you’ve done and accomplished. For example: Have you
A. Worked with employees in a restaurant setting.
B. Recruited, hired, trained and supervised more than 20 employees in a restaurant with $2 million in annual sales.
Both of these phrases could describe the same person, but details and specifics in example B will more likely grab an employer’s attention.

2)Write a Strong Objective Statement: Employers do read your resume’s objective statement, but too often they plow through vague pufferies like, “Seeking a challenging position that offers professional growth.” Give employers something specific and, more importantly, something that focuses on their needs as well as your own. Example: “A challenging legal secretary position that allows me to contribute my skills and experience in organizing and operating a law firm.”

3)Use Action Verbs: Avoid using phrases like “responsible for.” Instead, use action verbs: “Resolved user questions as part of an IT help desk serving 4,000 students and staff.” Use this comprehensive list of action and power verbs when writing your resume and cover letter.

4)Highlight Accomplishments, Not Duties: It’s easy to slip into a mode where you simply start listing job duties on your resume. For example:
-Attended group meetings and recorded minutes.
- Worked with children in a day-care setting.
- Updated departmental files.
Employers, however, don’t care so much about what you’ve done as what you’ve accomplished in your various activities. They’re looking for statements more like these:
-Used laptop computer to record weekly meeting minutes and compiled them in a Microsoft Word-based file for future organizational reference.
-Developed three daily activities for preschool-age children and prepared them for a 10-minute holiday program performance.
-Reorganized 10 years’ worth of unwieldy files, making them easily accessible to department members.

Get more detailed expert advice by reading “The Administrative Assistant’s Resume”

and

“Top Dos and Don’ts for Legal Resumes”

Read on to “The Legal Secretary Job Search”

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