Resume Advice Archives - Page 2 of 5

How to stand out on your resume

May 15, 2011 By Miriam Salpeter

Almost every resume I see reads like a laundry list of “stuff” the person has done at work. The problem is that everyone applying for the job you seek probably has a similar list of “stuff.” What makes you stand out? Why are you special – why do YOU deserve to win an interview and the job?

It certainly isn’t because you were “Responsible for” something or that you were “Recruited to” do something. A prospective employer wants to know what you’ve accomplished. What impact have you had on past employers? What obstacles did you overcome to achieve a positive result?

The most important thing you can do is target your resume specifically for the job. Use the job description as your guide and provide proof in your application materials that you have the skills necessary to accomplish the position’s goals.

Quintessential Careers compiled a comprehensive list of accomplishments employers seek.

Describe how you:

Make money
Save money
Save time
Make work easier
Solve a specific problem
Help the company become more competitive
Build relationships
Expand the business
Attract new customers
Retain existing customers

I suggest you answer the following questions:

What problems did you solve?
How did you improve your organization?
What innovative ideas did you introduce (and what were the positive results)?
How did you make a difference?

When you re-focus your resume spotlight to shine on what you have to offer instead of just listing what you’ve done, you will be much more marketable.

photo by Samurai John

How to incorporate keywords in your job search materials

November 23, 2010 By Miriam Salpeter

Well-informed job seekers know that companies typically screen resumes using software that searches for key words. Thatâ€™s why your resume should be targeted/personalized for each job. Re-writing even a sectionÂ of your resume can help scanning software (or Applicant Tracking Systems) mark your resume as one to review further.

I recently presented a webinar for The Career Summit about how to build a bridge to your next employer, and keywords (how to find them and how to USE them) play a huge role in paving the way to a new employer.

It is crucial for job seekers to identify the words that employers are using to look for them and to use those in their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, Twitter bios and Facebook bio.

You don’t want to waste any words on your resume. Earlier this week, I asked, “are you a job seeker or a French fry?,” making the point that job seekers need to select words carefully to be sure they make sense and will attract employers.

The best place to find keywords that are most relevant for your targeted organization is in job descriptions. Study job descriptions on job boards, via LinkedIn and any place that employers advertise opportunities. The descriptions don’t need to be for jobs you’d actually apply to do. For example, maybe the job is in Omaha, and you plan to stay in Miami. If the description itself is relevant to what you want to do, that information can be useful to inform your materials.

Review job descriptions and identify the nouns and noun phrases. (Remember from grade school — a noun is a person, place or thing.) Focus on being as specific as possible. For example, assistant (a noun) is not as specific as administrative assistant, or executive administrative assistant (noun phrases). Technical skills (including software), degrees and other specifics related to the job may all be keywords.

For example, a job description for a sales manager position for a fitness company includes the following keywords (among others):

Personal sales,
Model for team members,
Weekend production,
Sales Department Head,
Sales team,
College degree,
Member adviser

One way to be sure you are targeting keywords is to highlight all of the keywords in a variety of similar job descriptions and then incorporate all of them into your resume. Include acronyms (for example IT) as well as complete words (information technology). You should probably have at least 25 targeted keywords or phrases included in your resume.

Some fun tools I suggested during the webinar to help you visualize your keywords are Wordle — (http://www.wordle.net/) and Tag Crowd (http://tagcrowd.com). The picture accompanying this post is a Wordle representation of that sales manager position description.

You can see in the Wordle that words such as team, success, sales, benefit and healthy are highlighted. (Yes, I know that healthy is an adjective!) That would suggest those words should appear (among the others) in your resume. The bigger the word appears in the word cloud, the more significant Wordle considers it. Consider creating a word cloud of your job descriptions and comparing it to one of your resume. It’s not scientific, but it does offer a visual way to identify if you are including the details you need to land the job.

Are you a French fry or a job seeker?

November 21, 2010 By Miriam Salpeter

One of the first things I tell prospective clients who have received job huntingÃ‚Â advice elsewhere before coming to me is that a lot of job search is unscientific — what one person likes, another thinks is useless. A good example is the cover letter debate. Some recruiters expect a cover letter, others believe they are a waste of time. The fact that opinions vary about “right and wrong” is clear in resume-ology as well. The fact is, there is no absolute right way. There are best practices, and the rest is up to the job seeker or resume writer.

So, when I was speaking to a prospective client who told me he had been to a LinkedIn workshop and had his resume reviewed, I asked him to share a bit about what he had already learned, as I never want to confuse a job seeker from the get go with contradicting information.

Then, he told me that someone had advised him to suggest he was a “seasoned” professional in the headline of his resume. That’s when my coaching self control hit a road bump and I knew I needed to explain why he should not say he was “seasoned.”

I asked, “Are you a French fry?” (Actually, I didn’t really ask that. But, our discussion did hone in on that question.) Think about it: what is the chance that anyone has included the word seasoned in his or her applicant tracking system software (that scans resumes and helps identify the best ones) as a “grab this person if you find him” word? I’m thinking not very many.

I explained to the prospective client that it is so important to choose each word on the resume based on 1) the fact that it describes you (the job seeker) and clearly outlines what you have to offer (your skills and accomplishments – as they relate to the employer’s needs) and 2) the chance that the employer has flagged that keyword as important for the job.

Think about this when you get advice about your resume. Don’t just blindly incorporate information or words because someone mentioned them — think about what those words will be doing to help you get where you want to go.

Stay tuned for more advice about writing targeted job search materials!

photo by Gudlyf

How to avoid mistakes on your resume

October 28, 2010 By Miriam Salpeter

Today’s post is one of many from members of the Career Collective community I co-coordinate with my colleague Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter. I encourage you to visit other members’ responses, which will be linked at the end of my post tomorrow. Please follow our hashtag on Twitter: #careercollective.

This month’s question (in a nod to Halloween this weekend): How to avoid scary career/resume mistakes? How should job seekers ensure their resume/career “costume” fits / attracts the right target audience?

Both questions are so important! I’ve been working on several webinars, and have been thinking a lot about targeted search and how to be sure your materials are perfectly suited to your goals. (This is more important than you might realize for a successful search.) But, since that is the topic of my presentation for the Career Summit, I’m going to hold off on those tips. You can still register for the Summit (and listen to anything you missed via the archives). I present on November 17th.Â Learn more in THIS post about how the Career Summit is for you if you are looking for a job).

How to avoid scary resume mistakes?

Have you ever written an important document and sent it off, only to find that you included a silly error? Like, “I’m looking forward too meeting you” or “Its nice the the market is recovering.” (Can you find the errors in those sentences?) Your resume is as important a document as any, and the list of potential errors long.

I recently spoke with several hiring managers when I attended the Society for Human Resource Management-Atlanta’s conference, and each said that an error on a resume indicates a careless prospective employee. It may seem harsh, but when there are so many applicants for each job, weeding out candidates whose resumes don’t seem detail oriented is one way to screen them.

Are you relying on your spell check to catch your errors? You may want to think twice!

How often are words misspelled only to inadvertently form other words? You don’t want to advertise that you were distinguished as the “best manger of the year.”

I headed up the career center at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. You can only imagine how many of my students were touting their credentials as something slightly indecent! (Think public without the all important L!)

A tip to consider: create an exclusion dictionary in yourMicrosoft Office program. This personalized dictionary will flag a word as misspelled (such as manger), even though the main dictionary knows it as a proper word.

Thanks to Lindsay Olson, who blogs about recruiting and PR, for sharing this fun video that she saw on Rowan Manahan’s blog, Fortify Your Oasis. The video offers an exaggerated example of why you can’t assume that your spell check is a good editor!

Be sure to read through your resume, and have a trusted friend review it as well. (Or a professional!) You never know when “public” may become indecent.Â The list goes on and on: their/there, and/an, faculty/facility, board/bored.

In the meantime, take a look at this video for a good laugh!