Will that Professionally Prepared Resume Get You a Job?  Some people spend a lot of money having a resume professionally prepared.  The result can be outstanding.  People who prepare resumes for a living have spent a lot of time and money learning how to prepare resumes.  These people provide a valuable service for clients.

It is each job seeker’s responsibility to have a resume.  The purpose of the resume is to provide recruiters and hiring managers with information that will get the job seeker interviews and job offers.

I have read that recruiters and hiring managers spend as little as six seconds looking at a resume.  As a recruiter, I can say that I spend just a few seconds deciding whether to save a resume or delete it.

I no doubt have missed resumes that just did not catch my eye as a fit.  I do not think that I am unusual.  Recruiters and hiring managers have specific information they are trying to find in a resume.  The following factors that can make those things hard to find:

• The design in layout and colors
• Long-winded summaries and objectives
• A job seeker’s use of descriptive personal wording
• A weak list of accomplishments, skills, and training

The format of a resume is important.  Microsoft Word has resume templates that to me are distracting in comparison to a simple word document that contains these three elements of information about the job seeker.

• Contact information
• Employment history and accomplishments
• Education and training summary

If you are considering using a professional writer, I would evaluate the person on the following qualities:

• Examples of their work
• How comfortable you are about the person’s interest in developing your resume in a way that it can be tailored to specific company applications
• How well the resume writer is able to create a resume that represents you and not how well it will display their styles

When recruiter or hiring manager opens your resume, the first thing the person should notice is the content not the style.  If the style draws your eyes to the content, then the resume is effective.

THE BIRTH OF THE CAREER PLAN

As you are graduating from college, you will be moving into a new phase of your career plan.  In receiving a bachelor’s degree or an advanced degree, you developed tremendous skills.  Those skills and the skills you developed through hobbies, college employment, and volunteer activity, have value to an employer

The courses you studied will often define the direction of your career.  If you majored in marketing analytics, your objective will most logically lead to to getting a job in the marketing department of a company that uses marketing analytics either in-house or as a service to other companies.  If you majored in elementary education, your objective would most likely be to get a job as a teacher.

RESUME FORMAT
Every resume begins with the following information:

Your name
Location
Phone number
Email address

OBJECTIVE
If you state a goal on your resume, be specific in terms of the type of job you are seeking.  A common mistake is to state a general objective that does not help the hiring manager know how there is a fit between your goals and the needs of the employer.  That hiring manager may read no further.

For example, compare the following statements:

Objective:  I am seeking a job that will challenge my skills and talents.

Alternatively

Objective:  I recently graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.  I am applying for a job with Electro Mega Servers International.

EDUCATION
Something to think about on an individual basis is where on your resume you place the education information.  For people with a great deal of experience, the education summary normally goes at the bottom of the resume.  However, recent college graduates might benefit from placing the education experience at top of the resume.  The reason is that a person who has held a half dozen temporary jobs during college may immediately appear unstable to the hiring manager.  The resume may get tossed before the hiring manager realizes that the person had listed a number of college jobs and has only recently launched a career.
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Even after entering industry, any employment during college should go beneath the college experience. Most people stop listing the college jobs once they begin their career after college.

COLLEGE EMPLOYMENT
If you worked while attending college, any employment may add value to your resume for a several reasons. First, the fact that you worked during college, shows that you take initiative and have an interest in working.  Second, even some of the least important jobs you may have had could give a hiring manager the opportunity to make connections between the employer’s needs and your experience. Third, the places where you have worked may act as an icebreaker in conversations with the hiring manager. Fourth, there may be opportunities within a company beyond the opportunity for which you came in to interview, and your college employment may be a door opener for those other opportunities.

As you review your activities at school, socially, and in volunteer programs, you may recognize roles and responsibilities which have real value to a future employer and should be on your resume. For example, if you worked in developing a website for a charitable organization or managed a team of carpenters on the construction of a home for Habitat for Humanity, employers are going to see real value in these experiences.  Even clubs and societies that you joined while in college and in which you never had leadership roles may be helpful for the hiring manager to see value in your experience, perhaps even recognize experiences that the two of you share. Additionally volunteer projects speak to your character in reaching out to become a team player and your willingness to help other people.

Be certain to include all skills you have which may be appropriate for the job for which you are applying:

Foreign Languages
Software applications
Writing skills
Advanced math skills, and so forth.

Be especially aware of whether the skills fit the job requirements or a least lead to a long-term added value you could make to the company.

In conclusion, put your contact information at the top.  Perhaps next state you college experience.  If you state an objective, make it specific to the employer. Include those college jobs and volunteer activities and try to show how they might relate to the needs of the hiring company.

What ideas do you have to make your resume more effective?

Is Your Resume a Mere List of Responsibilities?

Take your resume to the next level by turning a list of responsibilities into a list of accomplishments.

Occasionally I see people write a resume that is a simple list of their core responsibilities.  The resume reads fine.  It adequately communicates the information about the responsibilities a person has had in a particular job.  The resume also explains the skills a person has developed.

However, a stronger resume is one that shows accomplishments when performing responsibilities.  You can easily turn a boring list of jobs into a resume that will get you a job.

For an example, a core responsibilities resume might state something like this statement:

• Worked as a liaison between marketing and production
• Kept the marketing informed on the status of product supply versus demand

However, an accomplishment-oriented resume might describe the same responsibilities, but the wording has more zing and creates a success story.  The wording discusses the same responsibilities but with the added punch of accomplishments and might read something like this:

• As liaison between marketing and production, increased communication efficiency by 25% by implementing digital texting
• Enabled marketing and production to respond with 100% accuracy to accelerate or decelerate production as required in the marketplace
• Reduced costs thirty percent (30%) in the first six months on the job

Therefore, as you are looking over your resume, you might consider areas where you can use more effective wording to peak a hiring manager’s interest and to enable your resume to rise to the top of the pile by adding an accomplishments twist to what might otherwise be a bland recap of your duties.  Emphasize accomplishments and success.  Focus on areas where you made a difference.

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Resumes

When sending a resume in an email or uploading your resume to a website, you want your resume to look as beautiful and read with the same impact that it has when you read it directly on your computer.

I work with all types of document extensions (that is, .doc, .txt, .docx, .pdf, .xls, .html, and others) on a daily basis.  I see many resumes.  I have found that the best word processing file format for a resume one that is created Microsoft Word© and saved with file the extension .doc.

Some website developers caution that Microsoft Word© can be problematic for web publishing software.  WordPress even has a special setting for dealing with Microsoft Word codes and has a help section on the problems with Apache Open Office formatted worksheets.  So I do not write a document in a worksheet and paste that document into my website.

However, the basic worksheet publishes on a web page and maintains the font settings for bold and normal, and works well as an upload or a copy and paste from a .doc.

FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY

 The following sentence, beginning with “This is a test,” is a direct copy and paste from a worksheet into this web page and did not involve any special settings.  Immediately after the copy and paste is a screenshot of the same worksheet.

This is a test of a copy and paste from a Microsoft Word worksheet as a direct copy and paste.

Screenshot

WHERE THE TROUBLE STARTS

When writing a resume, avoid the tabs “insert” and “format.”

There is code in those tabs and that code delivers different results on different software.

Some people incorrectly believe that they can prevent their resume from being changed in any fashion by clicking the review tab at the top of a worksheet and clicking “Track Changes,” thereby marking up changes a person might make after receiving the resume.  However, a person can simply copy and paste the resume into a new document and save the new document instead of the one with the “Track Changes” setting and the markups on the document do not appear.

Therefore, you really do not want to use the “track changes” setting, because it can really make your resume ugly if it gets passed from person to person in a company’s hiring pyramid all marked up.  By the time your resume lands on the desk of the President of the hiring company, the resume may look something like this:

BROWN PAPER BAG OR CROWN PRINCESS

The brown paper bag of word processing is .txt (Notepad*).   Notepad is used most effectively as a text editor for websites and saved as an .html.  In .html, Notepad is the crown princess of the Internet.  However, it is not at all necessary to send your resume out in Notepad and have all the code and highlighting stripped out.  If you have your resume written in a worksheet .doc and paste your resume into a website form, most often, the forms strip the content down to text only.  Those forms with visual editors are not very common and are designed to work with worksheets.

RESUME BRICKS

Sending resumes through websites can be a challenging event.  A .pdf makes for a terrific downloading document.  However, for me they are kind of a brick, and if your resume gets passed through many hands on the way up to the executive office, somebody may need to make a note on your resume and may not be knowledgeable enough nor have the software to write on a .pdf.  As an aside and FYI, Google Documents can convert a .pdf to a worksheet, if you need to edit the document.  The service is free.

.docx:  .docx arrived with Microsoft Office 2007 and is very dynamic yet appears to be problematic for some people.   The issue with .docx is that some .html uploading software still cannot process .docx correctly and your resume may not get uploaded nor will the software indicate that the upload submission did not actually upload.  However, if you prefer to send us .pdf or .docx, we are fortunate to be able to handle anything short of a stone tablet.

KNUCKLEHEADS

I rarely see anyone use .xls (Microsoft Excel ) so if you are thinking about it, forget it.  I get about one resume a year in Excel or an .xls.  It marks a person as some who sees himself (never got an .xls from a woman) as the only person in step as the parade goes marching by.  Occasionally, I get emailed a linked resume (.html).  Really?  You want my computer to go to the trouble to pop open your link so I can see your resume on the World Wide Web.  And?  Just send me a .doc like the rest of sane humanity!