I wanted to know what massage school was all about. Not admissions office glossy photos, but the real stuff. What was difficult? What was frustrating? What would help? How could I get a head start?

I found … pretty much nothing. A few dull checklists and articles from people who’d been out of school for years. A few people who claimed their e-book was the One And Only Thing To Ensure Your Success In Massage School No Matter What Your Particular Concerns Might Be! A handful of vague articles about how great it is to go into massage therapy.

But not what I was looking for.

So I stuck to reading the experiences of massage therapists. Because if I couldn’t know exactly what I was getting into in the short-term, I still wanted to know where I was heading.

Some of the blogs were crappy writing. Some were boring. Some were plastered in ads. Some rarely updated. But I found one amazing massage therapy blog, which led to another massage therapy blog, which led to another …

And since I also had experiences and opinions for people in the massage therapy field (although mostly useful for newbies like myself), I started my own massage student blog. I had no idea how hugely that decision would impact my life.

I really believe now that every massage student should blog. Here’s why:

1. Bloggers set the agenda

Sure, every single massage therapist is a part of the conversation surrounding our profession. But it’s bloggers and writers who are at the forefront of what form that conversation takes. Sure, the big organizations have a huge impact on this, but organizations can only move so quickly. (This isn’t a criticism, it’s just the nature of individuals vs. groups. Anyone who’s ever served on a committee knows it.) Sometimes, these big associations even end up commenting on blog posts themselves.

Students have almost exactly zero influence as association officers, policymakers, curriculum designers, business stakeholders, or industry experts. But on the internet, it’s the quality of your thoughts and words that can set you apart. If you want to shape the conversation, you’re going to need a blog.

2. Bloggers (aka conversation starters) are themselves a community

You’ve been fawning over your favorite industry bloggers from a distance, commenting enthusiastically, and living for updates, but you still don’t really feel like you fit into this community of folks who drive the conversation about massage. You think it might be because you’re so new, but there are some newbies in this group, too. Why not you?

Well, you might not have that much in common. Your favorite massage blogger might be crazy busy, keeping up with a practice and a blog, and a social life. Or maybe you haven’t tried actually making friends, and have just assumed everyone would see how fabulous you were and would flood your inbox with messages with declarations of their undying affection.

But here’s something I didn’t know two years ago. Many (most?) of the bloggers in the massage world talk among themselves. A lot. Even the ones who don’t get along follow each other on Facebook (weird, but true!). Friendship is something that happens between equals, and on the internet, the only way to be seen as the equal of someone who creates great content is … to be someone who creates great content.

Note: this means you DON’T have to be a super-experienced massage therapist to be a great massage blogger.

3. Practice Makes Perfect (or close enough)

When you get out in the world, you’re going to need a blog. Whether you blog for other massage therapists or for the general public or for potential clients, there is no more useful tool available to you on the internet. But blogging takes time to get used to. There’s this weird thing people are going to tell you about “finding your voice.” And unless your name is Dale Favier, you’re going to hear that and go, “Huh? Is it hiding? Do you think I could pick one up secondhand at the Salvation Army for cheap?” It takes a while to get a feel for your writing style. So you might as well make your early efforts before you’re trying to convince people to give you money.

If that doesn’t convince you, maybe you’d like to know that your Google rank will improve over time as more people link to your blog. So a year’s head start before you graduate wouldn’t be a bad idea on that level, either.

4. The Massage Therapy Field Needs Your Help

Massage school experiences are different from year to year, state to state, and school to school. There is somebody out there on Google right now, wanting to know what it’s like to go to massage school at a community college in a small town, or a big name chain of schools in a major city, or a whatever-you’re-doing. And nobody else can help them.

Experienced massage therapists who’ve been out of school for years can’t help them.

Massage students and recent grads with different experiences can’t help them.

Lord knows the major websites with generic “here’s a checklist for your second semester” student articles can’t help them.

But you can. If you love massage therapy, blog for it. If it’s helped you, help it flourish in return.

“Okay, fine. But I don’t know how to be a good blogger!”

You didn’t really think I’d leave you hanging on this one, did you?

Allissa, brilliant blue-haired blogmentor of mine that she is, has just released a workbook on blogging for your massage business. She wrote it, and I added stupid references to Home Improvement and fixed the spelling and yelled at her to finish it, already. But it’s on sale now for $15.

[Disclosure: Yes, Allissa is giving me a small share of the profits because I edited the thing. But I'd tell you to buy it anyway. Your $2 or whatever is not going to make or break my career.]

$15 is less than you’d spend on a fancy WordPress theme.

It’s how much you might spend on fajitas and a Dr. Pepper at your local Mexican restaurant. (And it won’t give you gas.)

It’s how much you might spend on a 15 minute chair massage. (I guarantee it’ll hold your interest for longer than 15 minutes.)

It’s how much you might spend on one pack of Vistaprint business cards, not including shipping. (And your blog will be at LEAST as useful as a bunch of cards.)

So if you’re unsure about this whole blogging thing, babysit for a couple of hours, skip the delivery pizza this week, weed your neighbor’s garden, do whatever it takes to find an extra fifteen bucks, grab the workbook now. There’s no excuse not to get started with your blog today!

Related Posts:

• Confusion. Ethics. All that jazz. (Part 1)
• Thankful!
• Learning For Free: Two Resources Too Good To Miss
• Thoughts on the Medical Debate
• Who’s Who in Local Massage (And Who the Heck am I?)

“Hi there, how are you?”

“MIKE MICHAELS.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mike. Have you been waiting long?”

“I GRADUATED IN 2009.”

“Um, that’s great. Won’t you have a se—”

“MY LAST JOB WAS IN CLEVELAND.”

“Okaaaay …”

This is what a business owner or hiring manager experiences every time you send a resume without a cover letter. You may meet all the basic qualifications for the job in question, but the boss is worried about finding the best person, not interviewing every single vaguely qualified massage therapist on the planet. This boss is worrying, wondering

• Is this person friendly? Funny? Smart? Organized? Professional? [Whatever]?
• Does this person understand and believe in the mission and philosophy of this business?
• If this person is “overqualified,” will they quickly get bored and move on?
• If this person is a brand new therapist, will they be able to pick up on things quickly?
• Basically, am I going to regret wasting my time on this person?

The more you can do to answer these sorts of questions BEFORE an interview, the better. That’s what the cover letter is all about.

What a cover letter ISN’T:

• A recap of all the information in your resume.
• A two-sentence email stating that your resume is included as an attachment.
• A totally generic letter full of vague statements about yourself that you never back up with specifics.
• A formal business letter essentially copied from an online example.

What a cover letter IS:

• A marketing document.
• A conversational introduction.
• A window into your personality.
• A chance to alleviate concerns your resume might raise.
• Your best shot at a personal connection.

So how do you actually go about writing a cover letter?

The first paragraph is the easiest. You’ll want to introduce yourself, how you heard about the open position, and possibly mention why you’re looking for a job right now.

After that, you’ve got some space to play around. Possibilities include:

• Telling how you came to have a personal passion for the specific kind of massage offered at this particular business.
• Addressing the fact that you’re a new therapist, and giving examples of why you’re not just any entry-level applicant.
• Talking about what, specifically, you love about being a massage therapist.
• Mentioning what you know about the business in question, and why that excites you.
• What made you stand out in your last position (paid or volunteer).

Keep it under a page, but anywhere from 1-3 body paragraphs are fine. Give each idea its own paragraph to keep your cover letter easy to read.

The last paragraph is your conclusion, and should give contact information (including email address, in case it gets printed out), even though it’s already on your resume.

A good cover letter is a reflection of YOU.

I recently sent out a few different cover letters to local businesses. The first one was to a physical therapy clinic. Now, I’ve never worked in a PT clinic, and that fact could work against me. But I do have a personal connection to the field, and this was how I chose to introduce the subject in the second paragraph:

My first experience with physical therapy was actually as a patient. As a teenager, debilitating joint pain led me to an orthopedic surgeon who wisely recommended physical therapy. I can’t say I enjoyed it all that much while I was there (what 17-year-old enjoys doing slow leg lifts while her friends are out on dates?), but I quickly began to see results. My ability to hike, dance, and provide massage, as well as my ongoing fascination with the musculoskeletal system, are all a testament to that experience.

My hope was to give the impression of:

• someone who relates easily to others (by not speaking in a stilted manner)
• someone who overcomes obstacles
• someone who is committed to health and wellbeing
• someone who is excited about the medical side of massage

It seems to have worked, because I got called in for an interview the next day, where I was offered the job on the spot. I’ve been there almost two weeks now.

(Update: got a positive response from cover letter #2, also!)

You can find two fabulous examples of complete cover letters (along with explanations of why they rock) from Ask A Manager here. They aren’t specific to massage, but it’ll give you a feel for how they sound when different people’s writing styles are involved.

• Example of a great cover letter
• What does a good cover letter look like?

(Also, you should probably take Ask A Manager’s advice for resumes, interviews, job searching, and how to function as either an employee or a boss. The world would be a better place if more people did.)

One last tip: if you haven’t picked up your free copy of Marketing With Personality at Writing a Blue Streak, you’re really missing out. While it focuses on how working massage therapists market themselves to potential clients, marketing yourself to potential employers involves a lot of the same principles. So get to it!

Cover letter questions, woes, or success stories? (Or hilarious mishaps? I love those.) Please feel free to share!

Related Posts:

• Massage Resume Review: This and That
• Massage Resume Review: Experience
• Massage Resume Review: Education
• Massage Resume Review: Objectives
• Massage Job Hunting – Craigslist Tips

Looks

1. It’s okay to use a template if you have to.
It’s better if you don’t have to. If you’ve got the time and a few skills (or a friend with a few skills who can be bribed with a massage), not using a standard Microsoft template can make your resume stand out in a pile. But if your choices are no resume, horrid-looking resume, or template, go template! It’s not as professional looking, but certainly not a deal-breaker.

2. Keep your fonts simple.
Unless you were a graphic designer before you became a massage therapist, this means two at MOST. You can use one font for headings and another for explanations, if you want. But my entire resume is entirely in various permutations of Garamond, and it looks pretty good!

Fonts to avoid include:

• Anything that looks like handwriting
• Papyrus
• Comic sans
• Courier New (it’s ugly)
• Times New Roman (it’s boring)
• Arial (also boring)

Some great fonts for headings, in particular:

• Gill Sans
• Futura
• Century Gothic

Some great fonts for the body, in particular:

• Garamond
• Georgia
• Bookman Old Style

Don’t panic if your favorite font isn’t listed here. I couldn’t list all the awesome ones, and so just picked a few examples. If you could picture a font being used in a nice printed book (not magazine), it’s probably good enough for your resume.

3. Keep color to a minimum.
I guess it’s fashionable right now to add just a splash of color to your resume, to make it stand out. It’s not necessary. But if you really want to use a little color, keep it to things like dividing lines. Colored text is hard to read, and images are distracting.

4. Don’t freak out over paper
If you’re actually printing out your resume, the conventional wisdom is to use nice, heavy paper. Despite how in love I am with good paper (and pens, and pencils, and markers), I’m not sure how much this matters anymore. Most of the time, by the time people see your resume on paper, they’ve already seen it online and liked you (meaning you’re in an interview and brought along a copy to refer to while speaking).

That being said, small massage businesses can be notoriously low-tech. I think that if you’ve got good quality paper lying around or the money to spend, you should go for it! But if you’re printing your resume at the local public library because it’s free and the thought of another expense sends you into paroxysms of terror … don’t panic. Just make sure the ink isn’t faded or streaky, and you should be fine.

Organization

1. Keep consistent with your organizational structure.
If your education is listed by school, followed by the date you graduated, don’t list your work by date, followed by workplace.

2. Use bold, underlining, font size, bullet points and tabs to keep things easy to understand at a glance.
Your headings should look different from places you’ve worked, either because they’re thicker, bigger, underlined, in a different font, or further to the left, or some combination thereof. Job titles should look different from job descriptions. Make sure you keep things consistent here as well, or it can really throw off the eye.

Technical Stuff

1. Tables can be your secret weapon.
The neatest thing about tables in documents is that they can be made invisible. This means that you can keep everything lined up just the way you want it, with each item looking like it’s within a neatly defined rectangle of space (which, in fact, it is). If you’ve never used tables and have no interest in learning, you can get a similar effect with really good use of tabs. But it might be worthwhile learning how to do this, because it’ll help you a lot if you end up developing your own marketing materials in the future.

2. PDF that sucker!
I once heard a story from someone who was emailed a resume in a Word document. The person applying for the job had forgotten to turn off “track changes,” and so the hiring manager was able to see all the changes that had been made in the document, including the bits like “I think you need to flesh this section out more” that the person helping them put it together had written! You’ve worked hard on your formatting, and you don’t want to risk it looking like crap when you email your resume to someone. If you don’t have the ability to export your document to a PDF, find someone who does.

3. But save an editable file too.
You know what sucks? Realizing that the resume you just spent hours on is saved in a PDF … and only a PDF. Unless you’ve spent a little money on Adobe stuff, these are read-only. If you’re ever going to want to make changes in your resume without redoing the entire thing from scratch (and I imagine close to 100% of folks fall into that category), save in whatever file type you normally use BEFORE exporting to a PDF.

4. Watch your filenames.
It’s not that big a deal, but think about saving as janedoeresume.pdf or something to that effect, rather than fabnewresume2005.pdf.

5. Spelling. Grammar. You know.
There are some technical things that computers simply cannot do as well as human beings. Language is one of these things.

Please, please, please, please, please have someone look over your resume for you before you send it out. You stare at one sheet of paper for so long, and it’s incredibly easy to miss things. I’ve done it. Everybody does it. So befriend a lonely English major and make sure it’s right!

This was the final post in the Massage Resume Review series!

Please feel free to share with the massage therapy students and recent graduates in your life. If you have any additional advice (especially if you’re an employer who hires massage therapists), please feel free to comment! What do you look for in a resume, especially when an applicant is starting a new career?

Related Posts:

• Massage Therapy Cover Letters Demystified
• Massage Resume Review: Experience
• Massage Resume Review: Education
• Massage Resume Review: Objectives
• Massage Job Hunting – Craigslist Tips

Experience? I don’t have any experience!

Except you do.

• Did you gain experience in your student clinic?
• Did you gain experience in your student outreach or internship?
• Did you gain experience as a volunteer?
• Did you gain experience giving massages to your friends and neighbors?

Was I a little embarrassed at first that instead of a proper job my resume included the time I did chair massage for two days in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week? Heck, yeah. But everyone has to start somewhere.

How to List Your Experience

Even if none of your massage jobs were technically jobs, list them in the same way you would list actual work experience. This is for two reasons. First, this is the information employers are looking for, whether or not you got paid. The second reason is that, once you have work experience, you can add it to the top of the list, and not have to reformat everything else to match. I am so in favor of not having to reinvent the wheel every time you get a new job.

Massage experience listings should include:

• The name of the organization you worked for.
• The city and state (and country, if needed) in which the organization was located.
• The approximate dates (month/year is okay) you worked there.
• The position you held (“massage student,” “volunteer” “student intern”)
• Basic overview of what you accomplished (how many massages, for example).
• Anything unique about the position (like you worked with burn patients or used a special technique)

“Other” Experience, AKA Your Previous Life

Most massage therapists have a “past life” of some sort. Whether you were an electrical engineer, a scholar of English literature, or a fast-food fry cook, your work history still shows employers that you seem to be employable. By keeping your “Massage Experience” section and your “Other Work Experience” separate, you can emphasize the fact that you are (or about to be) a massage therapist, without looking like you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re also currently a school bus driver.

One difference to keep in mind when listing your past work experience: you don’t need to include a ton of detail. When I was a teacher looking for teacher jobs, I wrote all kinds of things in my job descriptions about lesson planning, tracking developmental milestones, parent communication, keeping abreast of state licensing guidelines … thrilling, I know. I happen to be fabulous at thematic lesson planning and creating process-oriented displays of student learning, but that doesn’t really matter anymore. I keep each job to three bullet points:

• Something about the basic job description
• Something that might apply to the massage world
• Something I accomplished that made me stand out

For my last childcare position, that amounted to

• Provided developmentally appropriate education for toddlers (Basically, my job)
• Documented learning using digital and traditional media (documentation is still important in massage)
• Edited monthly parent newsletters for all 17 classrooms (something beyond what other teachers did)

The odds are that you can find things about your former jobs that fit into at least two out of three categories.

We’re almost done with the resume review! Just one more on layout and miscellaneous items, then we can move on to references and cover letters. Aren’t you excited?

Related Posts:

• Massage Therapy Cover Letters Demystified
• Massage Resume Review: Education
• Massage Resume Review: Objectives
• Massage Job Hunting – Craigslist Tips
• First Interview, First Impressions

Items you absolutely must include:

• The name of your massage school.
• The date you graduated (or intend to graduate)
• If you have a college degree, when you received it, and from where (and in what, if it’s remotely pertinent)
• If you don’t have a degree, your high school and graduation date.

Things you might want to include:

• Techniques you’re well-versed in and use extensively. Don’t be ashamed if that’s just Swedish massage and deep tissue; that’s enough for a lot of businesses!
• If you are a new grad, and you don’t have a separate awards or accomplishments section, you can include your GPA or class rank, but only if it’s really impressive.
• If you don’t have a separate section for additional training, you could include the names, dates, and number of contact hours for continuing education courses you’ve taken.
• Pertinent certifications like CPR, and the dates you last renewed them.
• The approximate number of hours of your school program, especially if you attended school in another state.

Things not to include:

• The fact that your school program was precisely 756.5 hours, and included massage techniques, massage theory, anatomy, physiology, pathology, business and ethics. Everybody else studied the same stuff, and it makes you look very inexperienced when this is the information you think makes you outstanding.
• Your commercial driver’s license, social studies teaching certificate, or other completely unrelated credential. But if you’re an aesthetician, personal trainer, or accountant, that could work in your favor. Think about what the business does, and use your common sense.
• Training in techniques that you’re not willing to provide. You may feel like you need to say that you’ve had training in TMJ massage just to fill that empty space on the paper, but if you hate doing it, you’re better off pretending it never happened.
• Self-study from books you’ve read or videos you’ve watched.
• How “prestigious” your massage school is. If your school is really that good, people will have heard of it.

Related sections you might want to add:

• Awards or Accomplishments: 97% on your licensing exams? Won a case report contest? Most return clients of any therapist in your student clinic? If you’ve got two or more things to brag about, show them off with their own heading.
• Additional Training or Continuing Education: This is especially good if you’ve taken CE courses in specific techniques or in dealing with certain populations, but other courses might make sense too, depending on the job you’re applying to. For example, I took a class on massage in integrated healthcare settings, and included it when I sent my resume to a physical therapy clinic. A course on the anatomy of the spinal cord might look great to a chiropractor.
• Skills: Generally speaking, I don’t think you need a special skills section for a massage resume, as your training and experience should speak for itself. If you’re going to do this anyway, at least keep it objective. “Experience with XYZ SOAP note software” is a skill. “Sensitive touch” and “great communication skills” are not. (If your communication skills are really great, your cover letter will already have blown them away, right?)

In general, less embellishment is probably better when it comes to the education section of your resume. Remember that being new is nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody started essentially where you are now, and it’s not the sort of thing you forget. Keep it simple and accurate and be confident in your ability to keep learning as you go; that’s the kind of person businesses are looking to hire.

Next time: Experience? But I have no experience!

Related Posts:

• Massage Resume Review: Objectives
• Massage Therapy Cover Letters Demystified
• Massage Resume Review: Experience
• Massage Job Hunting – Craigslist Tips
• First Interview, First Impressions

A teachable moment is the precise moment when a person is best prepared to learn something. It could be, for example, that a child’s fine motor skills have just become advanced enough for her to close the snap on her own pants. But sometimes, a teachable moment isn’t a stage of development. Sometimes, it’s a situation that is so interesting that children are suddenly eager for discussion on the topic. A snowstorm. A mounted police officer riding by. An illness. A conflict between two students. All of a sudden, the topic seems pertinent. And this is the teacher’s golden moment of opportunity.

I think we’re seeing a teachable moment in the massage community right now.

There’s been some buzz among massage therapists about a new show coming out called “The Client List.” In it, a woman struggling to make ends meet gets a job in a spa, then realizes there’s more than just relaxation going on. She ends up embracing the sexual side of the business in order to support herself and her family.

First of all, I’m so glad I don’t own a television and don’t need to deal with unoriginal plotlines like this all the time. (If you want a great story about a family in desperate financial straits, pick up a copy of The Glass Castle at your local library. I read it a couple of weeks ago and absolutely loved it.)

Secondly, what a fabulous opportunity! The vast majority of the people around us are far too polite to ask our opinions on the historical and current connections between prostitution and massage. But now we have this unique chance, in which the subject will be in people’s living rooms each week, sparking their curiosity. It’s a perfect teachable moment.

But the thing about teachable moments is, they don’t work unless you actually teach.

With your neighbors.

On your blog.

Through your business practices.

In your faith community.

At the dinner table.

Think of it like Show and Tell. You’ve brought a real, live massage therapist to show the class today. They’ve heard of massage therapists, but never examined one up close. What will you tell them?

Not every massage therapist used to hang out with toddlers all day. But every one of us has to be a teacher.

It’s your moment, so enjoy it. But don’t let it go to waste.

Related Posts:

• The Ellen Massage Prank
• What You Need to Know About Trauma and Massage School
• Permission. Respect. Love.
• Why I Don’t Own A Television
• Confusion. Ethics. All that jazz. (Part 2)

My first duty was to shred the resumes of the other applicants for the job I’d just been hired for.

I didn’t last very long there. It was an obscene amount of work to be doing for $5.90 an hour, and as it happens, it also turns out that I’m a terrible secretary. But it was also a great learning experience, because I got to see a Whole Lot Of Resumes.

I know that in a dream world, we would all be nice and helpful to one another no matter what, but this generally wasn’t how it went down at this place. People would get together in the hall and laugh at the bad resumes with all their spelling and grammatical errors circled in red ink. Sometimes with cartoons drawn on them. No kidding.

There were some gems, and if they impressed me, they almost always impressed my boss.

I want your resume to be one of those.

So, let’s start with the first heading most people include, after their name and contact information, which I’m just going to assume is correct.

Objectives

I’m going to say it: I hate objectives on resumes.

I have two reasons for this.

The first is that every employer knows your real objective already. “To land a job with you so I can get paid.”

Secondly, objectives waste a lot of precious resume space, and anything you can put in an objective could be said better in your cover letter.  But if you can’t send a cover letter because the employer has specifically said so, or you don’t have time to write a good one (a bad cover letter is worse than none at all), go ahead and put an objective on your resume if you want.

Still, there are plenty of objective disasters to avoid. Here are a few of them.

The “I Like”

Here’s a real life “objective ” I found on a massage therapist’s resume:

I am seeking a position in a Massage Therapy setting. I enjoy helping people work through muscular disfunctions and help bring them to a state of relaxation and compfort.

Aside from capitalizing “massage therapy” for no reason, and misspelling “dysfunctions” and “comfort,” there is one major problem with this objective.

It’s all about what this person enjoys.

An objective is a goal. It’s the “object” of your desire. What you enjoy and what you are seeking do not belong here. Imagine a form stating “My goal is _____________.” If your objective doesn’t fit into that sentence, it doesn’t fit in this part of your resume. (Hint: it probably starts with the word “To,” followed by a verb.

The Laundry List

Specializing in pain relief with experience in Headaches, Migraines, TMJ Dysfunctions, Neck, Shoulder issues, Upper and Lower Back Pain, Sciatica, Joint Pain, Fibromyalgia.

To start, headaches, necks, and pain are not proper nouns. Secondly, if you are fresh out of massage school, you are by definition not a specialist in ANYTHING, no matter what your teacher told you about how special all his students are.

If you’re going to make a list of every little thing you’ve ever studied (and don’t, it looks unprofessional), it belongs in the body of your resume.

The “ME! ME! ME!”

Professional growth and a deeper understanding in the way Massage Therapist work along side other medical professionals in a clinical setting.

I think it’s great that you want to grow professionally. I also think this person should grow in their understanding of grammar, especially the appropriate use of plurals. But employers, unlike your teachers, are not in the business of fostering your professional growth and understanding. They are running businesses, and if you can’t tell them about what you have to offer their clients or patients, then why would they take a second look at you?

The Thesaurus

To be a synergistic member of an organization whose aim is to be a beneficial influence upon the quality of life of their clientele, by utilizing my proficiencies in Massage Therapy and Reiki.

Seriously.

Translated: “To do Reiki and massage in a business that gives a shit about its clients.”

Translated again: “I am trying to sound extra intelligent by using big words and business jargon because I’ve heard this is what employers want and I’m too insecure in my own ability to communicate to use words that I might actually use in conversation.”

Don’t be this person, it’s just too sad. Be a more formal version of yourself, not a jargo-bot.

The Vague

I am lookin for something geared towards sports or therapeutic massage. I am also looking to work on athletes and\or athletic teams.

Everybody’s “lookin for something.” And/or something else.

Also, athletic teams are generally made up of athletes, rendering half of that sentence unnecessary.

The Terse

Professional Massage Therapist

Can Massage. Please Pay.

Cool Things About Objectives

Okay, so there are some cool things about objectives. One is that it’s a really easy thing to change without messing with the rest of the document, enabling you to customize your resume to your employer. So you can tell Hotshot Physical Therapy Clinic that your objective is to assist in patient rehabilitation, Rah-Rah Reiki that you aim to promote holistic wellbeing in community with others, and $elective $alon that you are driven by total guest experience.

You can also use it to point out things in your resume in a positive way. If you’re starting a new career and worry about the way your lack of massage background will look to an employer, you can say things like “To use both my massage therapy training and my background in customer service to provide … ” etc. Because people look at your objective first, it is an opportunity to put the spin you want on the information that appears later on.

All that being said, it’s just like a cover letter: none is better than bad. Spelling errors, Pointless Capitalization, obviously generic goals (“To gain employment in a spa or clinical setting”), or objectives that clearly do not meet the job in question will all get your resume dumped in the trash much more quickly than having boring job descriptions or a lack of experience.

Good luck!

Next up: the education section.

Related Posts:

• Massage Resume Review: Education
• Massage Therapy Cover Letters Demystified
• Massage Resume Review: Experience
• Massage Job Hunting – Craigslist Tips
• First Interview, First Impressions

Despite what some people will tell you, I think this is a good way to start. Almost every job and apartment I’ve ever found in my adult life has been through craigslist, and I haven’t been murdered yet. There have been a few sketchy moments (like the time I ignored my suspicions that a potential landlord was disorganized and incompetent, and it turned out the building in question wasn’t even residential), but a few tips will not only keep you safe, but help you find the best job possible.

Start With the Right List

You are five times more likely to get scammed in “salon/spa/fitness” than you are in “medical/health.”

Okay, I made that number up, but in my experience, the sentiment is basically true. It sucks if you’re really looking for that spa environment, but every creepy ad I’ve seen looking for “one more massage gal” has been in this section. Definitely check it out if you want to cover all your bases, but if you’re short on time and don’t want to deal with thinly-veiled requests for escort services, you’re better off sticking to the medical side of things. A number of businesses cross-post to both, anyhow.

Credentials

You’re best off responding to ads that specifically request a therapist with the appropriate credentials, whether that’s licensed, registered, or certified (depending on where you live). Beware businesses that get the wrong credential for your area (asking for certified massage therapists when the proper term in your state is licensed massage therapist), as these people, even if legit, clearly don’t know crap about massage and probably wouldn’t make the best employers. “No experience necessary” and “will train” are both warning signs. “Recent grads encouraged to apply!” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s creepy, but you can almost be assured the pay isn’t great.

Details

There are plenty of reasons why people don’t give too many details in a craigslist ad. They don’t want creeps to know exactly where they work, they haven’t yet told the person whose job they’re filling that they’ve been fired, they want to negotiate pay, whatever. But the ad should include (at a bare minimum) what city the business is located in (“west side suburb” doesn’t count), what kind of setting the business is (chiropractic office, upscale spa, community health clinic, etc.), and whether the position is part-time or full-time, and for an employee, renter, or independent contractor.

Any less than that, and you have no idea what you’re getting into.

Miscellaneous Creep Factors

• Poor spelling and grammar.
• Requesting a photograph
• Too many exclamation points
• Obscenely high pay rate, but not a lot of educational/experience requirements
• Request for a “bio” instead of a resume

Once You’ve Decided To Respond

If you’ve found a good-looking opportunity, there’s one more step you can take to protect yourself from scams. I always send an email asking whether the position posted on craigslist on such-and-such a date, and explaining that while I don’t feel comfortable sending resumes “cold” to an anonymous email, I’ll be happy to send one once I know there’s a genuinely interested human being on the other end. If you only get a computer-generated response, don’t send in your information. Most employers understand your wanting to be cautious with your personal info, and I’ve never had one respond negatively.

Making the Connection

When you have an honest-to-goodness person on the other end, go ahead and send them your resume. Write a nice cover letter explaining a bit about yourself, and put it in the body of the email. Your resume, unless they request otherwise, should be attached as a PDF. Spell check it all to hell, but don’t be afraid to be yourself in the cover letter. (More about that another time!)

Odds are, you’ll at least get an email back. It might be a personal rejection or an invitation to an interview, but either way you’ve done your best with craigslist, a useful tool once you get past the quirks that come with a totally open environment.

Happy hunting!

Related Posts:

• Massage Resume Review: Education
• Massage Resume Review: Objectives
• First Interview, First Impressions
• First Steps
• What I Really, Really Want

I’ve been working especially hard on setting up a web page. Writing content, organizing it effectively, developing a design that I can live with.

I’ve even written some extra content. I meant it to go on the main site, but then I realized it would just be clutter. It was better off going in the blog.

Blog? Crap! I have a blog to attend to!

So if you’re wondering where I’ve been, that’s where. Off in not-quite-panic land, gearing up for a new adventure.

It’s scaring the crap out of me.

But WI’m a scaredy-cat. hat else is new?

(More on what’s new with me after the holidays, I promise. For Christmas, I will hang out with my Jewish relatives, go for a walk in a cemetery, remember how to spout a minimum of six puns a minute, and eat sushi on Boxing Day, because that’s how we roll. You?)

Related Posts:

• When These Holidays Will Be Your Last
• Watershed Moment
• What I Really, Really Want
• Forgiveness
• Inability vs. Inertia

People seem to fall into two camps: continuing education junkies who are always looking for more classes taught by their favorite instructors or on a subject they’ve been dying to learn about (and there’s always a subject they’ve been dying to learn about) and those who do what they have to in order to stay licensed and insured.

You might be able to deduce that I am one of the former.

But, I’m also hovering valiantly above the poverty line. There are a lot of classes I’d like to take, books I’d like to buy, workshops I’d like to travel to, that are just not going to happen this year.

This doesn’t worry me.

I’ve got more than enough “official” continuing education this year (to be honest, I didn’t need any to begin with: Ohio doesn’t require it and I’m still on my AMTA student membership from before I graduated), which frees me up to learn without messing around with hours or accreditation.

I’ve written about formal continuing education before. I’ve also written about viewing your education as a process of capacity-building. Luckily, lots of other edpunks, autodidacts, and lifelong learners are out and about in the world, and learning what you want with out the BS is being refined into quite the artform.

What do you want to learn?

It seems kind of common-sense, in a way, to have a learning plan. You’ve got a business plan if you’re in business, after all. And since you’re definitely “in learning” even if you’re not in school, a plan for where you’d like to end up with all this learning business seems only sensible. The Edpunk’s Guide to a DIY Credential (a free e-book by Anya Kamenetz) will walk you through this process more thoroughly than I ever could here. It’s hugely helpful for differentiating what you want to accomplish from what you need to know from how you plan to learn it.

How will you get there from here?

• Sign up for the Massage Learning Network.
• Build up a list of useful blogs, and follow them.
• Peruse the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork
• Connect with a mentor.
• Find out whether your public library has any books on massage, wellness, business, or whatever else you want to learn.
• Engage in your own research.
• Keep a journal (especially useful if you’re trying new things).
• About a million other possibilities.

I’m taking a class at Stanford University starting in February. No, I’m not a student there, but they are offering a course on starting a business, The Lean Launchpad online for free.

No, you don’t get actual college credit for it.

No, I have no idea how much of what I learn will be applicable to starting a massage business.

Yeah, I’m doing it anyway, because I think it will be pretty interesting not matter what. But you know what would make it even better?

If there were a small group of new massage therapists (or new/future massage business owners) who were taking this class, who could interact online as a study posse of sorts. And if there were established massage therapists with successful businesses who felt like taking the course, and thought they could contribute to the discussion as mentors.

That would be awesome.

Anybody up for it?

Drop a comment if you want to be a part of this. Or even if you don’t. What’s in your learning plan?

PS- Stanford is also offering a free course on the anatomy of the upper limb. I have no idea if it’s any good, but at the very least it could provide some extra study material for the students out there. Can’t beat free, right?

Related Posts:

• Learning For Free: Two Resources Too Good To Miss
• Continuing Education Tips for the Massage Therapy Student
• Are We There Yet? Building our Capacity
• Why Attend National Convention?
• Who’s Who in Local Massage (And Who the Heck am I?)