This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Tamala writes:
I’m e-mailing you to find out if going to a professional resume writer is worth the time and money. Right now I really don’t have the funds, but I am desperate to find a job that I will be happy doing and making at least $35-40K a year.
You need to look at your job-search as an investment in your future. You can do a haphazard job-search and maybe find another job, or you can really put a lot of effort into it and find a great job and great career move.
The same holds with each tool of your job-search, and your resume is an extremely important job-search tool. You need to make the decision to invest a lot of time and energy to make it the best resume for you — or — you need to hire an expert to do it for you. Either way, it’s an investment of time or money; but either way, the payoffs should be big.
If you have the time and inclination, I suggest you read up on resume writing. You can find some good resources online and in your local library. Most job-seekers should have the ability to write a solid resume.
You have one other option besides hiring someone to write your resume. You can also get your resume critiqued by a professional resume writer — usually free or for a very modest fee. You can then make the changes yourself or hire the expert to do it for you.
You can also find quite a lot of resume-writing advice and strategies in the Resume Resources section of Quintessential Careers.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Maria writes:
I had been job-hunting without much success when a recruiter at a job fair told me he thought my resume was really bad. I was shocked! I thought I had a pretty darn good resume. What do I need to write and improve my resume?
The Career Doctor responds:
You didn’t attach your resume, so I don’t know for sure what the specific problem is with your resume, but I have seen enough bad resumes to know some of the most common problems. And for a recruiter to tell you that your resume was bad means that it must be really bad. I’m not trying to be overly harsh, but to add a douse of realism because I find job-seekers often ask for advice on improving their resume when they secretly love it and plan no changes.
So… here are my all-purposes fixes for resumes.
First, your resume has to have a focus. Every job-seeker needs to be a specialist, a specialist that fits the needs of the prospective employer perfectly. Sometimes a job objective or summary of qualifications can give you the edge you are seeking.
Second, your resume must showcase your accomplishments. Employers like specifics. They don’t want to know you saved your former employer money; they want to know exactly how much money you saved. They want to know the exact size of the staff you managed, the amount you increased revenues, the level of customer satisfaction you delivered.
Third, there is no such thing as one resume. Gone is a one-size-fits-all resume. Every resume you send out should be different from all the others. You need to use specific keywords and phrases that fit each employer.
Fourth, your resume has to look appealing, welcoming. Yes, it’s superficial, but a plain resume (or worse, from a template) screams plain job-seeker. Take the initiative to design your own resume style… or hire a professional resume-writer who can do it for you.
For more information, check out these articles on Quintessential Careers:
Many more articles, resources, and tools can be found in the Resume Resources section of Quintessential Careers and in the Resume and Cover Letters Tips Blog of Quintessential Resumes & Cover Letters.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Ira writes:
I have been asked to create a brief resume for a friend who has an extensive career history.
He has a professional background which is varied and I feel that everything he has done is very relative to the situation he is applying for.
I feel the resume needs to combine both functional and chronological aspects of his career and expertise; however, the same problem arises — it ALL seems relevant.
How should I target/focus this resume? What could be deemed unnecessary, if anything? How can I condense a 20-year-work history and list of achievements into 1-2 pages?
The Career Doctor responds:
The No. 1 rule of resume writing is focus. You must have a focus when you write a resume. A resume is not a work summary; it is, however, a marketing document that clearly shows why a job-seeker is the perfect candidate for the job.
If your friend truly has a varied work experience, you could categorize those experiences within the resume — but why not just do a standard chronological resume? (A side note for inexperienced job-seekers: everything goes in reverse chronological order, with the most recent information first.)
Also, the rule-of-thumb is that you do not want to list work experience that is more than 15 years old, partly because you do not want to give away information about age, and partly because technologies in most fields have changed greatly in the last 20 years.
As for page length, you can certainly go to two pages for someone who has that much experience, and some resume-writing experts say you can make an executive resume as long as it needs to be.
As you are writing the resume, remember to focus on quantifiable accomplishments.
Other key resume rules: make it perfect/avoid all errors; use traditional fonts/sizes; avoid graphics and excess colors; provide detailed contact information; do not include salary information, names of supervisors, or references.
One other tip for someone who has a lot of experience. If you have done a number of projects or consulting work, you might consider an addendum to your resume that focuses on them specifically.
Bottom line? This resume sounds like it may be too much for an amateur to tackle. I would probably recommend that your friend invest in a professional resume writer.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Tamala writes:
I’m e-mailing you to find out if going to a professional resume writer is worth the time and money. Right now I really don’t have the funds, but I am desperate to find a job that I will be happy doing and making at least $35-40K a year.
You need to look at your job-search as an investment in your future. You can do a haphazard job-search and maybe find another job, or you can really put a lot of effort into it and find a great job and great career move.
The same holds with each tool of your job-search, and your resume is an extremely important job-search tool. You need to make the decision to invest a lot of time and energy to make it the best resume for you — or — you need to hire an expert to do it for you. Either way, it’s an investment of time or money; but either way, the payoffs should be big.
If you have the time and inclination, I suggest you read up on resume writing. You can find some good resources online and in your local library. Most job-seekers should have the ability to write a solid resume.
You have one other option besides hiring someone to write your resume. You can also get your resume critiqued by a professional resume writer — usually free or for a very modest fee. You can then make the changes yourself or hire the expert to do it for you.
You can also find quite a lot of resume-writing advice and strategies in the Resume Resources section of Quintessential Careers.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
This posting is a guest entry from the Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen, PhD:
Orly writes: I was wondering if you could give me the names of some books that you recommend for putting together a functional resume. I am changing careers and believe that my chronological resume is not having good results.
I also suggest you read my partner’s article, Should You Consider a Functional Resume?, which discusses the merits and problems with functional resumes.
The problems are worth noting — many employers dislike functional resumes, especially a purely functional format. Experiment with a chrono-functional format, but keep your chronological version handy in case the chrono-functional is even less successful. In light of your career change, you may want to hire a professional resume writer.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
Maybe. Many considerations go into the decision of whether to hire a professional resume writer. Read about them in our article Why Hire a Professional Resume Writer?
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
This posting is a guest entry from The Career Doctor, Randall S. Hansen
Mauro writes:
I read an article of yours — Resume Critique Worksheet for Job-Seekers — and found it very interesting. I have been applying for quite a few jobs recently and have not had much luck getting interviews, and I think this has a lot to do with my resume. I know it can be improved a lot and was wondering if you could provide me with some critique given your knowledge and experience. I sincerely appreciate any help you can provide.
The Career Doctor responds:
I’m sorry for your lack of job-searching success, but pleased that you have taken the time to analyze your situation and recognize that your resume is probably the problem. Anytime you are not getting job interviews, the problem generally lies with your resume or cover letter. (It could also be that you are applying for positions for which you are not qualified — or overqualified, but let’s assume that is not the case.)
I was kind of stunned recently when the results of a recent online poll revealed that almost 50 percent of business professionals thought their resume needed improvement. I can only imagine how high that percentage would be for all job-seekers.
Your resume is one of the most — if not the most — crucial career-marketing tool a job-seeker uses, and yet, as evidenced from the thousands and thousands of resumes I have seen over my career, many job-seekers just do not get either the importance of the resume or simply do not put the time in that is necessary to produce a resume that results in employer interest.
Sometimes, all it takes is some tweaking and minor adjustments, but other times, it is best to start from scratch. How do you decide? Get your resume professionally critiqued. If you are a college student or alum, go to your college’s career services office. Or, hire a professional resume writer (many will critique your resume at no cost). Or, even just ask some of the people in your network to critique for you.
Here are some suggested links for mastering the resume-preparation skills you need:
- Ten Easy Ways to Improve Your Resume
- Resume and CV Resources for Job-Seekers
- Resume Tutorials for all Job-Seekers
- Why
Hire a Professional Resume Writer?
A career change gives you the opportunity to sharpen the focus of your resume toward the new career or industry. Study ads and job postings in your desired new field, and frame your resume bullet points so that your skills and accomplishments in your current career can be seen as directly applicable to your new career. Use copious keywords that relate to your new career, and tailor your profile, headline, branding statement, or objective statement to your aspiration. Read more in our Frequently Asked Questions About Resumes: The Complete Resume FAQ.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
If you’ve never created a resume before, here are some suggestions for resources to get you started:
- Use our Quintessential Careers Resume Worksheets, especially our Resume Components Worksheet.
- Try the Inexpensive Resume Workbooks from the late Yana Parker
- A resume wizard or template in Microsoft Word can be a useful starting point because it will prompt you to fill in appropriate information. Once you’ve used a Word template to start your resume, it’s best to customize the layout and design. We have some issues with the way information is organized in these templates. Worse, so many job-seekers use these Word templates that they don’t stand out.
- Use our Fundamentals of a Good Chronological Resume as a basic template.
- Get inspiration from our collection of more than 100 Free Sample Professional Resumes.
- If you’re really stuck, consider hiring a professional resume writer.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
Hiring decision-makers surveyed for the book, Top Notch Executive Resumes identified this as one of their Top 30 Executive Resume Pet Peeves: Resume has spelling errors, typos and grammatical flaws.
Hiring decision-makers cited this peeve more than any other. It may surprise some that misspellings and typos pervade even executive-level resumes, but they do. A job-seeker-submitted sample considered for the executive resume book, for example, contained the common error of spelling “manager” as “manger.” You’ll note that this misspelling won’t be picked up by spell-check functions because “manger” is a correctly spelled word. So is “posses,” the plural of posse, which I often see on resumes when the job-seeker intends “possess.”
“I once received a resume where the applicant misspelled the name of the University from which he received his MBA,” said Jeff Weaver, regional manager for a global information services company.
“Poor spelling and grammar … is particularly worrying,” said Pete Follows, senior consultant, for SaccoMann, Leeds, UK. “If a candidate is not giving due care and attention to a document to improve their own personal circumstances, what care would they take with documents with less personal significance?”
A few tips on avoiding typos, misspellings, and grammatical errors:
- Use spell-check functions but remember that they aren’t enough.
- Proofread. Then put the resume down overnight and proof it again in the morning with fresh eyes.
- Try proofing from the bottom up. Reading your resume in a different order will enable you to catch errors that you may have glossed over before because your brain was accustomed to reading your verbiage in the expected order.
- Ask a friend or family member to proof, preferably one who is a meticulous speller and grammarian.
- Be careful about company and software names, which are frequently misspelled and can damage your credibility.
- Consider hiring a professional resume writer.
See all 30 peeves: executive resume peeves
1-10 in Part 1, executive resume peeves 11-20 in Part 2 and
executive resume peeves 21-30 in Part 3.
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
Have people told you your resume needs work — perhaps friends, co-workers, professors, recruiters, or others? Sometimes these folks are trying to tell you your resume needs a lot of work, but they are too kind to tell you that.
If you’re hearing this message, it’s probably time to re-vamp your resume — on your own or with the help of a professional resume writer. Read more in our article Why Hire a Professional Resume Writer?
Need help with your resume, cover letter, or other career-marketing document? Order today from Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters, powered by About Jobs Resume Writing Service.
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