Trish’s Jobsearch Tips

What does your resume say about you?

Does it say you’re a professional in your field, or does it say you forgot to spell check it?

There seems to be no set format’s, it depends on who you talk to what they want to see, 1 page or 2 page resume. Or the new school of thought is this is your chance to shine and it should be an advertisement of your skills, so showcase them splurge and even go up to 3 pages. If this is going to be your first job, then include your school, clubs, activities, or volunteer position. But if you have been in the workforce for 1 year or more you should drop the school activities and club information. If there are gaps on your resume be prepared to explain why they are there. Today we don’t have to run out and pay a printer to print our resumes, we can do this ourselves. But we do need to be sure to have someone else assist in editing.

Which ever format you choose there are several serious do’s and don’t we should all follow.

Do’s and Don’ts of Resume writing.

Do’s

• Always spell check your resume-not once but twice then give it to someone else to review and assist in editing. Even if you spell checked the resume, the word program is not going to pick up misused word that is spelled correctly or typo that is spelled correctly(it recognizes it as valid word)

• Keep to the truth- don’t embellish your skill’s , be honest since they will find out, and it could be cause for them to let you go. However if you worked on excel spreadsheets, and you created complex graphs and charts- this should qualify you as an expert. Be sure to include this as skill for example: Created/Implemented complex reports, graphs and charts using-Microsoft Excel 2007( or 2003 ) etc.

• Write your own advertising-create a section that advertises your major accomplishments, for example if you help your company save 1,000’s of dollars in creating a new process, than get the numbers, $, % etc how you assisted in this endeavor.

• List your skills-don’t forget to list your skills not matter how trivial, if you adapt to change easily, than your are flexible, if you come to work every day then your are loyal and dedicated etc. Don’t forget to include all the software and hardware you are familiar with i.e computer, scanner or cash register, calculator etc.

• Awards-list your awards, if they were received at the last job, or recognition from professional group.

• Internal Training-don’t forget to include any internal training you received at your last position.

Don’ts

• Include photos, video or gimmicks- leave the gimmicks for YouTube, unless a employer is requesting these type of formats forget it, its not going to get your resume further to the top or recognized as being unique.

• Include every mondane detail of your job-keep it to simple phrases or bullets, be descriptive, be brief and to the point

• Include the date you graduated high school or college- unless you just graduated leave this information blank-( age discrimination etc)

• Leave gaps between jobs-but don’t lie-again this can be checked could be cause to let you go. So they way to get around this if you had a small gap just put the month and year you worked for the employer, if it is longer than a month or two you could just put the years, but this could be cause for dialog (beware).

• Include your hobbies, sports etc (unless you just graduated this should be left off -save it for your Myspace, Facebook entries not for your resume) If you don’t have a lot of experience keep it simple. A one page resume is okay.

• Forget to spell check and spellcheck it again!!! Give to a friend and have them check it again. I recently read somewhere if you read it backwards it will help you see the grammatic errors as well.

Well the weekend was hectic , Saturday we had a tag sale in front of the house, and  sold a few big items so it turned out to be worth my time. Weather was sunny, and beautiful, I even got a little sun burned!

Today received a few more nibbles, waiting on a couple of call backs to schedule interviews. I figure I will follow up with them at the end of the week if I don’t hear back from them. I just don’t want to appear to anxious or aggressive.  So don’t panic if they say they are going to call back they usually will. The recruiters are very busy and they get 100’s of resumes every day so it is easy to forget who they owe a call back to.

Well I guess I will close

Talk again tomorrow

Trish