Creating a Winning Resume

For most jobs, a resume is the first thing hiring managers look at when they’re considering candidates for a position. A sloppy or unprofessional resume can land you in the circular file quicker than just about any other mistake in the hiring process. To create a resume that makes employers want to hire you, consider these tips.

Use the employer’s keywords. When applying for a position, carefully read the job description. Know every skill or qualification the employer wants, then look at your resume. Many employers use tools like Taleo that parse resumes for certain keywords. If your resume lacks those keywords, it won’t even make it to the eyes of a hiring manager. Try to rephrase the text of your resume to include some of the keywords. If you can’t, maybe that position isn’t right for you. 

Eliminate extraneous information. In most circumstances, your resume should only be one page long. You can leave off the life guarding job you had that summer at the community pool, even if it gave you “experience working in a team environment.” Make sure everything on your resume is directly applicable to the skills and qualifications the employer lists in the job posting. 

Use specific language. There’s nothing more useless on a resume than generic buzzwords and vague job descriptions. All they do is take up valuable space and waste a hiring manager’s time. “Performed various duties as needed,” is not a job description. What duties did you perform? If you worked as an assistant and got coffee and answered phones write, “Performed personal errands for upper-level management,” and “Provided phone support in a busy office environment.” This gives hiring managers a more accurate idea of your duties and capabilities. 

Don’t be afraid do brag. Your resume is a sales pitch, pure and simple, and if you don’t sell yourself, no one else will. That being said, there’s a difference between bragging and lying. By no means should you fabricate positions you never held or awards you never won; in the Internet age everything is online and verifiable, and the last thing you want is to get a conditional job offer rescinded once an employer finds out you lied on your resume. 

Proofread, then proofread again. Having spelling and grammatical errors is a surefire way to get your resume trashed. You can’t claim to be “detail oriented and professional” if you confuse their and there or misspell conscientious. Before submitting your resume for a position, look it over as many times as you can stand, then e-mail it to a friend or colleague. Having a set of fresh eyes will hopefully alert you to mistakes you missed.

Know your information cold. Be prepared to explain everything on your resume in detail. From the moment you submit your resume, be prepared to speak with a hiring manager. You might get a call to clarify a few points on your resume in what might amount to a phone interview. Don’t blow it buy being unfamiliar with what you wrote. Think back to the job description and go through your resume and memorize ways to link your experience back to the qualities the employer is looking for.

These are just a few tips that will help you craft a winning resume. If you take away one thing, it’s make yourself relevant. It might take a little creativity, but it’s possible to make any experience pertinent to the desired qualifications of a job opening.


Need a Resume done for an affordable price!?

Check out www.onestopresumeshop.NET for all of your career and resume needs.

How to Find and Get Jobs Online

The Internet is perhaps the best resource you have as a job hunter. At any given time, there are millions of jobs opening and powerful tools are available to job hunters find the jobs that are right for them. In this article, I’ll list a few sources that are useful for job hunters and a few tips and tricks to make the most out of each one. While it might be easy to find a job opening online, a smart job hunter will concentrate his or her efforts on positions that seem to be the best fit for his or her skills and experience.

Two of the best-known sites are CareerBuilder and Indeed. These sites are aggregators, which means they’re essentially search engines that parse a number of sites with job openings and collect them based on your search criteria. If you input something vague such as “writing” in “New York, NY,” you’re likely to get thousands of results, many of them for positions in which you have no interest. By inputting more criteria, you can narrow down your results to positions you might actually want. If you have salary requirements, you can choose a range, say $50,000+. However, you should be aware that many positions do not list the salary. If you’re looking for a mid-level position, you can select “3-5 years” from the “experience level” menu. If you’re looking for positions that involve writing but aren’t crazy about the legal field, you can choose to exclude words like “legal” and “paralegal” under the advanced searched menu. It’s a good idea to browse through the initial results first before including additional search criteria.

Another advantage to starting out with general searches on aggregators is that they link back to smaller sites that often have more job listings limited to one profession. For example, a search for “paralegal” on Indeed will list a number of results from state bar association websites, which have job postings specific to the legal profession. Searching for IT jobs will bring up a number of pages with listing for technology jobs. These sites are usually frequently updated and offer more specialized listings for a given career field.

If you don’t have one already, create a LinkedIn profile. Even if you don’t have that many connections on the network, it’s still amazing how far your web will spread. Chances are, you’ll find a friend of a friend that works in the field you’re interested in and personal contacts are always more effective than going in cold. Send a few messages and try to get the contact information of a person responsible for hiring decisions. If you open your cover letter with a personal greeting and mention of a connection you have to the company, hiring managers will assume you already know something about the company and are thus more likely to fit in.

Finally, make sure your resume and cover letter are neat and professional. There’s no use in finding the perfect job if you send a generic cover letter and a resume full of typos. Make sure each cover letter you write is unique and tailored to the position for which you’re applying, and your resume has been proofread several times and is absolutely perfect. Getting hired is often a long and arduous process, but going about it the right way can make it shorter and infinitely easier.

 Need a Resume done for an affordable price?!

Check out www.onestopresumeshop.net for all of your career, cover letter, and resume needs!