Corporate ladder, meet elevator
Corporate ladder, meet elevator
Just because we have the tools, doesn’t mean we are qualified to use them
Creative Resumes
Are you using a creative resume template? Have you incorporated color or design elements into your resume? Are you using an artistic design template found on the Internet? For 95% of candidates, including myself, I believe that we are hurting ourselves when we incorporate design elements into our resume.
Job resume format
How you format your job resume is the most critical step when it comes to your job search. Yes, how you dress in job interview matters, as does how you answer job interview questions. But for most of us, the job search starts mentally and emotionally with the creation of our resume and it is our foundation. How we format our resume will absolutely determine whether our document will generate a call back or be sent to the round file for recycle so unfortunately, for many of us, this is also where the job search ends. In today’s post we explain how candidates with a few years of experience should be thinking about their formatting their job resume. If you have applied to jobs with your resume multiple times and not heard back from the hiring company, todays post is probably the root cause of the silence.
I see two very common job resume formats that will consistently disqualify a candidate. If your resume has either of these to formats, I would recommend making an adjustment. The two most common job resume format mistakes I see are,
2 page resume
“Is the 2 page resume still in vogue?” “Is a 2 page resume too long?” “I have been working for 20 years, is 2 pages long enough?” I am very rarely asked this question because most of us have a sense of what a resume should look like. We have been writing resumes since we applied for our first part time job in high school and most of us have consistently used the same format over and over. When it comes time to update the resume, we pull the version used to land our last job, bolt on the most recent experience, and trim to fit. Most of us list the following and don’t give it a second thought:
• Contact info
• Objective statement / Mission
• Experience in chronological order
• Education
• Extra curricular activities, clubs, associations, continuing education
All of the above is pretty standard stuff. The reason for todays post is that I see a lot of resumes that list too much information in every listed category and this is causing our resume to be discarded by the hiring managers. Listing everything in the kitchen sink results in a 2-page resume when a single page is enough, 3 pages when a 2 pager is enough, etc. This is the wrong approach. With the new economy in mind, todays post answers the question we all wonder about, “Just how long should my resume be?”.
Closing the job interview with a non-verbal flourish is just nasty
Closing the job interview
We all know that closing the job interview is a critical piece to the interview process. I read and hear many well-intentioned closing statements when reading cover letters and interviewing candidates. How many of us have said or listed the following in a cover letter or stated the below when closing the job interview?
Tinder and resume reading have a lot in common
Reading Resumes in 5 seconds
I just delivered a presentation to a group of job seekers and one thing that caused a lot of strife in the room was the fact that I look at resumes for an average of only 5 seconds. In reality,
Do you really need a video resume? One recruiter blows the whistle on how these job search tools are really viewed by the intended audience, hiring managers