A resume plays an important part while beginning a new career. There are some things you should care while writing a resume because it shows your academic life, skills and achievements. If your resume looks like others than there might be chances that the hiring manger might regret it before even reading it. Following are the main things you should care while making your resume a blockbuster:
Your Career:
In your resume you must be clear that what you really want to achieve in your life. To make this clear you can highlight about your qualifications and what duties you are assuming in the job. If you don't have any experience of job in your career than you should immediately provide your qualification summary because your education is a marketable asset.
Education:
Highlight your education or your qualification. Some of the things that should be in your education section are:
Objective:
Write an attention grabber line that explains about your strengths and capabilities. You can write a quote but it is better that it would have your words.
Layout:
Try not to exceed from one page but if you have many experiences, rewards and achievements then write them down but in the end use a simple layout so that if the reader is just taking a quick glance it would be easy for him/her to read. Therefore be easy while writing your resume because a busy manager will be irritated if you are giving him/her your resume in a haphazard manner.
Wide Space:
There is no good way of making your resume easily rejected if it has narrow margins and interrupted blocks. Employers don't have much time to read your resume therefore is you have written a four to five lines this will make a text-heavy document. So, think of wide or required spaces and necessary pauses so that your resume can be read easily.
Training:
Provide all types training in your resume specially in which you have specialized. Hiring mangers prefer candidates who an experience in training in their specialized field.
Employment Dates:
Be specific when it comes to dates and it is better to provide the exact date when applying to any organization. When writing a date try to use bullet format or use table so that it may look more easy to read manner e.g. pared down sentences commencing with power verbs.
Special Skills:
You must identify your professional skills because they show what you can do. Special skills include computer skills e.g. typing, Microsoft office etc, linguistics skills or any other online education certification achieved by accredited institute.
In the end remember a good resume is like a short advertisement in which you have to give as much information as you can but in brief time. If the hiring mangers call you it means they have a copy of your resume so that they can ask you questions from it. So make their work easy by making a simple layout resume which helps them and not hinders them.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Why Less Is More When It Comes to Information Technology Resumes
It is a common misconception that the more fields that an Information Technology professional knows about, the more valuable that he/she will be in the market place. In fact, assuming otherwise appears almost counter intuitive.
But experienced industry professionals will tell you otherwise, "You can't know everything about everything, we look for a narrow set of specific skills with a very deep knowledge in the field to produce the best quality results."
The primary reason for the demand in this kind of skill set is risk mitigation. Many Information Technology systems carry hundreds of thousands documents, messages or records. The information, or the transmission of this information, is so important that it makes more sense to pay more for a specialist to create or support the system.
This specialisation trend is apparent all over the world, one just has to research online job advertisements to find countless examples of this kind of demand. And with Information Systems becoming more complex with every new version this trend will most likely escalate in the future.
Most experienced Information Technology job candidates have already adopted this approach. Even if the specialization is reasonably broad in its scope. Some examples of popular specializations today include;
- Microsoft Technologies specialists
- Linux/Unix specialists
- Network (Telecommunications) specialists
- Database Specialists
- Storage Specialists
- Developers or Programmers
- Business Analysts
- Project Managers
- Security Specialist
In most cases, these fields have specializations within them. Network specialists, for example, often work with just one or two vendors' hardware. Their resumes reflect these targeted skills and their job applications are limited to employers specifically looking for these skills.
This approach gives job seekers a high likelihood of receiving an invite for an interview when the job and the applicant are accurately matched. It also gives the job applicant a high possibility to stand out in the employers' eyes.
After all, being the second best job applicant is as good as coming last. In a process where only the #1 position is rewarded - preparing intensively for one job instead of throwing your hat in the ring for a hundred jobs where you are less prepared seems a much more sensible approach.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
But experienced industry professionals will tell you otherwise, "You can't know everything about everything, we look for a narrow set of specific skills with a very deep knowledge in the field to produce the best quality results."
The primary reason for the demand in this kind of skill set is risk mitigation. Many Information Technology systems carry hundreds of thousands documents, messages or records. The information, or the transmission of this information, is so important that it makes more sense to pay more for a specialist to create or support the system.
This specialisation trend is apparent all over the world, one just has to research online job advertisements to find countless examples of this kind of demand. And with Information Systems becoming more complex with every new version this trend will most likely escalate in the future.
Most experienced Information Technology job candidates have already adopted this approach. Even if the specialization is reasonably broad in its scope. Some examples of popular specializations today include;
- Microsoft Technologies specialists
- Linux/Unix specialists
- Network (Telecommunications) specialists
- Database Specialists
- Storage Specialists
- Developers or Programmers
- Business Analysts
- Project Managers
- Security Specialist
In most cases, these fields have specializations within them. Network specialists, for example, often work with just one or two vendors' hardware. Their resumes reflect these targeted skills and their job applications are limited to employers specifically looking for these skills.
This approach gives job seekers a high likelihood of receiving an invite for an interview when the job and the applicant are accurately matched. It also gives the job applicant a high possibility to stand out in the employers' eyes.
After all, being the second best job applicant is as good as coming last. In a process where only the #1 position is rewarded - preparing intensively for one job instead of throwing your hat in the ring for a hundred jobs where you are less prepared seems a much more sensible approach.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
What You Don't Know About Resume Screening Software Could Be Sabotaging Your Job Search
Ten years ago, only large recruitment firms and big-budgeted corporations could afford to use resume screening software as part of their talent acquisition process. Job seekers who were applying to small-to-mid-sized companies were immune from the vagaries of these tools.
With the proliferation of the 'software as service' delivery model, this no longer holds true. Even fairly small companies can afford to adopt some kind of resume extraction, screening and management software, either directly or through a full-service hiring solutions firm such as Staffback Inc. This means that job seekers have to be much more savvy about the technology if they want to ensure that their resume gets noticed.
How Resume Screening Software Works
First of all, lets get the 'Optical Character Recognition' issues off the table. There are only a few companies who still scan paper versions of resumes, so if you are holding on to concerns about using italics, underlining, bolding and colour in your resume, you can let them go.
Today's resume management tools are substantially more sophisticated than the OCR versions of old, and have the capacity to neatly handle a wide range of text-based formats and content. They typically include a module that extracts data from resumes, and an HR or talent management system that uses the extracted data to evaluate and rank qualified candidates.
The resume extraction tool uses advanced algorithms to scan your resume, identify text information, and categorize it using the rules of standard resume formatting. Data such as your name, address, telephone number, education, professional experience, years with each job, and keywords will be extracted and fed into an HR database such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, or SAP, or into a candidate tracking system such as Hire Desk.
The talent management database is the foundation tool for the candidate evaluation and qualification process, not your actual resume. Based on the criteria identified by the recruiter or hiring manager, each candidate that makes it into the talent management database is ranked in terms of how closely they match the parameters of the job. Factors that will go into this ranking include where the candidate lives, their years of experience, and most importantly, the appearance of specific keywords - the more keywords, the better the ranking.
In older versions of extraction and talent management tools, the keyword match had to be exact, and many candidates were inadvertently screened out because of spelling variations (AS400 versus AS/400, for example). Moreover, the software was fairly simplistic in its parsing capabilities - the keyword was either present or not present, there was no ability to judge the context in which the word was used. This meant that unqualified candidates were able to trick the system by loading their resume with keywords. Today's advanced tools, such as Talent Technology's Resume Mirror and HireDesk, have the capacity to parse and interpret meaning from entire sentences and phrases, which allows hiring manages to conduct contextual and parametric candidate searches.
Soon after the job is posted and applications begin to roll in, the hiring manager will generate a report with a list of applicants who meet a minimum ranking - the more applicants there are for a job, the more restrictive the hiring manager can be in setting the threshold for qualification. The report may contain small excerpts such as the summary from your original resume, but your actual resume may not get looked at in its entirety unless it makes it to the top of the ranking pool.
The Resumator, a new software suite launched early in 2009, cuts across the grain in this regard. Designed to meet the hiring needs of small to mid-sized companies, Resumator's built-in logic mimics the way that resumes are read in real life, and the software has the ability to display the resume in its entirety. But it still uses data parsing and keyword recognition logic to identify qualified candidates.
What Job Seekers Can Do to Maximize Their Success with Resume Screening Software
Before I start this section, I want to state for the record that I am not an advocate of trying to beat the system. If you are applying for positions for which you are patently unqualified, I believe that you are doing a disservice both to your own job search strategy and to the people who are managing the hiring process. In fact it is largely because unqualified candidates keep applying in great numbers that companies of all sizes have been forced to resort to resume screening software.
Now, that being said, there are specific measures that qualified candidates should take to ensure that their resume gets scanned properly and makes it to the top of the candidate pool.
How to Make It Past the Resume Extraction Process
1. Submit your resume in a text format. A surprising number of candidates use graphics-based pdf files, which are viewed by the scanning software as nothing more than pretty pictures. Ken Winters, CEO of Staffback Inc., goes one step further. He recommends that you stick to MS Word, because its very universality means that it is least likely to cause reading and parsing problems for resume extraction software.
2. Don't use graphics at all on resumes that are being electronically submitted. Extraction tools work on the basis of text recognition, so graphics are white noise that not only don't get scanned, but can actually mess up the parsing process for the surrounding text.
3. Don't forget your address. Some candidates think that by excluding their address they won't be geographically limited, but in fact the opposite is true. One of the first screening parameters that hiring managers use is often the postal code or zip code, and if it isn't present on your resume, you fall to the bottom of the candidate pool.
4. Don't use Word's header or footer options for key data such as contact information. These are outside of the scanned areas, and won't get parsed.
5. Use conventional formatting for things like your telephone number, no spaces between the numbers, no fancy characters as separators.
6. Stick to standard layouts. While resume extraction software has greatly improved over the years in terms of the ability to recognize and parse a variety of formatting conventions, if you are too creative, the software may not parse your resume properly. Unless the response to the advertised job has been low, the recruiter or hiring manager is probably not going to take the time to fix the errors, and you will be dismissed as a P.I.T.A. candidate.
7. Use reverse chronological formatting rather than functional - it tends to parse with fewer extraction errors.
How to Stand Out in the Candidate Ranking Process
1. Tailor each resume to the specific job - one size most certainly does not fit all in today's job market. Read the job posting carefully, and look for the keywords that are used to describe the job and the qualifications. These are an indication of the company's thinking and will most likely be used to rank candidates. In fact some candidate-ranking tools will do a direct comparison of the entire job ad against the candidate's resume.
2. Learn how to read the qualifications section. Many companies that are currently in recruitment mode are looking for candidates who can cover multiple skill sets, almost to be point of being unrealistic in their expectations. When faced with a long list of qualifications, know that some of them are must haves, and many of them are nice to haves. The higher up in the list of qualifications a keyword occurs, the stronger it is weighted in importance in candidate rankings, and the more likely it is to be a must have.
3. Incorporate keywords directly into the body of your resume, so that a context is provided for the word. Keywords that cannot easily be used this way can be listed in a separate table. Be aware however, that some recruiters frown on the use of a lengthy keyword table, and regard it as an attempt by unqualified candidates to trick the system. Keep your keyword list short (10 to 12 items), relevant to the job, and accurate in terms of being a key strength you have to offer.
4. Understand the principle of resume fatigue. Keep your resume easy to scan visually when it finally does get seen by a recruiter or hiring manager, and avoid look-alike formatting that you get from off-the-shelf and online resume templates. As one recruiter I spoke to noted, "I've had virtually identical resumes come in from multiple applicants for a single job. Not a good way to stand out, and shows a distinct lack of initiative.
5. Get your resume in early. In fact the earlier you are in the submission process (provided that you are qualified), the more likely you are to become the gold standard by which the qualification threshold is set for all subsequent applicants.
A Final Word on Job Search Strategy - Advice from Industry Insiders
While knowledge of resume extraction and candidate management software can give you a leg up, motivated job seekers should not rely exclusively on electronic submission of their resume to land their next great job. The laws of the hidden job market still apply, and candidates should be using a multi-pronged job search plan that includes direct applications, networking, cold calling, and relationship building.
Ken Winters advises candidates to make use of resources such as LinkedIn to create a network of contacts and referrals. Use your network to solicit recommendations where appropriate, it's a great way of establishing credibility and letting people know that you are available for new opportunities.
Don Charlton, Founder & CEO of The Resumator describes a great job search strategy as one that uses best practices in relationship building and solution selling. A good salesman knows that there is a fine balance between being pushy and annoying, and creating positive connections. Don't be afraid to ask questions, to seek out the person who you will be making the final hiring decision. But be respectful of their time. You are offering a solution. Look, sound and most of all act like somebody who is solution-minded.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
With the proliferation of the 'software as service' delivery model, this no longer holds true. Even fairly small companies can afford to adopt some kind of resume extraction, screening and management software, either directly or through a full-service hiring solutions firm such as Staffback Inc. This means that job seekers have to be much more savvy about the technology if they want to ensure that their resume gets noticed.
How Resume Screening Software Works
First of all, lets get the 'Optical Character Recognition' issues off the table. There are only a few companies who still scan paper versions of resumes, so if you are holding on to concerns about using italics, underlining, bolding and colour in your resume, you can let them go.
Today's resume management tools are substantially more sophisticated than the OCR versions of old, and have the capacity to neatly handle a wide range of text-based formats and content. They typically include a module that extracts data from resumes, and an HR or talent management system that uses the extracted data to evaluate and rank qualified candidates.
The resume extraction tool uses advanced algorithms to scan your resume, identify text information, and categorize it using the rules of standard resume formatting. Data such as your name, address, telephone number, education, professional experience, years with each job, and keywords will be extracted and fed into an HR database such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, or SAP, or into a candidate tracking system such as Hire Desk.
The talent management database is the foundation tool for the candidate evaluation and qualification process, not your actual resume. Based on the criteria identified by the recruiter or hiring manager, each candidate that makes it into the talent management database is ranked in terms of how closely they match the parameters of the job. Factors that will go into this ranking include where the candidate lives, their years of experience, and most importantly, the appearance of specific keywords - the more keywords, the better the ranking.
In older versions of extraction and talent management tools, the keyword match had to be exact, and many candidates were inadvertently screened out because of spelling variations (AS400 versus AS/400, for example). Moreover, the software was fairly simplistic in its parsing capabilities - the keyword was either present or not present, there was no ability to judge the context in which the word was used. This meant that unqualified candidates were able to trick the system by loading their resume with keywords. Today's advanced tools, such as Talent Technology's Resume Mirror and HireDesk, have the capacity to parse and interpret meaning from entire sentences and phrases, which allows hiring manages to conduct contextual and parametric candidate searches.
Soon after the job is posted and applications begin to roll in, the hiring manager will generate a report with a list of applicants who meet a minimum ranking - the more applicants there are for a job, the more restrictive the hiring manager can be in setting the threshold for qualification. The report may contain small excerpts such as the summary from your original resume, but your actual resume may not get looked at in its entirety unless it makes it to the top of the ranking pool.
The Resumator, a new software suite launched early in 2009, cuts across the grain in this regard. Designed to meet the hiring needs of small to mid-sized companies, Resumator's built-in logic mimics the way that resumes are read in real life, and the software has the ability to display the resume in its entirety. But it still uses data parsing and keyword recognition logic to identify qualified candidates.
What Job Seekers Can Do to Maximize Their Success with Resume Screening Software
Before I start this section, I want to state for the record that I am not an advocate of trying to beat the system. If you are applying for positions for which you are patently unqualified, I believe that you are doing a disservice both to your own job search strategy and to the people who are managing the hiring process. In fact it is largely because unqualified candidates keep applying in great numbers that companies of all sizes have been forced to resort to resume screening software.
Now, that being said, there are specific measures that qualified candidates should take to ensure that their resume gets scanned properly and makes it to the top of the candidate pool.
How to Make It Past the Resume Extraction Process
1. Submit your resume in a text format. A surprising number of candidates use graphics-based pdf files, which are viewed by the scanning software as nothing more than pretty pictures. Ken Winters, CEO of Staffback Inc., goes one step further. He recommends that you stick to MS Word, because its very universality means that it is least likely to cause reading and parsing problems for resume extraction software.
2. Don't use graphics at all on resumes that are being electronically submitted. Extraction tools work on the basis of text recognition, so graphics are white noise that not only don't get scanned, but can actually mess up the parsing process for the surrounding text.
3. Don't forget your address. Some candidates think that by excluding their address they won't be geographically limited, but in fact the opposite is true. One of the first screening parameters that hiring managers use is often the postal code or zip code, and if it isn't present on your resume, you fall to the bottom of the candidate pool.
4. Don't use Word's header or footer options for key data such as contact information. These are outside of the scanned areas, and won't get parsed.
5. Use conventional formatting for things like your telephone number, no spaces between the numbers, no fancy characters as separators.
6. Stick to standard layouts. While resume extraction software has greatly improved over the years in terms of the ability to recognize and parse a variety of formatting conventions, if you are too creative, the software may not parse your resume properly. Unless the response to the advertised job has been low, the recruiter or hiring manager is probably not going to take the time to fix the errors, and you will be dismissed as a P.I.T.A. candidate.
7. Use reverse chronological formatting rather than functional - it tends to parse with fewer extraction errors.
How to Stand Out in the Candidate Ranking Process
1. Tailor each resume to the specific job - one size most certainly does not fit all in today's job market. Read the job posting carefully, and look for the keywords that are used to describe the job and the qualifications. These are an indication of the company's thinking and will most likely be used to rank candidates. In fact some candidate-ranking tools will do a direct comparison of the entire job ad against the candidate's resume.
2. Learn how to read the qualifications section. Many companies that are currently in recruitment mode are looking for candidates who can cover multiple skill sets, almost to be point of being unrealistic in their expectations. When faced with a long list of qualifications, know that some of them are must haves, and many of them are nice to haves. The higher up in the list of qualifications a keyword occurs, the stronger it is weighted in importance in candidate rankings, and the more likely it is to be a must have.
3. Incorporate keywords directly into the body of your resume, so that a context is provided for the word. Keywords that cannot easily be used this way can be listed in a separate table. Be aware however, that some recruiters frown on the use of a lengthy keyword table, and regard it as an attempt by unqualified candidates to trick the system. Keep your keyword list short (10 to 12 items), relevant to the job, and accurate in terms of being a key strength you have to offer.
4. Understand the principle of resume fatigue. Keep your resume easy to scan visually when it finally does get seen by a recruiter or hiring manager, and avoid look-alike formatting that you get from off-the-shelf and online resume templates. As one recruiter I spoke to noted, "I've had virtually identical resumes come in from multiple applicants for a single job. Not a good way to stand out, and shows a distinct lack of initiative.
5. Get your resume in early. In fact the earlier you are in the submission process (provided that you are qualified), the more likely you are to become the gold standard by which the qualification threshold is set for all subsequent applicants.
A Final Word on Job Search Strategy - Advice from Industry Insiders
While knowledge of resume extraction and candidate management software can give you a leg up, motivated job seekers should not rely exclusively on electronic submission of their resume to land their next great job. The laws of the hidden job market still apply, and candidates should be using a multi-pronged job search plan that includes direct applications, networking, cold calling, and relationship building.
Ken Winters advises candidates to make use of resources such as LinkedIn to create a network of contacts and referrals. Use your network to solicit recommendations where appropriate, it's a great way of establishing credibility and letting people know that you are available for new opportunities.
Don Charlton, Founder & CEO of The Resumator describes a great job search strategy as one that uses best practices in relationship building and solution selling. A good salesman knows that there is a fine balance between being pushy and annoying, and creating positive connections. Don't be afraid to ask questions, to seek out the person who you will be making the final hiring decision. But be respectful of their time. You are offering a solution. Look, sound and most of all act like somebody who is solution-minded.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Good Cover Letters For Resumes - A Hiring Manager's Secret Thoughts
When I decided to reenter the workforce and began the tedious and gut-wrenching task of sending out resumes and good cover letters for resumes to every employer I could think of, I quickly realized my hard work and tenacity were not getting me very far. I am a pretty decent writer, and I thought my good cover letters for resumes were truly works of art. I was sure I would get at least an interview for each and every one of these beauties.
But I was barely getting even so much as a courtesy confirmation that my good cover letters for resumes were being received in the appropriate HR mailbox, much less an interview.
I dug into every contact I had, and twisted a few arms to get early heads up on any one retiring, or being fired. I canoodled and networked. I knew that even good cover letters for resumes like mine needed the extra boost of being personally handed to the hiring manager by a current trusted employee, in these times of record unemployment.
But even those "definite ins" did not get me interviews. I was terribly upset and disillusioned.
I knew how the game worked. I was doing everything right. I was more than qualified, was asking for completely reasonable salaries, and had personal recommendations from trusted employees at the companies to which I was applying.
I know times are hard, and there are as many as hundreds of applicants for any given opening, but it seemed to me like I had all my ducks in a row and good cover letters for resumes to at least guarantee a preliminary interview. I knew if i could just get the face-to-face I could make the necessary impression. Like many people in my industry, I am VERY good in interviews.
I began looking at my resume to review the possible problems there. True, I was leaving behind my successful stint as an entrepreneur and business owner to return to the workforce. That can often cause an employer to hesitate. It makes me look like I was either "technically unemployed" or "not a team player." Neither of which was true. But that was supposed to be counteracted by the friends that were physically handing my resume to their managers with the words "she would be perfect."
I reworked much of my resume over and over again, trying desperately to highlight the skills I had acquired and the accomplishments I had managed to achieve. I was almost ready to throw up my hands and apply at Wal-Mart when a close personal friend, who is a hiring manager in a large energy company (an industry I was not qualified to work in, unfortunately.) asked to see my so called "good cover letters for resumes."
I asked her if she didn't need to see my resume also and was surprised when she simply said "not really." I was confused to say the least. I wanted to know how she could help me if she didn't even look at my resume.
"Honestly, as a hiring manager having a good cover letter for resumes is far more important these days."
I was still convinced that my good cover letters for resumes were impeccable so I proudly sent them to her. The advice she gave me was priceless, and helped me land an interview at last.
You need individual good cover letters for resumes for each position you apply to.
Okay. I knew this, but she explained that I needed to be sure I was researching exactly what the company was looking for, and exactly what then needed, and then make sure to highlight those areas of my skills that are relevant to those needs in all my good cover letters for resumes.
For example, when applying to Company A, I learned they needed someone with very strong database and bookkeeping skills. For the same titled position at Company B, I learned that they needed someone that could, in addition to their normal tasks, publish a short departmental newsletter.
These were both skills I had in spades. So I had mentioned these skills on both good cover letters for resumes But company A saw my desktop publishing skills and probably assumed I was overqualified or would require extra pay for that task. They thought they only needed a data-cruncher. Company B saw my database skills and bookkeeping and possibly assumed I was too "left-brained" to create the kind of fun and artistic design they wanted for their newsletter.
I had effectively over-marketed myself to both companies and my good cover letters for resumes went straight to the bottom of their file drawers.
I was hurting myself by showcasing the wide range of my skills. This is a sad reality in the corporate world where they still think they want one person per task, instead of sharing the work load as a creative collaborative effort. So for my good cover letters for resumes to really have the desired effect: (get me an interview) I needed to narrow their focus a bit.
You need to sound less fancy when writing your good cover letters for resumes.
What? This threw me for a loop. But she explained: My writing was in fact great. I had a very extensive vocabulary and my sentences were complex and interesting.
Unfortunately this was not a good thing. In fact it was hurting my good cover letters for resumes for two reasons, both of which are silly but true:
1. It makes me sound like an insufferable prig. Certainly not the impression you want your good cover letters for resumes to leave.
2. The managers I am applying with are likely less verbal, and might feel threatened if they were to hire someone they viewed as possibly "smarter" than they are.
I found this last one a bit far fetched, but she assured me that while many managers realize the value of having people on your team with better skills than your own, just as many are insecure and would fret that they might eventually be replaced by a superior individual they themselves had hired.
Silly. But True. The lesson learned there was that good cover letters for resumes use concise and basic language. They use short and straightforward sentences. They are utilitarian, not verbose. Finally, you must learn to put the skills and talents you have in the correct place in good cover letters for resumes.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
But I was barely getting even so much as a courtesy confirmation that my good cover letters for resumes were being received in the appropriate HR mailbox, much less an interview.
I dug into every contact I had, and twisted a few arms to get early heads up on any one retiring, or being fired. I canoodled and networked. I knew that even good cover letters for resumes like mine needed the extra boost of being personally handed to the hiring manager by a current trusted employee, in these times of record unemployment.
But even those "definite ins" did not get me interviews. I was terribly upset and disillusioned.
I knew how the game worked. I was doing everything right. I was more than qualified, was asking for completely reasonable salaries, and had personal recommendations from trusted employees at the companies to which I was applying.
I know times are hard, and there are as many as hundreds of applicants for any given opening, but it seemed to me like I had all my ducks in a row and good cover letters for resumes to at least guarantee a preliminary interview. I knew if i could just get the face-to-face I could make the necessary impression. Like many people in my industry, I am VERY good in interviews.
I began looking at my resume to review the possible problems there. True, I was leaving behind my successful stint as an entrepreneur and business owner to return to the workforce. That can often cause an employer to hesitate. It makes me look like I was either "technically unemployed" or "not a team player." Neither of which was true. But that was supposed to be counteracted by the friends that were physically handing my resume to their managers with the words "she would be perfect."
I reworked much of my resume over and over again, trying desperately to highlight the skills I had acquired and the accomplishments I had managed to achieve. I was almost ready to throw up my hands and apply at Wal-Mart when a close personal friend, who is a hiring manager in a large energy company (an industry I was not qualified to work in, unfortunately.) asked to see my so called "good cover letters for resumes."
I asked her if she didn't need to see my resume also and was surprised when she simply said "not really." I was confused to say the least. I wanted to know how she could help me if she didn't even look at my resume.
"Honestly, as a hiring manager having a good cover letter for resumes is far more important these days."
I was still convinced that my good cover letters for resumes were impeccable so I proudly sent them to her. The advice she gave me was priceless, and helped me land an interview at last.
You need individual good cover letters for resumes for each position you apply to.
Okay. I knew this, but she explained that I needed to be sure I was researching exactly what the company was looking for, and exactly what then needed, and then make sure to highlight those areas of my skills that are relevant to those needs in all my good cover letters for resumes.
For example, when applying to Company A, I learned they needed someone with very strong database and bookkeeping skills. For the same titled position at Company B, I learned that they needed someone that could, in addition to their normal tasks, publish a short departmental newsletter.
These were both skills I had in spades. So I had mentioned these skills on both good cover letters for resumes But company A saw my desktop publishing skills and probably assumed I was overqualified or would require extra pay for that task. They thought they only needed a data-cruncher. Company B saw my database skills and bookkeeping and possibly assumed I was too "left-brained" to create the kind of fun and artistic design they wanted for their newsletter.
I had effectively over-marketed myself to both companies and my good cover letters for resumes went straight to the bottom of their file drawers.
I was hurting myself by showcasing the wide range of my skills. This is a sad reality in the corporate world where they still think they want one person per task, instead of sharing the work load as a creative collaborative effort. So for my good cover letters for resumes to really have the desired effect: (get me an interview) I needed to narrow their focus a bit.
You need to sound less fancy when writing your good cover letters for resumes.
What? This threw me for a loop. But she explained: My writing was in fact great. I had a very extensive vocabulary and my sentences were complex and interesting.
Unfortunately this was not a good thing. In fact it was hurting my good cover letters for resumes for two reasons, both of which are silly but true:
1. It makes me sound like an insufferable prig. Certainly not the impression you want your good cover letters for resumes to leave.
2. The managers I am applying with are likely less verbal, and might feel threatened if they were to hire someone they viewed as possibly "smarter" than they are.
I found this last one a bit far fetched, but she assured me that while many managers realize the value of having people on your team with better skills than your own, just as many are insecure and would fret that they might eventually be replaced by a superior individual they themselves had hired.
Silly. But True. The lesson learned there was that good cover letters for resumes use concise and basic language. They use short and straightforward sentences. They are utilitarian, not verbose. Finally, you must learn to put the skills and talents you have in the correct place in good cover letters for resumes.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Friday, November 5, 2010
5 Ways to Optimize Your Resume For Database Search
If you can't network your way into a hiring manager's office to interview for the position you know is the perfect fit for you, try these 5 ways to optimize your resume's online exposure in database search engines. Resume database search engines are created to pick keywords out of your resume and rank accordingly. Be prepared with a keyword rich resume that is reader friendly in addition to reaching the top searches in Monster and CareerBuilder database searches.
1.) The first thing you should not overlook when submitting your resume is to include a keyword summary. This lets you add keywords that may be used by the searcher even if those same words are not found specifically in your resume. Be sure to separate each keyword with a comma.
2.) Just providing a keyword summary is not enough. Having a keyword loaded "Qualification Summary" at the beginning of your resume creates a visually stunning document in addition to making your resume database search friendly.
3.) Use your industry's most preferable search terms. Get keyword hints from the job itself. You will find that each employer may use certain keywords to explain the position that they are hiring for in the job description. Use those words to your advantage when compiling keywords for your resume.
4.) Fill your resume with top keyword titles. These titles should also expose valuable keywords to search engines.
5.) Lastly, spell out exactly what you are looking for from your future employer. If you plan on working in Colorado, type the entire word: Colorado. Don't use abbreviations in your resume.
If you aren't getting a call to interview with a recruiter or hiring manager, use these basic tips to optimize your resume for database searches.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
1.) The first thing you should not overlook when submitting your resume is to include a keyword summary. This lets you add keywords that may be used by the searcher even if those same words are not found specifically in your resume. Be sure to separate each keyword with a comma.
2.) Just providing a keyword summary is not enough. Having a keyword loaded "Qualification Summary" at the beginning of your resume creates a visually stunning document in addition to making your resume database search friendly.
3.) Use your industry's most preferable search terms. Get keyword hints from the job itself. You will find that each employer may use certain keywords to explain the position that they are hiring for in the job description. Use those words to your advantage when compiling keywords for your resume.
4.) Fill your resume with top keyword titles. These titles should also expose valuable keywords to search engines.
5.) Lastly, spell out exactly what you are looking for from your future employer. If you plan on working in Colorado, type the entire word: Colorado. Don't use abbreviations in your resume.
If you aren't getting a call to interview with a recruiter or hiring manager, use these basic tips to optimize your resume for database searches.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
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