Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Some Resume Advice - Please Take It

The amount of resumes we have been receiving as of late is staggering. A sure sign of the economic struggles we are facing as a nation. Puzzling to me is what seems to be a lack of understanding when it comes to preparing and sending a resume. It is frustrating to go through 100 resumes in a day and find that only 5 of them are keepers.

With all of the wealth of information available to us via the Internet, it seems we still aren't taking the proper time to better educate ourselves with regard to creating our resumes. People... sending a resume that screams that you could care less how to create a proper resume is exactly the formula that recruiters or hiring managers look for to advance that resume directly to the trash.

Though there is no definitive blueprint for creating a resume, there are specific guidelines that are constant. Below are just a few guidelines that you really should strongly consider when creating your resume and sending to recruiters and/or hiring managers. But don't stop here. Search the Internet for more advice. The extra hour fine tuning your resume could make all the difference.
  1. Do not lie. I could write a book on why not, but it just seems too obvious. And if you don't know why you shouldn't lie, then I probably cannot help you out. Here is a link to a previous blog I wrote that may help. Believe me, recruiters and hiring managers will Google you. So, you should also Google yourself, checking for any digital dirt that may come up about you. What is digital dirt? Click here for another blog I wrote explaining.
  2. Proof your resumes for spelling and grammatical errors. A resume with spelling or grammatical errors is another sign of laziness and carelessness towards something important - your career.
  3. Spare the details. Too much detail is not a good thing either. Spare the micro-details and boasting. Stick to the highlights.
  4. Spare the outdated details as well. Your high school activities and accolades may not be necessary and add unnecessary fluff to the resume. And job specifics that are more than 10 years old may not be necessary either.
  5. Carefully explain any work gaps. If you were not employed for any reason for a specific period of time, simply state personal reasons. If your resume makes the cut, a recruiter or hiring manager will ask so be prepared to answer. The resume is not a place to explain a work gap.
  6. This should be a professional resume, so create a professional resume. What I mean by that is make sure the entire resume is professional, including an email address you use. In other words do not use an email address like kegstands07@domainname.com on you resume. If you do not have a professional email address, go get a free one at hotmail.com.
  7. Include years of graduation with your higher education areas. When you do not provide this, it can be a reason to move on to the next one in the pile. You have to understand, a recruiter or hiring manager sifts through hundreds of resumes a day sometimes. We sometimes discount a resume for the simplest things.
  8. Make sure your resume fits the job description you are applying for. If the job description requires, for example, someone with SAP experience and your resume doesn't include experience with SAP, then it very well may get put aside or tossed. Do not just assume just because you have a degree from a good school and are a solid overall individual that it will overshadow the necessity for a company seeking someone with specific experience. Simply and better stated, just make sure your experience meets the job requirements.
  9. Too much movement can be a red flag. In other words, if you have a new job every 9-12 months, we will wonder why? And sometimes there is good reason. If you have what would be considered more than normal job movement (approximately 3 years at a job on average is average and okay), then you might want to explain in a cover letter, avoiding too much detail on a resume.
  10. Have references ready. They will be checked. But... we aren't looking for your aunt or neighbor to provide a personal reference. We would rather see one from a former boss or peer. References should be relevant to your job experience.
Careerbuilder has a resume template that is pretty decent. Here is the link. Again, there is no exact science to creating the resume, but following the above guidelines may help your chances of stopping it from quickly ending up in the trash.

Keep this in mind. With the increasing unemployment, that will mean more supply of job candidates seeking new jobs and less available jobs. This is more of a reason to take the time to get your resume right. Good luck.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree with this but will add that in the technical world we live in, buzz words are very important. If you have experience with a particular software, system, database, etc, you should indicate that somewhere on the Resume. Also resumes can only do so much, recruiters can be the promoter of you. Just a comment.

Anonymous said...

This is some good advice and I like to add a couple things that I have found that employers like to see on a resume.

First, the resume should have accomplishments or achievements listed. This can either be a section at the top of the resume or a couple bullet points for each job. A couple examples: money you have saved the company, revenue you have generated for the company, special projects (like ERP system implemented) under budget or ahead of schedule, etc

Second, for each job that you list, write a brief description of the company (i.e. their industry, revenue, and # of employees, etc).

Hope this helps.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the information here. I submitted my resume to JTL and was told that they could not help me at this time. I must say thanks for the honesty and not wasting my time. I know my resume needs some major work so once again thanks for the free info.