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 […]
Great Resumes Must Be Created I learned long ago that writing the perfect resume was not much different than cooking. If you’re making your favorite dish—let’s say lasagna—you don’t just throw any old thing into the pot. If my wife caught me putting carrots in her sauce, she’d cut an appendage off, and she wouldn’t […]
How To Format A Resume We all know that many resumes end up in the trash. But quite a few get tossed not because of content, but because they look so bad. Before you send out your next resume I want you to pretend it’s the one going for an interview. Then dress it up […]
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. […]
Why Resume Mistakes Make a Difference I reviewed twenty-seven resumes this week—not many. But the frustration level was high because nineteen of them had mistakes—and yes—mistakes matter. Some were minor: • Lead instead of led. • Compound adjectives used improperly. • Semicolons used when they should have used a comma. • A couple of misspellings, […]
Resume Advice I’m often asked for advice regarding resumes, cover letters, interview techniques, references…just about anything related to careers, but most of the questions deal with resumes. The questions are usually simple ones: • How do I cut it down to two pages? • Is this a good resume? • How can I improve it? […]
How To Write A Great Resume I realize there are many options when it comes to writing a resume, but I’m not talking about any old resume; I’m talking about a great resume. There are a lot of requirements for producing a document like that, but in this post we’re only dealing with one—specifics. What […]
How To Keep Your Resume Out of the Trash This post is about a resume-screening monster. I’m sure many of you aren’t familiar with them, or at least you think you’re not. But if you’ve applied for jobs in the past ten years, I’m certain you’ve run across one or two. I’m not implying that […]
The 10-Second Resume Rule: Truth or Bullshit? It seems as if every other month someone is writing an article on the “10-second†rule of resume screening—that you only have 10 seconds to get the recruiter or the gatekeeper’s attention. I even mention it in my book, No Mistakes Resumes. I don’t like the way it’s […]
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 […]
No Mistakes Resumes Checklist: Looking for a job? Don’t do this: • Don’t send a resume without a cover letter. • Don’t include an objective. • Don’t include a summary. • Don’t send a resume with mistakes. But definitely do this: â– Â Do research on the company and the job. â– Â Tailor your resume specifically for the job description. â– Â Show them—don’t tell them—why you’re the person they should consider. Before […]
Resume Tools I’m going to start this post out discussing tools. You might wonder what tools have to do with resumes but you’ll see they have a lot in common; in fact, your entire resume is a tool, and it consists of hundreds of other tools—words. When you mention “tools,†most people think of a […]
When Should You Write A Resume? The technical answer is you should write a resume when you have a position to apply for; however, you should keep a document that resembles a resume updated at all times. Anytime that something occurs in your work history that you might want to put on a resume, update […]
What Is the Best Resume Format? First, let’s talk about… Formatting Mistakes Note: Part of this I’ve taken from the formatting chapter in my book, No Mistakes Resumes. A lot of people pay no attention to the resume format, but that’s a huge mistake. Formatting deals with the readability of your resume, and that affects […]
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 […]
Responsibilities Dilute Your Message Responsibilities take up a huge part of most resumes, and that’s unfortunate. I say unfortunate because the space most people devote to responsibilities could be used much more effectively. If you have a compelling reason to list responsibilities, follow these few rules: Keep it simple. Keep it short. Keep it relevant. […]
Objectives I have been looking at resumes for 33 years. In all of that time, out of the tens of thousands of resumes I screened, I can’t recall a single one where the objective was so compelling that it made me stop and want to pick up the phone to call that person. There were […]
Dealing With Headhunters I’ve been doing this headhunting business for more than 30 years. I’ve even managed to pick up a few bits of wisdom that I can pass on to you. Most of it is common sense, but for some reason many people forget about common sense when it comes to their careers. If […]
How the Gatekeepers Think This is by no means an attempt to portray the gatekeepers as anything other than the magnificent beings they are. (Whew! That was tough to get out.) All kidding aside, when I refer to the gatekeepers, I’m talking about anyone whose job involves screening resumes, which puts headhunters squarely in the […]
What Is a Resume? By definition it is: a brief account of one’s professional or work experience and qualifications. a set of accomplishments. a brief written account of personal, educational, and professional qualifications. But That Doesn’t Begin To Explain It. A resume might take you from a job where you feel unwanted and unappreciated to […]
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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