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Thinkin’ ’bout lyin’ on your resume?  Fuh-get-uh-bout-it. 

by Ann Baehr, President of Best Resumes of New York - e-bestresumes.com

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Go ahead, blow the dust off of the ol’ thing.  It has been some time since you shopped for another job, eh?  Bartell has given you some pointers to lead you through your redesign 

by Karen Bartell 

It’s a fact. If you have not looked for a job in the last few years, and even if you have, you probably don’t know how to do it. So please read on. It could mean the difference between being called in for an interview and being passed over for a more savvy-and better prepared-job candidate.

Times have changed. OK, so I’m stating the obvious; but did you know that nowhere is this more relevant than in today’s successful job search strategy?

If you are still thinking that all you have to do is create a pleasant, well-formatted “pretty” resume, put a stamp on the envelope, and mail it out, we have some serious talking to do. You had better read on.

Three resume formats.

That’s right, you heard it. There are not one, but three, essential resume formats to be used in any successful modern-day job search. They are the following:

Presentation Resume

The Presentation format is probably the one you are most used to. This is the “pretty” one I spoke about earlier. It is the standard format traditionally used for mailing, faxing, and presenting directly to an interviewer. However, since we all know these are not the only ways your resume will be greeted these days, you need to become accustomed to the other formats as well.

Keyword Scannable Resume

This format is a relatively new invention brought on the scene to keep up with the changing times. In today’s high-tech corporate climate, the bigger companies –and sometimes smaller ones too - will often scan resumes into a database for future retrieval. Here, the resume will need to be stripped of some of its “bells and whistles.” These would include decorative elements such as horizontal or vertical lines, and fancy fonts. A simple non-serif format like Arial or Tahoma works best. It is also essential to make sure none of the letters or other elements touches each other, since this can confuse optical scanning software and create an illegible mess.

This resume format is also optimized with a specific list of keywords, separated by commas or periods. These are most commonly nouns that indicate your experience such as your job title (e.g. Systems Analyst or Account Executive), industry expertise (Microsoft Excel, TCP/IP, C++), or Education (Masters of Business Administration, BS in Engineering). This keyword summary is ideally placed just before the Professional Experience section.

ASCII Resume

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) resumes are also essential to any modern-day resume campaign, or any time you are emailing your resume to a prospective employer. It also can be used for posting your resume to an online job-bank site such as Monster.com. Like the Keyword Scannable Resume, it should ideally include a Keyword Summary. Unlike the Keyword Scannable, however, it uses a proportional font (generally Courier or Courier New)

Gone are the days when you can simply attach your resume to an email and send it. Unless the employer already knows and trusts you, you are going to have to send it this new way.

This means you are going to basically strip your beautiful resume of all its attractive “bells and whistles.”

You will do this as follows:

1) First, set your margins to 6.5. Left justify the entire document.
2) Next, save your resume in the Plain Text style. This should convert your text to Courier or Courier New font. Ideally the font size should be set to 12 point.
3) Next, make sure you remove all bold, italics, underlines, etc. Also convert any tables you may have to text format. You can just separate any text you may have created in the table with commas.
4) The next step is to convert any special symbols or characters to keyboard – based features. For instance, convert any bullets you may have created (and, hopefully, you WILL have created these in your resume and cover letter!) to asterisks, since these are found on your computer keyboard and so are ASCII friendly. You may replace each bullet with one or two asterisks, at your discretion.
5) After you have finished with this process, you need to simplify your resume even further by saving it in a plain text format. The best is to save it as “MS DOS text with line breaks.” This is found in MS Word under “save as type.”
6) Be sure to repeat this process for your cover letter. When cutting and pasting the cover letter to an email document, just place the cover letter before the resume with some kind of separation indication, such as, you guessed it, COVER LETTER. After the cover letter is finished, cut and paste the resume with the indication- you guessed it again- RESUME. Difficult, right? Now just simply zip it away to the employer of your choice, and you’re done!

Karen Bartell is the President and Owner of Advent Career Services. She is a Certified Professional Resume Writer who has been creating job-winning resumes, cover letters and bios for job candidates and companies for many years. She has also written many successful high-end resumes for the job-bank Website, Monster.com.

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Time for a career change?  You’ve been thinking about it for some time now, and time is what little you have.  Take heart!  You have stumbled on the right page at the right time.  Deborah James has some pointers for you in the following article.  Get your notepad ready. (BTW: check out their blog, http://resumegal.typepad.com/.)

By Deborah James, CCMC, CPRW - Leading Edge Resumes and Career Services

Today’s marketplace is tough! Even the best and brightest need a powerful resume to achieve career success. With the unemployment rate dropping and the labor market tightening, that means JOBS are opening up. Now is the time to get your resume in tip-top shape.

Executive recruiters and HR professionals typically scan the first page of your resume on the first go-around. That’s why your resume needs to read like a newspaper headline, highlighting your brand, value, qualifications, and achievements. Express how you fit into the organization’s future.

The suggestions below really work and are sure to improve your marketability and success landing interviews. You are unique, and your resume needs to be unique too.

Here are 10 tips that will help you create a winning resume.

• Career Focus: Start with a career focus / title at the top of your resume under your letterhead. You want this title to stand out. Focused resumes are powerful job search tools. It’s a well-known fact that hiring managers and recruiters want applicants who know where they can best fit into an organization. Objectives statements are out of style these days.
• Professional Profile: Write your profile / branding message in paragraph or bulleted format. This is your sales pitch — a concise synopsis that tells employers who you are, why you are unique, and what you have to offer, and compels them to read further.
• Areas of Expertise / Core Competencies: This section contains top business, leadership, or tangible / intangible craft-related skills and is comprised of keywords / industry jargon.
• Advanced Degrees: If you have a Masters or above, place your educational credentials to the top half of your resume to improve your marketability.
• Key Performance Indicators: Highlight 4 - 5 of your STRONGEST career accomplishments on the first page. This is a great way to pull a success story that might appear on page two or three and bring it to the reader’s attention during their first scan. Achievements communicate success and numbers sell. Employers want candidates who can identify problems and challenges and offer solutions. Select accomplishments that showcase your track record of success resolving similar challenges.
• Employment Summary: Make sure you include a brief description of each employer and then follow with a scope of responsibility to include the number of direct reports you provide leadership to, type and amount of budget oversight, and title of the person you report(ed) to. Don’t forget to mention your mission – they hired you for a reason.

Bullet point your most relevant accomplishments. You don’t need to tell everything. Focus on your important contributions, and be sure to summarize the challenge, action, and result of your initiatives.Note: If you are having problems coming up with your accomplishment statements, ask yourself the following:
 

• If the person interviewing you asks what the bottom-line impact of what you did was, and how it affected the organization, how would you reply in 30 seconds?

• Think of what it was you did for the organization, and what it meant to the company. What steps did you take to make it happen?

• What would NOT have happened had you not done your job the way you did?
   

• Education, Professional Memberships / Affiliations, and Certifications: Include relevant information only. Note #4 above for advanced degree placement.
• Verbiage: Avoid saying “responsible for” and never use “I” or “my” in a resume. Don’t use helping verbs (be, is, are, was) and limit the use of articles (a, an, the).
• Length: If you have a solid background, don’t be concerned with length. You have a story to tell, and squeezing your entire career history on one or two pages just won’t work. One-page resumes are killers; however, for networking purposes they are perfect.
• Formatting: Make your resume easy to read, pleasing to the eye and designed to generate interviews. No pictures please, and leave some white space. Once content is in place, it’s all about presentation. First impressions count. Use good paper and a laser printer.

Resume writing isn’t for everyone. The most brilliant of minds can have difficulty writing about themselves. Don’t rack your brain toiling over your resume. If you find it difficult, hire a professional writing service to team with you.

Deborah James, Certified Career Management Coach and Certified Professional Resume Writer, is the Executive Director of Leading Edge Resumes & Career Services. She is a member of Career Masters Institute, the Professional Association of Resume Writers, Career Directors, and the National Association of Resume Writers. Deborah is a resume expert and assessor for ExecuNet. She also serves as a guest speaker for colleges and professional organizations, and facilitates career-related workshops to business and community groups. Website: http://www.leadingedgeresumes.com

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Technorati Tags: Executive

I suppose I’m in a technical mood this week.  She teaches or reminds us that acquiring a job of desire requires an action plan.  That plan begins with the right resume format. 

by Heather Eagar

The term resume format refers to the strategy used to structure your resume.  There are various resume format styles.  However, for the purpose of simplicity we will define the most common resume format styles:  

Reverse Chronological Resume Format and Functional Resume Format.  

Often times a resume format is refers to how a file is saved, whether for word processing or the web.  For information on online resume formats click here

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Technorati Tags: Reverse Chronological Resume Format, Functional Resume Format

How you market and promote yourself, has a direct link to how quickly you find the job you want.  The fact is that there are many job hunters out in the market and you need to distinguish yourself more effectively. Having a strong cover letter makes all the difference to your success. A poorly writing cover letter, on the other hand, can hurt your job hunting and job search efforts.

It’s possible to flood yourself with more hot job interview requests and top job offers than most of your competition will land all year if you take the right steps. In applying for a particular job together with hundreds of applicants, this might be your first and last chance to ’sell yourself’ properly to the employer.

Resume

The resume cover letter is a separate page which is tailored according to the specific companies you are targeting. When hunting for a new job, the primary key tools that you need are an excellent resume and a back up resume cover letter.

Upon submission of your resume and cover letter, your first interaction with the prospective employer takes place.

Writing

When writing your cover letter or application letter what you need to do above all is to create impact and interest. Although you should feel free to consult references and models, use your own words when writing a cover letter; don’t mimic another person’s writing style.

It is important to realize that there is an art to writing an effective cover letter. You can skip the review and have a resume and cover letter writing service prepare solid documents for you. Or you can do it yourself and save time and money by usng a software program like the Amazing Cover Letter Creator.

Experience

In the case of email applications it is acceptable to write a brief paragraph of a few sentences explaining where you heard about the role and why your qualifications and experience are a perfect fit for the job. Do you have unique and relevant experience that make you an ideal candidate for the job.

Qualifications

First , your cover letter should state what job you are applying for, as well as, the qualifications you possess to do this job. It serves as a direct guide for the employer in knowing your credentials that match the qualifications that were given. A cover letter is an important marketing tool where you will highlight your qualifications as a potential employee of a particular company you applied for.

Cover Letter Template

Amazing Cover Letter Creator is a simple, but clearly defined cover letter creation software that you can use to help create your own masterpiece. Your time is limited, so writing one basic cover letter and using it as your template will simplify the application process, making you more efficient and hopefully employed all that much faster. Using a cover letter template when job hunting is a logical and time saving measure.

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