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I highly suggest you read this article. It's written by Alison, over at askamanager.org - a 'Dear Abby' type blog for the professional world. She has tons of great, free advice that I used in my recent job hunt.
She has brilliant advice in her resume links. I love the post titled "The No.1 Question Your Resume Should Answer". If the resume reads like a job description, there is no chance of standing out.
While the blog is helpful, some people need their hand held. It's where 2-3 weekly career skills class come into play.
Quote:
The vast majority of resumes I see read like a series of job descriptions, listing duties and responsibilities at each position the job applicant has held. But resumes that stand out do something very different. For each position, they answer the question: What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldn't have?
I find her advice very confronting. Giving up my functional resume will be tricky, but must be done. I hadn't thought that displaying career progression (laid bare in a chronological resume) was so important. I realise that I wholly misunderstand how and why an employer reads a resume.
Recruiters are being paid to find the best candidates, so rather than actually read the resumes, they are scanned and canned if they don't hold the right keywords.
In my estimation, this is a poor way to find good workers. Truly, many of the best workers I have known in my life could not write their own resume...it just makes me wonder why even have HR or staffing agencies if they are not going to actually do their job? Sure, they fill positions, but many times with a less than stellar candidate.
Annoying. Maybe I should change and become a recruiter...just get resumes all day and let the computer do the rest of the work, and make a handful of calls a day for $50K plus a year. Awesome.
My main issue with this is that there is little incentive anymore to find the best match...only on paper.
I highly suggest you read this article. It's written by Alison, over at askamanager.org - a 'Dear Abby' type blog for the professional world. She has tons of great, free advice that I used in my recent job hunt.
A lot of the advice she offers helped me go from not many bites in a two month span to two job offers!
Read the article! You've got nothing to lose!
I know lots of people though this was a crazy strategy but I always would test a new resume by applying for jobs that I didn't want due to location but I was qualified to do the job. And once you see that you are getting calls from this companies outside your area of preference then that lets you know that resume can be used for closer jobs.
I did agree with the cover letter advice to make it sounded conversational rather than scripted.
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Sad to read this, actually
