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Are you thinking about looking at other options for work? Updating your
resume?
There are schools out there that tell you how to write a resume—should you
attend, or hire the teacher to get yours gussied up?
It depends.
Scott Bennett is the author of The Elements of Resume Style (Amacom) and has
done a little resume reading. The former president of Public Service
Computer Software, he’s now wearing the hat of career coach.
Bennett has read over 10,000 resumes, conducted thousands of interviews and
has coached over 4,000 job seekers.
“Resumes are a sales tool,” he says. “One of the biggest mistakes is that
too many people sell themselves—it’s a misnomer.” It’s your skills and your
expertise that should jump off the resume page. Good enough.
His website, www.click4careercoaching.com, is loaded with freebie tools and
articles to assist you in the ideal resume quest.
Start with email—make sure it’s listed on the resume. If it’s a silly one,
dump it and create a more appropriate one.
Don’t list your current work email or phone number—it may say to the reader
that you misuse your current employer’s time.
If you send your resume via email, don’t send it from one email address and
ask the recipients to respond to another. Cut and paste should be
avoided—making responding easy.
Here’s more:
Tip #1 Don’t fudge on dates and age. Ever. It’s a myth that you need
to shadow your age or dates that you might have been unemployed, even
incarcerated. If you omit your age, it might say that you view it as a
problem—give the interviewer the benefit of doubt.
If they can’t determine an age range on paper, they will when you are
seating across from them in a one-on-one interview. Who you are is who you
are. You can explain the date gaps in person.
Tip #2 Delete words like benchmark, brainstorm, core, fine-tune,
duties, verbalize, paramount, necessitate, “I”, etc.
Go for the action—contribute, achieve, capture, debug, exceed,
revolutionize, troubleshoot, turn-around, etc.
Avoid like the hollow self-puffery that is the norm in most resumes today:
dedicated hands-on management; or excellent written communication skills
like the plague.
Try: “Cut annual employee turnover rate 85% (from 40 percent/year to 6
percent/year) in 36 months” or “Wrote jargon-free User Guide for 15,000
users.”
Tip #3 Be cautious of self-proclaimed experts. Headhunters don’t
write resumes (although they do read them). Use them for placement, not
resume touchups.
Be wary of the “free” career or resume workshops. Either the presenter is
fishing for clients (maybe you) or is selling something, it just isn’t in
the description of the workshop. Lot’s of free things are worth the amount
that you pay: nothing.
Tip #4 Use the Internet. Any person (company) that you are
considering assistance from must have a good website. It should clearly
state who they are and what they do.
If they don’t have one, take a pass. People in business today use the
Internet as a calling card/store front.
Tip #5 What happens if you find an ad but information is missing? The
company and/or contact name are excluded. Instead, there’s a fax number, a
community type of email to respond to (i.e., Yahoo or Hotmail) or a PO box?
Go to www.freeality.com and do a
reverse lookup by the email address. For a fax, go to
www.google.com, type in the fax number
with quotation marks around it. If a PO Box, call the postal service in the
city where the box is located. USPS is required to disclose upon request the
name of the owner of a PO box.
Tip #6 Delete errors. For every 200 resumes submitted, only 10 will
be error free; and half of those 10 will get called for interviews.
Spell names right. Go to the company’s website to seek out the correct
spelling (is it John, Jon or Jonathon?) or call the receptionist to verify.
Don’t assume a Susan is Sue, Susie or Suzie.
If you are spelling challenged, read what you have written out loud and
backwards—you will be amazed at misspellings and incorrect grammar usage.
Tip #7 Don’t use mumble jumbo, get to the point.
Tip #8 Keep it simple—don’t use more than two fonts (serifs generate more
responses), bullet points (creates a slower read), bolds (use for name and
section headings only), italics (use only for publications), all CAPS and
underlining (never).
Tip #9 Create a snappy and to the point cover letter. Bennett says forget
long cover letters—try four lines. Less is more. Something like:
Dear Contact:
Given your requirements and my skills and experiences, I may just be the
person you are after. I’m enthusiastic about (the name of company you are
sending your resume to) and this work. Would you be so kind as to please
review my resume and contact me? I early await your reply. Thank you in
advance. Your Name
The mission of the resume is to give the reader a honest sense of where
you’ve been, what you’ve done and where you are going. That’s all.
# # #
© 2001-2005 The Briles Group, Inc. All
Rights Reserved.
Dr. Judith Briles is a Denver based award winning author, keynote speaker
and consultant. Her books, The Confidence Factor, Woman to Woman 2000:
Becoming Sabotage Savvy in the New Millennium, Money Smarts and
Zapping Conflict in the Workplace have all won business awards. Dr.
Briles website is www.Briles.com
and blog at
http://DrJBriles.blogspot.com. She can be reached at 800-594-0800
or e-mailed at Judith@Briles.com.
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