Your resume is, in part, a history of your career to date. The companies you are applying to want to know if you have a track record of success in their industry, customer base and geographic reach. Often job applicants seem to expect hiring managers and recruiters to be familiar with every company on the planet. It is much better and more realistic to assume that no one is familiar with the companies you worked for in the past. You… Read More
Technical Resumes: Five Steps to a Better Resume
Many technical resumes suffer because engineers, developers, researchers, and other technical job applicants have trouble communicating what they do. Many of them are more at home drawing a diagram than writing; and many are used to communicating with their peers at a level where a hiring manager or recruiter is simply lost. Still, the hiring managers and recruiters are the ones who will ultimately examine a resume and decide whether a candidate should move forward to an interview. Here are… Read More
Proofreading Resumes on Paper
I have often ranted about the complete uselessness of electronic grammar checkers and mentioned the need for manual proofreading, rather than relying on electronic spellcheckers, but I am also against proofreading a resume on the computer instead of printing it out. Here are my top five reasons for advocating manual proofreading, with paper in your hand: No matter how carefully you look, onscreen you are going to miss the tiny details like a double period at the end of a… Read More
How Resumes Have Changed over the Years
Resumes have changed over the years and are still changing. Thirty or forty years ago, for example, a resume commonly led off with an objective such as “seeking challenging job in publishing industry.” Now the resume starts off with a summary or profile of the job seeker’s strengths. It used to be that resumes concentrated on skills and responsibilities. Now they concentrate on achievements (how those skills were used) and the value the job applicant brings to the position. In… Read More
LinkedIn Profile Versus Resume: Do You Need Both?
Your LinkedIn profile and your resume have the same goal: to get you an interview for the job you want. To do that, they need to support each other because most employers will look at both. In fact, some recruiters and employers search LinkedIn profiles to fill job openings that have not been announced or that you might not be aware of. Over the decades, the format for resumes has changed and so has the delivery system. Recruiters and employers… Read More
