Use or Utilize This post is more for the professional crowd. I may have mentioned that I worked as a headhunter for more than thirty years. During that time, I got a lot of résumés—more than twelve thousand of them. One thing that used to jump out at me was how people tried so hard […]
Three Things Every Job Description Needs How to write a job description is something they should teach every manager, or at least the ones responsibile for writing job descriptions. It’s not that difficult. When you break it down, there are only three things every job description needs. I worked as a headhunter for almost thirty-five […]
Make Sure Your Résumé Isn’t Wasting My Time When companies need to hire someone, they resort to what they feel is a process that works, and all too often, it’s a black-and-white decision. It has to be. The person screening résumés has a stack of 200–400 or more applications in front of them, and they […]
Ten Best Words to Put on a Résumé A while ago, I did a post on the ten words to avoid on your résumé. You can see it here. In that article, I mentioned how many of the “go-to” words people typically use are useless. I’m including a table I used in that post to show […]
Rules You Shouldn’t Break When Writing a Résumé The easy answer to that statement is “all of them” but that wouldn’t be correct. As we saw in a previous post, there are a few rules you want to break. The majority of them, however, should be adhered to. So read on for a quick rundown […]
I know I already wrote about mistakes to avoid on cover letters, but that didn’t encompass all the common mistakes. It’s time to look at a few more of the common errors. More Cover-Letter Mistakes A cover letter opens up wonderful opportunities, but it is also where mistakes appear most often. In a cover letter, […]
I’ve mentioned time and again about making no mistakes on your résumé, but there are certain grammar rules you should break when writing a résumé. Résumés have their own set of rules, and they should be adhered to if you want your résumé read. Rule Number One Don’t Include the Articles “The”, “A”, or “An” […]
When to Use Compound Modifiers on Résumés Compound modifiers play an important part in the English language, particularly when written. Many people pay no attention to them, but it’s important to know when to use compound modifiers—especially on résumés—because some of the people who screen résumés do pay attention. And of all the places where […]
Words That People Misuse Have you ever heard someone say “ain’tâ€, and thought—they should improve their grammar? Most of us have probably thought that at some point. But perhaps we shouldn’t judge too harshly, because there are many words that are misused on a daily basis. They might not seem as bad as ain’t, but some […]
List of Business Redundancies Everyday speech, television, movies, books, emails, and all other forms of communication are riddled with redundancies. Most of it is harmless, of no consequence, but if you want to present yourself in the best light, try learning a few of the more common business redundancies. These appear frequently on resumes, […]
Clarifying What We Mean—When Is Midnight? During one of my book promotions, the people running the ad sent me this message: Hi Giacomo, I will be posting your book, Murder Has Consequences, as a bargain book on Wednesday, 7/17. Please leave your book on sale until midnight 7/18. Thanks, Administrator I thought to myself, but when […]
I Feel Good When I ask people “How are you?”, I typically receive a response of “I’m well, thank you.” But is that the right response? Should you say good or well? This is a particularly sensitive issue, because in almost every interview situation candidates are asked something similar to “How are you?” And you’ll probably […]
Power Words For Resumes Words can be very powerful. And since your resume is—by necessity—limited to a page or two, it is important that the words you use have impact. Resumes consist of incomplete sentences and bullet points; you can’t afford to use weak or passive verbs. I compiled this list from many sources, including […]
What Is an Em Dash and How Do I Use It Hyphens, en Dashes, Em Dashes In order to understand an em dash, it’s important to put it into perspective. That means we need to explore a few details on hyphens and en dashes. The following are definitions from CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style). Hyphen […]
A lot of writing, whether or not it’s books or, especially formal business writing, has become excessively bloated, quite pretentious, and very confusing. It has been heavily bogged down with redundancies, and it seems to be quickly getting much worse. Whoa! I hope you made it this far, because if it had been me reading […]
Two-Dollar Words Many people think that the bigger the word you use the better it sounds. They seem to equate the number of syllables, or scarcity of word usage to sounding scholarly. What these people don’t understand is that the trick is not to find the biggest word, but the word that works best in […]
25 Impact Words For Your Resume (Most of this is an excerpt from one of the chapters in my book, No Mistakes Resumes.) Your resume should be filled with impact words. Words can be very powerful. Think of the emotions some of these simple statements generate: “I love you.†“I hate you.†“You are so […]
What To Capitalize On Your Resume Capitalization Many people who write resumes have an inclination to capitalize damn near everything. Perhaps they think that by capitalizing words, those words, or the functions they represent, become more important; ergo, the person becomes more important. (Did I just use the word ergo? I did, didn’t I? Smack […]
There’s a Lot of Reasons… …why I’m writing this post, and the heading of this sentence is one of the primary ones. To a growing number of people, the phrase, “There’s a lot of reasons,” and others like it are okay. They’re acceptable. But to other people, in particular, resume screeners and gatekeepers…let’s just say […]
Use or Utilize This post is more for the professional crowd. I may have mentioned that I worked as a headhunter for more than thirty years. During that time, I got a lot of résumés—more than twelve thousand of them. One thing that used to jump out at me was how people tried so hard […]
Make Sure Your Résumé Isn’t Wasting My Time When companies need to hire someone, they resort to what they feel is a process that works, and all too often, it’s a black-and-white decision. It has to be. The person screening résumés has a stack of 200–400 or more applications in front of them, and they […]
Ten Best Words to Put on a Résumé A while ago, I did a post on the ten words to avoid on your résumé. You can see it here. In that article, I mentioned how many of the “go-to” words people typically use are useless. I’m including a table I used in that post to show […]
Rules You Shouldn’t Break When Writing a Résumé The easy answer to that statement is “all of them” but that wouldn’t be correct. As we saw in a previous post, there are a few rules you want to break. The majority of them, however, should be adhered to. So read on for a quick rundown […]
Seven Worst Résumé Mistakes There are a lot of mistakes people make when writing résumés. Some are forgivable and some not. But instead of talking about all the mistakes, let’s just discuss the seven worst résumé mistakes. What Is a Résumé’s Purpose? We’ve talked about this before also. A résumé has only one purpose—to get […]
It Takes a Great Résumé to Get an Interview Before we begin, let’s look at a few things that take a résumé down a peg or two. Spelling mistakes. This may be the number one reason why résumés go into the trash, and yet they’re so easy to fix. A quick run with a spellchecker […]
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