With national unemployment moving higher each passing month, candidates encounter significant competition for jobs. No matter what career field you are (or were) working in, there is undoubtedly knowledge and skill you possess that could appeal across many industries and fields. Do not limit yourself. Identify those skills and look for them at potential future employers. Following is a list of skill areas having broad application: (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘resumes’
Identify Your Transferable Skills
Thursday, July 9th, 2009Your Resume Leadership Advantage
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009Picture this:
You are tasked with interviewing new college graduates for work in a “fast-track” manager training program. The job requires participants to work in each functional area of the company then be assigned to a position in operations. Most candidates are the “cream of the crop” with impressive academic credentials from top business schools. Each of them spent time abroad studying or traveling. They have excellent grades, a fine resume, speak intelligently, and present themselves with aplomb.
But one of the candidates is different from the others. He had “B” –level grades in college, went to a well-known but smaller university, and was employed full-time as a parking lot supervisor for a downtown professional sports stadium while attending school. He worked many nights and weekends, and had responsibility for hiring/managing as many as sixty people. On the strength of the information in this true story, should he be considered for the job?
Education Is Good, But What About Experience? (more…)
Finding the Best Professional Resume Writer
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009Job candidates in this economic recession are frequently turning to professional writers to create resumes that will attract the attention of employers. In today’s labor market, a good resume should help you land the right interview, for the right job, to start work sooner rather than later. With selected industries experiencing major shake-ups, like automotive, financial services, banking, real estate, and others, many people are finding job search time required to find a new position is much longer than in recent years. So why consider a professionally written resume? (more…)
12 Best Practices for a Winning Cover Letter – Part 2
Thursday, May 28th, 2009In my last post, we discussed the first six “best practices” for a winning cover letter. Unfortunately, the cover letter is often an afterthought However, the cover letter is a very important part of the resume, giving the first impression an employer will have of you. Following is a list of the second six “best practices” that your cover letter must and/or in some cases must not reflect. (more…)
12 Best Practices for a Winning Cover Letter – Part 1
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009The cover letter is often an afterthought. A job candidate sees an ad in the paper or online and scrambles to get a resume in the organization’s possession. The cover letter sometimes is a hastily written, patchy communication that is little more than a hand-off of resume.
This is far removed from the objective that cover letters should achieve. A well-written cover letter introduces you, prompts the reader to want to know more about you, and establishes your credentials. A good cover letter partners nicely with your resume and a strong networking process. Following is a list of the first six best practices that your cover letter must and/or in some cases must not reflect. (more…)
Resumes – Less is More
Friday, March 27th, 2009On the surface it would seem that resumes should be chock full of information. Especially if you have reached the executive level, a common trap that people fall into is to think that all of the history of achievement and experience needs to be put into their resume to display how accomplished they are and how much experience they have. Overwhelm them with breadth of your experience. Sure, a lot of that information is important, but when you get to the executive level a lot of things are assumed by possible employers. To get to the executive level you have to have a pretty impressive past employment history. They know that. So, you need not mention every single thing that you ever did. (more…)