Are You Resume Ready?

Nov 6th, 2006 | By Bill | Category: Employment News



Are You Resume Ready?

What if a recruiter called you today? Would you be ready to jump on the opportunity she offers you? If not, you could lose the chance to better your career, as jobs go FAST in this competitive market. If you are going to be “Resume Ready” you have to keep your resume up-to-the-minute.

Always check your resume once a year. Since you will always want to talk about your current job, add the new results and accomplishments you’ve achieved during the year. Try to shoot for adding two new bullets, at least. Then, when you go to a professional to update the whole resume, you’re already up to date. Another way to track your achievements is to keep a running list of your work accomplishments. You’d be surprised how many things you’ll forget if you don’t write them down.
Update your resume and cover letter when you have changed your focus. For example, if you are a Senior Accountant but now want to apply for CFO jobs, it’s time to update your skills and include more of your leadership talents.

Get ready for company layoffs if you see the handwriting on the wall. Don’t delay tetting yourself ready to hit the job market running. Your resume and cover letter should be ready to use immediately. And don’t delay preparing your resume if you are feeling dissatisfied in your job.

It’s time to take stock of yourself NOW and a resume is the best tool you have for clarifying your work goals and responsibilities. Remember, too, your resume is your first tool in your job search.

Resume writing can be the bottleneck to advancements in your career. If you find yourself getting writer’s block consider getting help. You can find experts who have written hundreds of resumes; they can help you, too. A good first place to look for help is online job search sites such as career builder or monster.com.

Get help writing resumes that will get you hired

There you’ll find a number of expert writers who can provide you critiques as well as do-overs for resumes. There are some services that specialize in niche markets for executive resumes. You can also find help distributing resumes.

Even if you’re a professional writer, you’ll recognize that these people know their stuff. They’ll help build resumes into effective marketing brochures that people can use to interviews. People often put too much or too little information in their resumes. They may not have the distance to critique their own resumes to decide what should stay in and what should be taken out.

Online job search sites have a number of sources that you can use for your career search. Getting help writing resumes is just one of them. You can also pick up interview tips, learn about career fairs, and get the low down on continuing education. Not only can you learn how to improve your interview skills, you can also learn more about hot careers.

Resume writing tips for the Internet

You need resume writing tips for the Internet because not all resumes are created equally. Sometimes employers will want their resumes in ASCII format only. That means you produce something in Notepad, not Word. You can write your resume in Word but then you make sure you save it in Text format. You’ll lose a lot of formatting when you do this so keep the resume simple and check what it looks like in Notepad.

Getting interviews depends on submitting the right kind of resume

The usual reason why an employer wants the resume in ASCII format is that they scan the resume into their resume bank. This way you might get a call for an interview when you’re not actively looking because your resume was scanned in to the employer’s database of resumes. Here are some tips to help improve how scannable your résumé is:

• Employ ample use of keywords in your resume when you write it. The recruiter uses keywords to search through the database to find resumes.

• Use a simple font, one that doesn’t have curly shapes to it. Look for sans serif fonts; Arial is a good one to try. This is so that the letter shapes don’t confuse the OCR software.

• Avoid bold or italic font. It’s harder for the OCR software to read the text that way.

• If you are using snail mail to get your resume to the company, don’t fold it. Folds in the paper can obscure the writing on your resume.

• Don’t use columns for your resume. It doesn’t get picked up that well by the OCR scanner. Use a single column table format instead.
Consider safeguarding your identity when posting resumes on to the Internet. Minimize personal identifying information on your resume. Create a job search e-mail that you shut down when you don’t need it anymore.

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