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 […]
Four Things You Don’t Need on a Job Description Responsibilities Responsibilities—The first of the four things you don’t need on a job description is a long list of responsibilities. We discussed this on a , but it won’t hurt to mention it again. No one I know of gets excited by the thought of responsibilities. […]
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 […]
Four Things You Don’t Need on Job Descriptions Responsibilities Responsibilities—The first of the four things you don’t need on job descriptions is a long list of responsibilities.We discussed this on a , but it won’t hurt to mention it again. No one I know of gets excited by the thought of responsibilities. Instead of listing […]
Every résumé needs a cover letter. Cover letters are your chance to shine (or look like an ass). The following is an excerpt from my book No Mistakes Resumes. I know that most people don’t use cover letters. That should make you happy. Why? Because that gives you an edge. Using a cover letter is like […]
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, […]
How can a cover letter do that? Suppose you want to apply for a position working for a medical device company that designs and manufactures devices for diabetics to monitor their blood sugar. The job description calls for experience that you don’t have, but you do have the skills. Don’t fret. Great cover letters can […]
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 […]
Job Descriptions Are Boring Have you ever fallen asleep while reading a job description? I’m not kidding. Have you? I have even thought that for the people who take sleeping pills, doctors might try substituting a reading regimen—read three job descriptions ten minutes before bedtime. Yes, job descriptions are boring, but they don’t need to be. […]
Resume Mistakes People think recruiters and resume writers exaggerate when we say that resume mistakes kill your chances of an interview. The truth is more complicated than that simple statement. Mistakes do kill resumes, but not for the reasons you might think. Before we go into all of the details of why mistakes matter, let’s look at […]
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 […]
Cover Letter Basics I’ve seen a lot written lately questioning the value of cover letters. Some articles go so far as to say including a cover letter is detrimental. I say bull… nonsense. I’ll address that issue in another post; for today, we’re going to deal with the finer details of writing a cover letter. […]
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 […]
Business Emails According to Mashable, there are approximately 145 billion emails sent every day. No matter how you count it, that’s a lot of emails. I receive quite a few from people looking for jobs, inquiring about the market, or sometimes just asking me if I know how to reach someone we both know. The […]
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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