Resumé Pointers
Studies show that regardless of how long you
labor over your resume, most employers will
spend 10 seconds looking at it. That's it.
Because of the masses of job searchers, most
managers and human resource employees receive an
enormous number of resumes. Faced with a pile of
paper to wade through every morning, employers
look for any way possible to reduce the
applicant pool to a manageable number. Thus,
your resume must present your information
quickly, clearly, and in a way that makes your
experience relevant to the position in question.
We have provided some helpful links below to
optimize your resume and cover letter, so you
can make a lasting impression.
Top Ten Reasons Why You Need a Cover Letter
by Peter Newfield
Your cover letter presents your intentions,
qualifications, and availability to a
prospective employer in a succinct, appealing
format. It's your first chance to make a great
impression; a personalized letter indicates you
are serious about your job search. Your resume
can give the nitty-gritty of dates, places of
employment, and education but your cover letter
must entice the reader to take the extra few
minutes to consider you when faced with hundreds
and thousands of candidates for any one job
opening.
1. Do you really need a cover letter?
You bet! Just as you would never just show up
unannounced at a prospective employer's door,
your resume should never just appear solo on a
decision-maker's desk. Your cover letter is your
first opportunity to introduce yourself, present
your qualifications, and show the search
committee you are a potential candidate for the
advertised position.
2. Personalize it to the company.
Anyone can reproduce a "canned" cover letter and
hope for the best. Instead, take a few minutes
to personalize your letter by showing that you
are really serious about working for the
companies you are contacting. State the reason
that you are interested in working for that
particular company. Mention a department, a new
project the company is involved in, an
acquisition the company has made. Show that you
have done your homework. Address the cover
letter to a specific individual whenever
possible.
3. Why are you sending your resume and cover
letter?
Cover letters should be clear and to the point.
Include the specific job title, two to three
reasons why your experience makes a good fit,
and a brief outline of career highlights.
4. Highlight your strengths!
You may be a great person and never call in
sick, but prospective employers really want to
know why they should consider you for this
position. Brag a little! Give a few facts, list
relevant skills, and state accomplishments on
your present or most recent jobs that will be
impressive. Increased overseas sales by 93
percent? Negotiated new financial leases/loans?
Implemented new training programs which reduced
staff turnover by 15 percent?
5. State your intentions and qualifications
right up front.
If you expect a senior personnel manager or
recruiter to wade through a mish-mash of
information on your cover letter before
understanding why you are sending your resume,
chances are, it will never happen.
6. What makes you different?
Emphasize your skills, talents, and experiences
to show how you would be a valuable addition to
the team. If you have relevant volunteer or
professional experience include it briefly in
your cover letter. Example: An accountant who
serves as volunteer treasurer for a nonprofit
community health organization; an international
sales rep who has lived in Europe and Asia and
speaks several languages.
7. No negative information!
Never include personality conflicts with
previous employers, pending litigation suits, or
sarcastic remarks in your cover letter. If you
are bad-mouthing your present place of
employment, interviewers may fear a repeat
performance if they hire you.
8. When should you include salary/relocation
information?
The rule of thumb is to always include salary
requirements and/or salary history in the cover
letter if a prospective employer requests it.
For example: My salary requirements are
$60,000-$75000 (negotiable). Or: My current
salary is $53,000 at XYZ corporation. To
eliminate this information from your cover
letter may justify your resume getting tossed
out. Never include salary and relocation
information on your resume, only address this
information in your cover letter.
9. Action Steps to Take
Take a proactive approach in your cover letter.
State the fact that you are available for a
personal interview; give your home, work,
e-mail, and/or cell phone numbers where you can
be reached; note that you will follow up by
phone (where possible) to provide any additional
information required.
10. Be direct!
A professionally written cover letter and resume
can open the doors to your next position on the
corporate ladder, as well as a new career in a
different field. A clean, error-free
presentation combined with strong phrasing and
solid facts will encourage the reader to review
the attached resume and call you in for an
interview.
Source:
www.Monster.com
Six
Rules for Writing a Resume
Rule No 1: Do not write a long and boring
description of your current job.
Do not turn your resume into a tedious list of
key responsibility areas. Many people even use
their company jargon in writing a resume. Do
tell the prospective employer how you made a
difference to your job. Provide specific
examples of how the company you work for gained
from your performance. Highlight any goals that
you achieved ahead of time, or any special
cost-cutting measures spearheaded by your
department. Your resume should answer the
following questions:
- What special expertise did you bring to
your current job?
- Attach any special praise, certificates of
achievement presented to you or your
department?
- What were the problems or challenges that
you or the organization faced?
What did you do to overcome the problems?
Rule No 2: Do not use long-winded sentences
and old-fashioned language.
"Sir, I would hereby draw your esteemed
attention to the way my talents are in tandem
with your company's long-term goals" is a
sentence most employers do not have time to
read. Be specific; be direct. Which goals will
you help the company to achieve - better sales
revenue, a new strategy to cut costs, better
management of inter-department communication?
Explain in a few crisp sentences what you do
now, and what you aim to do in your new job.
Rule No 3: Do not write a CV of over two
pages.
Most employers just don't have the time to
go through long CVs. If you've answered a
newspaper advertisement, you can safely conclude
that a flood of CVs would have landed on the
employer's desk. To stand out, your CV should be
short and to-the-point. List all your
achievements but keep them short. Current job
profile, years of experience, educational
background and personal details are a must. Do
put in a short paragraph showing your knowledge
about the industry as a whole.
Rule No 4: Do not sprinkle your CV with
personal pronouns (I and Me)
It is your CV and is bound to be about you.
However, try to avoid using I, me, my in the CV.
Example:
The statement: I overshot my sales target
by 20 percent and was given a special increment
by the marketing director.
Better written as: Overshot my sales
target by 20 percent, and was given a special
increment by the marketing director.
Rule No 5: Do not list personal information
such as how you spend your leisure time.
Your interests such as reading, dancing,
rock-climbing should not be included in your CV
unless such information is specifically asked by
the employer. But if you are applying for a job
in public relations or communication, do list
good writing, reading habits, enjoy meeting new
people as your work-related interests. Personal
information, such as date of birth, address,
telephone n umber should be written in the last
section of your CV.
Rule No 6: Connect your skills to your job
history.
Your resume should record your career
progression. That is, do link new skills to jobs
done. Also, link the skills that you now have to
the job you are applying for. Here is the basic
resume layout:
- Lead with a strong profile section
(detailing the scope of your experience, skill
sets, key responsibility are as)
- Reverse chronological employment history
(emphasizing achievements in the past 10-15
years)
- Education (this might be moved to the top
for new grads)
- Other related topics include professional
affiliations, community activities, technical
expertise, and languages spoken.
- Personal details.
Developing an Electronic-Friendly Resume
Employers today are
likely to request your resume in an ASCII or
plain-text format, so it's a good idea to keep
one saved on your computer, ready to go. Here
are some tips for creating and submitting an
electronic resume:
- An ASCII resume is
basically plain text with no formatting. This
means that there should be no bullets,
underlines, bold or italics in your copy.
Acceptable ASCII characters are dashes,
asterisks and arrows.
- Line lengths in excess of
80 characters have a very good chance of
wrapping the line prematurely, creating an
annoying double-spaced window. You can avoid
this problem when using Word for Windows by
selecting 10-point Courier font and adjusting
the page width to 4-3/4 inches. Then save the
file as a "Text with Line Breaks" to put a
hard return at the end of each line.
- To maintain vertical
alignment, use an equal number of spaces from
the left-hand margin. Convert all text to
10-point Courier or another suitable
fixed-width font. Proportional fonts such as
Helvetica or Arial have different widths for
different characters and should be avoided.
- Sending your resume as text
within an e-mail message will guarantee that
the resume can be scanned. In addition, many
companies prefer receiving resumes this way as
opposed to an attachment due to concerns about
computer viruses.
- When e-mailing your resume,
be sure to include the position of interest in
the subject line of your message.
© 2000, Smartpros Ltd. All
Rights Reserved.
www.accounting.smartpros.com
Resume Posting vs. Resume Distribution-Do YOU
Know the Difference?
The electronic age has revolutionized the way
job seekers and employers meet. The marvels of
online automation take the volume of resume
traffic to levels unimagined only a few years
ago. With services to job seekers expanding
continually, it's important to understand the
different options available to increase the
exposure of your resume to potential employers
and recruiters.
Two such services are Resume Posting and Resume
Distribution. Do you know the difference between
them? Let me explain:
1. Resume Posting
This is a service where job seekers post their
resumes to a job board for paid subscriber
employers and recruiters to find. This is a
passive approach in that the employer or
recruiter must find you within the resume
database. They usually find you by calling up
resumes via key words. The chances of their
finding you depend greatly on your including all
the appropriate key words in your resume.
This service is normally free to job seekers,
and used only by those employers and recruiters
who have paid a substantial fee to access the
resumes. Years ago, when Monster and other
similar job search boards were fairly new, I was
a headhunter (rather than a resume writer as I
am now). It cost me thousands of dollars just to
look at resumes posted on one job board. So you
can imagine what it must cost today! My point
is, when you post your resume to an online
resume posting service, not every employer or
recruiter will find you, only those with the
huge recruiting budgets. And that leaves out a
good part of your target market.
2. Resume Distribution
This is actually opposite of a posting service.
With a resume distribution, the job seeker has
access to a select database of well-qualified
employers and/or recruiters to email his/her
resume to. This service does cost the job seeker
a fee, usually anywhere from $45 to several
hundred. The advantages of a resume distribution
over a posting are:
- It is a proactive strategy.
You don't have to wait to be found.
- You have more control over
who receives your resume.
- You can control how many
employers/recruiters you contact-several
hundred or several thousand-all at once.
- It is very quick and
efficient. You submit your resume once and
reach your entire targeted audience of
employers and/or recruiters.
The quality of the service
depends on the quality of the database of
employers/recruiters the service maintains. Make
sure the distribution service allows you to
target the employers who receive your resume. At
a minimum, you should be able to query the
employer/recruiter database by industry, job
function and geographic region. If the service
offers no targeting capabilities, your resume
may be sent out indiscriminately to employers
and recruiters who do not match your employment
criteria.
Let me caution you, for optimum resume
distribution or posting effectiveness you'll
want to make sure your resume is in tip-top
shape. If you are not currently getting the
response rate from your resume that you'd like,
using a resume distribution service will only be
marginally helpful, as it will merely be
distributing a sub-standard resume to a larger
group of people.
Both services, resume posting and resume
distribution, are valuable strategies for your
job search. Don't be turned off by the fact that
one is free and the other you must pay for. The
money spent on a good quality resume
distribution will repay you over and over again
with valuable job leads and introductions to
influential recruiters.
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