The amount of information available for job seekers in cyberspace is overwhelming.
Here are some of the helpful recommendations I send to job seekers when they ask for help:
Top Ten Resume Mistakes that Turn off employers:
http://www.boston.com/bostonworks/galleries/10_resume_mistakes?s_campaign=8315
Resume Tips from a top industry recruiter, Bob Eiland:
http://www.egselite.com/resumetips.html
Six words that make your resume suck:
http://www.squawkfox.com/2009/01/19/6-words-that-make-your-resume-suck/
Then if they ask, I give them advice from my own experience of hiring literally hundreds of managers, project managers, engineers, writers, quality engineers and more. Here is a capsule list:
- For resumes, I quickly scan the top – usually objective and summary and last job. When I can’t quickly find a match to the job at hand it’s “Next!”
- Reflect your personality and be accurate about it in both your resume and interview. For example if I read that you are a warm and caring person, and then see you scowl during the whole interview, it’s “Next!”
- If your resume has a lot of confusing, unclear statements, again it’s “Next!”
It’s true that some parts of your resume may need to be communicated in the best possible light, and people who deal with resumes a lot do learn the important skill of reading between the lines. Ultimately, you may have to explain why your year of college graduation is missing or 10 years of your work life. It’s best to be honest about that in the interview, when the time is right for your interviewer to hear it. It will come out at some point anyhow, so be prepared and deal with it responsibly.
