resume Archives - Page 3 of 3

Freelancing And Your Resume

One question that often arises for job seekers is how to go about listing freelance jobs on their resume. This can be a confusing process, because improperly listing freelance jobs can give the appearance of instability in a position. Here are some tips on how to organize your freelance jobs on your resume in a way that will highlight your work and knowledge you can bring to a company.

The most important thing to remember is that freelancing is an important part of your career; you are someone who has been self-employed. Organize all of your freelance work into one section of your resume under the heading “freelance.” List all of your achievements, roles and projects in chronological order just as you would for a full-time position. This also applies to freelance work that you have done while also holding a full-time position. If you alternate between your full-time positions and freelance work on your resume, you will risk confusing employers into thinking each freelance job was a change in employment. You can also be selective in the freelance assignments you choose put on your resume. If you have worked on several assignments, pick the two or three that best showcase your overall skills or that applicable to the job you’re applying for.

A clean, well organized resume will help you stand out to potential employers. It is important to keep the information on your resume as up-to-date as possible. If you need help getting your resume in check or any other job-related queries, visit our website and set up an appointment. We’ve got you covered!

Follow-Up or Be Forgotten

Following up on an interview can be tricky business. You want to ensure you stand out among the other applicants, but not for the wrong reasons. Here are three ways to follow-up after an interview that won’t get you on the block list.

1. Send a thank-you note. – This should be done no matter what. Whether it is a handwritten note sent the next day or an email immediately following the interview, a thank-you note goes a long way. It shows you are interested and thankful for their time. Keep it brief and sincere.

2. Share a relevant industry article. – In order to keep up the engagement and help the recruiter remember you, try sending him or her a relevant article. Make sure the article is from a credible source, is current, and pertains to something discussed during the interview. This keeps the lines of communication open and shows you have industry knowledge.

3. Ask to connect on LinkedIn. – You’re looking to be part of this organization. Connecting on LinkedIn shows you are ready to take the next step. When you send the request, be sure to write a customized note so they know who you are and what your purpose is. If you can, provide an incentive for them as well by offering to connect them with a relevant industry contact of yours. It’s all about who you know.

While doing these follow-ups doesn’t guarantee a job, they can help set you apart from the rest. Showing you are eager to be part of their team as well as knowledgeable about their industry is imperative in the job-hunting process. If you need help with finding the right career match for you, visit our website and set up an appointment. We can help you every step of the way!

New Year, New Career Goals

Tablet PC computer with 2013 New Year counter isolated on white background. Vector illustration.

This is the time of year when everyone resolves to shed bad habits and adopts healthy new ones. It’s also a good time to adopt some healthy new habits for your career. Whether you want to find a new job or just move up the ladder, here are some career tips for the new year.

Spruce up your LinkedIn profile
Whether or not you’re seeking a new job, your LinkedIn profile should be complete and current. Even if you aren’t currently in the market, it will help you make connections and network with people in your industry
One word of caution: if you are making several changes to your profile at once, you might want to go into your settings and turn off your activity feed so your current boss doesn’t see your edits. Even if you’re just updating and not job searching, it might be misinterpreted!

Freshen up your resume
It’s always good idea to have your resume ready to go, even if you’re not in the job market. You never know when opportunity might knock and you’ll need a current resume to send out.

Take some time to add your current or last job to your resume. It will be easier to remember key achievements and accomplishments now while they’re fresh in your mind.

Think about your career goals
It’s easy to get complacent in your job, especially if you’ve been there a number of years. The new year is a good time to make some goals for your professional development. Whether it’s taking a class, attending a seminar or simply committing to reading an article a day about your industry, it all helps.

If you’d like some advice on updating your resume, your LinkedIn profile, or general career planning assistance, please contact us. Also, please be sure to check out our latest list of job opportunities and send us your resume if you see something that looks like a good match.

Back to Basics: Silly Resume Mistakes

You can find a plethora of advice and articles that contain intermediate and advanced tips for improving your resume. However, sometimes it’s good to go back to the beginning and review some of the basics. Typos, misspellings and poor grammar will get your resume tossed much quicker than using passive language or not writing effective section headings.

Sometimes candidates get so focused on the difficult bits of the resume that they bungle some of the easy stuff. Here are a few very basic, but very common resume mistakes.

Can you spell your own name?
Okay, so I’ve never seen a resume in which the writer actually misspelled his or her own name.
Believe it or not, however, people misspell the name of their city and/or state all the time. Whether it’s just a typo, or you just moved to Mississippi and you still miss the occasional “s” or “p”, it doesn’t look good.

Don’t rush through the proofreading of your contact information – you’d be surprised what you might miss.

“Mr. Smith is outstanding candidate”
Many people make the mistake of writing their resume in the first person. For example, you should never say “I increased sales by 50 percent”. Resumes should always be written in the third person. However, writing in the third person and referring to yourself in the third person are very different things.

If you want to turn off a hiring manager, use the following summary as an example:

“John Smith is an outstanding leader with 20 years of experience in turning around underperforming departments. Mr. Smith has undergone extensive sales training and he is ready to put it to work for your company.”

That paragraph is perfect for someone else to write as a reference for you. However, you should remember that you are not your own reference!

Okay, now just hit the spellcheck key and you’re done!
Spellcheck is not a fail-safe. It will catch misspelled words, but it won’t recognize your grammar fouls. Grammar is a particular pet peeve of many hiring managers, so mixing up you’re & your, its & it’s, hear and here, their and they’re, to & too, and lose & loose will lose (not loose) you the interview.

We have extensive experience helping job candidates perfect their resumes, so whether you need basic or advanced assistance, please contact us. If you’re in the market for a new career opportunity, please take a look at our list of open positions.

Recent Graduate? Sell Yourself With Your Resume

Regardless of the degree you’ve just earned, you will soon spend some time in sales. If you’ve never done so before, you will get your chance when convincing employers that you are exactly what they need.

You should market yourself with your resume as effectively as you sell yourself in an interview. A resume that separates you from other recent graduates, as well as established candidates, is more likely to get you an interview. To make a successful sale, you need to know and understand your current assets.

Relevant Experience – Yes, you have it!
No matter what kind of job history you have, you’ve developed a few skills that are relevant to your current career ambitions. Even if they were not used in the same way as will be expected in your new career, there are many basic transferable skills, such as leadership, customer service, and problem solving. Spend time reading job descriptions that interest you to locate keywords and terminology that relate to your skills to use in your resume. A chronological work history many not help if your most recent work is the least relevant. You can remedy this problem by listing industry internships and giving them more prominence by writing more detailed descriptions than the less relevant experience.

The Cover
Yes, cover letters aren’t always required, but in the job market, you need to take every opportunity you can find to stand out. Writing a cover letter can show your personality, ability to write in a professional manner, and your willingness to be comprehensive and detail-oriented in your work. Your cover letter should be specific to the job for which you’re applying. Read the job description carefully and incorporate relevant keywords that speak to the specific skills and qualities needed for the position.

Flexibility vs. Indecisiveness
When you’re fresh out of college, it’s important to be open minded. You may not get the exact job you want, but you might find a good opportunity you never considered. However, you shouldn’t leave out all of your specific aspirations in an attempt to be flexible. Of course you want to get a job quickly, but you don’t want to appear desperate or seem like you have no real vision of what you want your career to look like.

The most important aspect of making yourself a marketable candidate is focusing on what makes you special and what you can bring to an employer. A new graduate should do this through balancing humility with confidence, and that can include asking for help. The Wilson Group offers resume appraisals, interview coaching and career coaching to candidates. Click here for more information.

Working With a Recruiter – What You Should Ask

Working with a recruiting firm can be a great way to explore new career opportunities. Good recruiting firms will have established relationships with a number of companies and can help you get past the HR “gatekeepers.”

As with any industry, some recruiting companies are more successful at their jobs than others, and some take ethical considerations more seriously than others. Here are some tips to help you determine if you are working with an effective, reputable recruiting firm.

A good recruiting firm should:

Have a real knowledge of your industry. They will understand your expertise and how it fits into the marketplace. If you ask an industry-specific question and hear an answer that doesn’t sound right, or they don’t have an answer at all, you may want to politely terminate the conversation.

Have real relationships with their client companies. They will know the company, the corporate culture, and the decision makers. They will also spend time getting to know you, both professionally and personally, to determine which positions and clients would be the best fit for you.

Not be “promiscuous” with your resume. You don’t want a recruiter to present your resume for every open position they are working, regardless of whether it’s a good fit for your background and skills. A good recruiting firm will have a more targeted approach that will not waste your time or their clients’ time on positions that are clearly not a good fit. And, they will respect you and your confidentiality by not submitting your resume to a company without your prior knowledge and consent.

You may or may not decide to work with a recruiter during your job search. If you are approached by a recruiter, ask a few questions and make an informed decision:
Do you specialize in my industry?
What is your relationship with the employer?
What kind of relationship do you have with the decision maker(s)?
Will you submit my resume to any employer without first notifying me?
What can I expect as far as communication?
Will you prepare me for my interview?
Will you let me know the result, even if it’s no?

Rescue Your Resume from the Black Hole

“I’ve sent my resume to a dozen companies weeks ago and I haven’t heard from one.”

If you’ve been in the job market or know anyone in the job market, you’ve heard this statement. Your resume has been sucked into the infamous HR “Black Hole”. Today we’ll explore how the black hole is created, and some ways you can rescue your resume from the abyss and get it in front of the hiring manager.

Big companies can get hundreds of resumes for a position. If the company has several open positions at one time, multiply that number. Simple math will tell you that the handful of recruiters in a typical HR department simply can’t process thousands of resumes each month. That’s why most companies use an applicant tracking system (ATS), which automatically parses incoming resumes and converts them into database records.

When searching for candidates, corporate recruiters will plug in keywords related to the particular job opening, and resumes containing those keywords will turn up in the search. If your resume turns up toward the top of the list, it has a chance of being viewed.

How can you increase your chances of turning up in that search, or perhaps bypass the black hole completely?

Keywords are key
The ATS will return results that contain the keywords the HR person has entered. Be sure your resume contains plenty of words that relate to the particular job you’re seeking. Think like an HR person – if you were searching for candidates for this job, what terms would you use? Also, try to include variants of those keywords. For example, if you are applying for a copywriter job, include copywriter, copywriting, writer and writing.

One caveat – be sure the words you use make sense in the context of your resume. If you include a block of text at the top that reads “analyst analyst analyst analyst analyst”, you may show up at the top of the results for an analyst search, but it’s going to look ridiculous to the HR person when they actually open your resume.

Format is important
Always submit your resume in Word, plain text (.txt) or rich text (.rtf) format. DON’T submit a PDF. A PDF is basically a snapshot of your text document. It’s visible to the human eye, but an ATS, which is designed to parse text, won’t recognize any information on a PDF document. It will most likely attach your resume to a blank database record, which doesn’t do you any good.

Also, keep your resume formatting simple. An ATS will look for certain patterns when parsing your resume. It will assume that the first block of text is your contact information, and then it will look for common headings like “education”, “experience”, and “skills.” If you have a complicated format with graphics or pull quotes, there’s a good chance your information will either go into the wrong database fields or not be imported at all. The best format for an ATS is a simple, straightforward, chronological resume.

So remember, don’t let your resume get trapped in the black hole! Remember you are writing for a computer AND Human Resources.