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in the Internet age everything is online and verifiable, and the last thing you want is to get a conditional job offer rescinded once an employer finds out you lied on your resume.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.


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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.

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How to Interview to Get the Job You Want

So you have a great resume – but how are you going to present it? Usually, the resume is just a basis for employers to narrow down the number of their applicants. When your resume has finally passed the initial screening process, you now have to prepare for the interview. It may be the sole deciding factor whether you will get the position you want or not.

There are a lot of cases when people who have the best job skills or qualifications still fail to pass their interviews only because they were not able to present themselves very well. Either because they were simply lacking in confidence or they have poor communication skills. Fortunately, everything can be learned like knowing how to relax during interviews as well being able to express yourself better verbally. Here are some basic interview tips you can apply to improve your performance on your next job interview:

1 – Prepare Yourself. Preparing for an interview is one of the best ways you can beat your anxiety regarding your upcoming or during your actual interview. When you are aware that you have prepared yourself well for the interview, you will realize that you are going to do just fine because you know for yourself that you were ready for it.

The most important thing you have to prepare is your mindset. Believe in yourself that you are fit for the job and your interviewer might as well believe you are and hire you. Also, condition your “EQ” or self-esteem for the job interview. Avoid stress as much as possible so you can project your best ‘you’ during your interview. There are a lot of resources online that will help you manage stress effectively, apply relaxation techniques, and even give you self-improvement tips like practicing “people skills.”

2 – Know What to Say or What NOT to Say. When the nerves start to kick in, even if you have the best “about yourself” story, you would still probably get tongue-tied, and worse, accidentally say all sorts of silly things. When it comes to interviews, it would really help ‘rehearsing’ the things you will say as well as take careful note of what NOT to say. Think of the things that your interviewer might ask you and come up with your answers even before your actual interview. Also prepare some relevant questions to ask your interviewer to show your keen interest about the job you are applying for.

3 – Come ahead of Time. Coming a little bit earlier for your interview is not really just about making a good impression (punctuality/ professionalism). Coming a little ahead of your scheduled interview gives you some time to catch your breath and get used to the environment. It will give you some extra time to relax just before your interview.

Every time you go on an interview, make sure you learn new skills that you can apply in your next interviews. This will surely help increase your chances of acing your future interviews. Remember: No matter what the result of an interview, the most important thing is the “learning experience.” In due time, you will greatly improve your interview skills and hopefully land the job you are eagerly
aiming for. Best of luck!

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Choosing your Field

Deciding which career path to take may seem overwhelming but you can make things a lot easier. What you need to do is to research all your options and give yourself time to consider each one of them.The field of work you choose is always important because it will determine where you will spend a great deal of your time for the most part of your life, so make sure it fits well with your values or priorities.The field you choose will also define the amount of opportunities you can branch out to using your basic skills set. So choose your field well and pick one that covers as many of your skills or talents as possible. This will allow you lots of freedom and flexibility in case you may want or need to shift change careers to a related field that still incorporates your basic skills set. 

1 – Your Area of Specialties

A field of work is a broad area of specialties wherein there are many trades or jobs to choose from. For instance, if you studied Education, you can focus on tutoring English to foreigners, teach high-school, or become a Principal or start your own school. You can also focus on Special Ed. or Daycare Management. Whichever field you choose, make sure that it will give you a shot at at least 5 types of related jobs within that particular field to help broaden your options. Also make sure that the field matches your interests, lifestyle, values, and skills set.

2 – Consider Cross-Field Jobs

One field may also be closely related to another field of work. Again for example, teachers tend to be skilled with words too so choosing a career as a writer or editor is also possible. In case your (first or previous) career in the field of education doesn’t work out, then you can easily shift to another (related) field. You can also use this to your advantage if ever you want to have a quite different outlet, for instance if you want something new in your career life.

3 – Learn as Much as Possible about Your Chosen Field

Once you’ve narrowed down your choices and have finally chosen your field, your next step would be to get first-hand advice from people who work in the same field. Get feedback and suggestions from them. Once you’ve decided which specific job to take within your chosen field, speak to those who already work in this area and ask them about their experiences, what they like most about the job, as well as which areas are most challenging. This will help you gauge your capacity or forbearance to perform in this specific kind of job.

In essence, you first need to determine what kind of lifestyle you have or want to have, what interests you the most, and what kind of values and skills set you have.  If ever you need an expert personalized career assessment to help you choose your field, you can order through this link:  

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Finding a Career Path

In a career search of my own, I realized that sometimes finding a career or changing career paths can be very difficult and stressful.  I went from getting my bachelor’s degree in theater to working with kids with special needs.  Although each career path I choose needs to have some sort of creative outlet, I found that there were other careers out there that would fulfill me just as much as theater did.  For a long time I believed that being a famous actress was the only way I would ever be happy.  I was very naive and ignorant at the time.  Not only did I find that I needed to incorporate some sort of creative element into my career search, but I also found that I really love to help people. Because of this I decided that I want to help others with their career goals.

The first step in choosing a career path is to know your values. Values are the things in life that are the most important to you. For example, my top values are time with friends and family, being able to have the money I need to survive and to enjoy my life, and to be able to set my own schedule.  Values are different for everyone, but until you know what those are, it will be difficult to choose a career path. One thing I have noticed when talking to people about their careers is that they are involved with careers that meet little to none of their values. This ends up causing all sorts of issues including work stress, home stress, depression, and exhaustion. If a career goes along with all or even most of your top values, you are very likely to stay with that career for longer and be happy while you are doing it. It took me a long time to realize what my values were.  Once I did figure it out, I created a career path and career goals and am now taking steps every day to get to my ultimate career life, which will in turn give me my ultimate personal life.

The next step after figuring out your values is to choose a career path based on those values.  If attempting to search for a job based on values alone is not enough, there is always the possibility of taking assessments. There are several wonderful free assessments online that will evaluate your skills, interests, and personality and will suggest different careers for you based on the assessments. This will give you a general idea of what sort of career would fit what you like and using your top five values will help you to narrow it down. For example, if you enjoy being able to move around on the job, then a desk job would not be the right option for you. If one of your top values is to have time to spend with family and friends, then a job that requires you to work nights and weekends is not for you.

Once you have chosen a career that goes along with your values, you have to create a plan to get to where you want to go.  This may require changing your resume a little bit, going back to school, getting an internship or taking classes. The most important thing is to look up your job choice on the internet.  Figure out what is required of the position. Does it require a degree? Does it require a certificate or a license? Does it require you to know specific software? These are all things to consider when trying to get into a specific position.  If you can meet all of the qualifications and be trained in all of the areas they are looking for, you have a much better chance of getting the job.  If you feel overwhelmed with things that you have to do to get involved with a specific position, it is important to write a list of what needs to be done and then do them one at a time.  If your current job does not allow you very much extra time, then spend one hour per day working on your goal for your new career path and you will get there as long as you are diligent about working on it.

If you would like a personalized career assessment, a resume, or a cover letter, just click the link below.

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