Daily Aid 81: How to automate followups for job hunting, stimulus, student loan consolidation

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Daily Aid 81: How to automate followups for job hunting, stimulus, student loan consolidation

12 February 2009 1 views No Comment

Daily Aid 81: How to automate followups for job hunting, stimulus, student loan consolidation

Student Financial Aid News

Yesterday, Congress came to an agreement on the final version of the stimulus package. Unfortunately, no one has any idea what’s actually in it. We do know some more education stuff got trimmed; I would hope the provision for increased unsubsidized Stafford Loan limits to have survived since there is no net taxpayer cost, but we’ll see.

From NASFAA:

“[T”>MP3 filehe credit crunch hit, and the market for student loans dried up. The freeze has left … thousands of borrowers … in a financial limbo, unable to put their defaults behind them. Each month an additional 15,000 students or more join their ranks,” The Chronicle of Higher Ed reports. “Guarantee agencies, which are allowed to keep a percentage of each loan they sell, are urging the Education Department to purchase the frozen loans under a loan-rescue law enacted last year. But the department says it doesn’t have the authority to do so, and some Republican members of Congress are pushing a legislative fix. The change could come as early as this week, in an omnibus spending bill that Congress is expected to take up for the current fiscal year.”

Commentary

The market for things like student loan consolidation certainly is a good deal more sparse than it was just a couple of years ago; right now, the Department of Education is the only game in town (because of legislative changes in 2007, it’s unprofitable for everyone including the Department of Education to consolidate student loans). For private student loan consolidation… I’m not actually sure ANYONE is doing that right now. (if you work for a lender that does offer private student loan consolidation, please get in touch – I’d like to chat about working together!)

Scholarship Update

Whether you’re feeling the love or totally over it, we want you to express it in a Valentine or Vendetta card design! Over the moon? Create a touching Valentine for your sweetheart, mom or secret crush. Lost that loving feeling? Create a Vendetta for your ex, that cop that gave you a speeding ticket or your noisy neighbor. Here’s your chance to ignite your love or snuff it out! The best Valentine and Vendetta design will each win $500!

Details at our free college scholarship search site.

Jobcast

One of the most important parts of any job search is followup. After you’ve sent a resume, after you’ve interviewed, you must, must, must follow up. Most job seekers don’t, and the few that do automatically rise to the top of the pile for most hiring managers. Why don’t most candidates follow up? They forget. Here’s a quick tutorial using a contact manager that will help you forget less.

Using the Batchblue contact manager for job hunting. Full disclosure: Batchblue has not paid to be featured in this post. However, if anyone from Batchblue is reading, please feel free to hit up our advertising link.

Sign up for a free account, obviously. Next, take note of the BCC address that you’ll use in every email you send. Usually looks like this: batchbox+1111111111@yourid.batchbook.com.

Send out resumes normally, but using BCC:

Next, go into the contact manager, find the person’s card, and attach a to do.

Now, what good is a to-do if you forget to do it? Enter Google Calendar. If you don’t already have a Google account, get one. It’s free too. Find your calendar subscription feed from your dashboard:

Head into Google Calendar. Find the add button and paste in your calendar URL:

Then click Settings and change notifications.

If you want to use SMS/text messaging reminders, you’ll need to set up your phone with Google as well.

That’s it! Now every time you send an email, go into your contact manager and set up a reminder to follow up. Once you do that, anything you program into reminders will automatically be sent to you via email, text message, or popup, which will help ensure you don’t miss any opportunities to make followup great impressions on prospective employers. In this market, when every little bit helps you beat the competition, a system like this will really, really help.

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