One key to job search success: an up-to-date, contemporary resume that doesn’t make the reader assume you last applied for a job in 1995. Here are some tips to help you create a resume an employer will appreciate:

Include links in your contact information.
Include links to social media profiles (such as your LinkedIn URL) in your resume’s contact information. If you use other social media tools professionally (such as Twitter or Facebook), include that information as well. Simply listing these will help someone reading your resume picture you as a candidate who is keeping up with modern communication tools. Use a professional email that doesn’t reference your age or family status. (For example, avoid “gram@hotmail.com” or “mom7@gmail.com.)

Typeface.
Your resume doesn’t need to be in Arial or Times New Roman. To create a more modern look, consider expanding your typeface choices to include: Georgia, Calibri, Tahoma, or Geneva.

Nix the objective.
While there are no absolute rules for resumes, adding an “objective,” which usually focuses on the job seeker’s needs, will make you seem out-of-step with today’s market. Instead, use headlines to highlight what you offer that is in line with what the employer wants in a candidate. For example, take a look at the “before” and “after” highlights for a candidate looking for a medical administrative assistant job:

Before Objective:
Innovative, highly motivated, dynamic team player with extensive experience, stellar writing skills and the ability to effectively manage concurrent projects seeks opportunity to contribute in hospital setting.

After headline:
Medical Administrative Assistant / Unit Secretary / Clerical Expert

Maintain Confidentiality – Coordinate Effectively With All Stake Holders

Strong Oral and Written Communication Skills – Organized – Reliable – Quick Thinking

Notice how the “after” example includes job titles and specifics directly from the job description to describe relevant skills.

Avoid “empty” words.
Notice the “before” objective includes “highly motivated,” “dynamic,” and “team player.” None of these words help the reader learn something specific about the candidate. Do not waste space with generalities. The more targeted you can be, the more vibrant and interesting your resume appears.

Avoid “functional” resume formats.
Functional resumes focus on the job seeker’s skills without emphasizing when and where he or she used those skills. Sounds great for someone who wants to de-emphasize age and years of experience, right? The problem is, hiring managers like to know when and where you used the skills you say you have. Many will assume someone using this format is trying to hide something. Since you don’t want to arouse suspicion, stick to a “reverse chronological” format, where you describe your most recent experience first and include dates.

Graduation dates.
You may choose to leave off the year you earned your degree(s), but assume if you do, the person reading your resume may  assume you are older than you are.

Don’t include every job you’ve ever had.
It’s perfectly acceptable to only include the last 10 years of your professional experience. You may even choose to headline the section, “Recent Experience.” If it is relevant, summarize work you did more than 10 years ago at the end without describing it in detail.

Now that you have an idea of how to structure your resume, what content should you include to appear as modern and hire-able as possible? In my next post, I’ll explain. Stay tuned.

photo by practicalowl

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Hiring managers see thousands upon thousands of resumes every year. That’s why job seekers have to stand out in a crowd if they are  harboring any hope they’ll be hired.

When you’re writing a resume, what you don’t know can hurt you. John Kalusa is a nationally recognized writer who speaks about corporate sales, recruiting, and personal career management. With over 25 years of experience as a strategic recruiting, human resources, and sales and marketing management leader in start-ups and Fortune 250 companies, he’s well qualified to comment on what hiring managers want to see — and what they DON’T want to see.

Mistake #1: Failing to highlight your strengths

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It certainly isn’t because you were “responsible for” something or that you were “recruited to” do something. No one really wants to see a list of what your “duties included.” A prospective employer wants to know what you’ve accomplished. What impact have you had on past employers? What obstacles did you overcome to achieve a positive result in the past?

Don’t forget — your job is to market yourself. The resume needs to make a reader visualize you doing the job.

Quintessential Careers compiled a comprehensive list of accomplishments employers seek.

Describe how you:

• Make money
• Save money
• Save time
• Make work easier
• Solve a specific problem
• Help the company become more competitive
• Build relationships
• Expand the business
• Attract new customers
• Retain existing customers

I suggest you answer the following questions:

• What problems did you solve?
• How did you improve your organization?
• What innovative ideas did you introduce (and what were the positive results)?
• How did you make a difference?

When you re-focus your resume spotlight to shine on what you have to offer instead of just listing what you’ve done, you will be much more marketable.

photo by Horia Varlan

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What about the biggest resume mistake? My reply:

Most job-seekers don’t realize one important fact: the resume really isn’t about them; it’s about making a connection to the targeted employer. Most people don’t completely understand this key strategy. Instead, they incorporate materials not relevant to their audience and hope potential employers will read between the lines to identify their qualifications.

Since most resumes are either evaluated by an Applicant Tracking System — a computer that scans for key words — or are visually scanned for 10-20 seconds by a busy recruiter or hiring manager, if you don’t make it clear why you are perfect for the job, you don’t stand much of a chance at landing an interview.

It’s not difficult to target a resume. Find keywords in the job description and in the organization’s Website. Focus on job requirements and make it clear you have what it takes to solve the employer’s problems. Incorporate skills accomplishments and results in your resume; don’t just write a laundry list of “stuff” you’ve done. Always consider the employer’s perspective. Will he or she know why you are a good fit based on your resume? If not, revise your materials.

For other responses to this question, click through to Quint Careers.

photo by  elycefeliz

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How much of the information you are including in your resume is relevant or interesting to your target audience — the employer you want to hire you now? How much jargon from your old job does your *next* employer understand? Are you speaking a language that seems foreign to the person who will be reviewing the resume?

Have you really evaluated the keywords you believe the employer will be seeking when the applicant tracking system (ATS) reviews the resume?

When it comes down to it, your resume needs to be forward facing — it must reflect what your next employer wants to see, which means you shouldn’t be looking in the mirror; you should be looking closely at the job description and at what the employer shares online, in-person and via social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, website).

This week, I spoke to a group of job seekers and emphasized how the vast amount of information we can find online is a bit of a double-edged sword: one one hand — WOW — look at all the information you can find out without ever leaving your home or office!

• You can learn where the hiring manager went to school and maybe even read about what he or she thinks is important to do when applying for a job (via LinkedIn and his or her blog).
• It’s easy to find out something about the organization’s culture (via reading their websites, Facebook page or even viewing their YouTube channel).
• You can connect and engage with people who work at organizations where you want to work without boundaries or barriers (via Twitter or Google+).

All of this information allows you to figure out what to include in your application materials. The more you learn, the more targeted your materials can be and the better chance you have to structure an appealing resume.

On the other hand, having this information available puts the onus on you (the job seeker) to track down the useful information and to put it to good use! I’m not going to sugar-coat it — it’s not easy, but it isn’t rocket science.

When you write your resume, put yourself in the reader’s shoes and consider what he or she wants to know. What skills and accomplishments does the perfect candidate possess? If you are that candidate, be sure to showcase your best information.

Omit details that aren’t relevant or won’t make sense to the employer. (Including them is like ordering your pizza in Chinese and your Chinese food in French. You’ll probably not have the meal you’re expecting. (Or land the interview you were wanting.)

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There’s a plant sale in a neighborhood near where I live. I’ve been seeing signs for it. They say, “At the Kingsly Club House.” That’s the only direction or address the signs provide. I guess we’re supposed to know where that is…Or, at least, the organizers assume we all know how to look it up online.

It occurred to me — a lot of job seekers present their information (on their resumes and via their online profiles) with a mindset similar to the one of the person who wrote that vague sign. These job seekers assume either everyone will know “what they mean,” will take the time to figure it out, or look it up.

Are you writing a resume requiring people to think too much — or to figure out what you mean to say? Are you leaving your skills and accomplishments to the reader’s imagination or asking him or her to read between the lines? If you aren’t clear and concise on your resume, it’s unlikely to attract the type of response you need.

photo by UofSLibrary

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It certainly isn’t because you were “Responsible for” something or that you were “Recruited to” do something. A prospective employer wants to know what you’ve accomplished. What impact have you had on past employers? What obstacles did you overcome to achieve a positive result?

The most important thing you can do is target your resume specifically for the job. Use the job description as your guide and provide proof in your application materials that you have the skills necessary to accomplish the position’s goals.

Quintessential Careers compiled a comprehensive list of accomplishments employers seek.

Describe how you:

• Make money
• Save money
• Save time
• Make work easier
• Solve a specific problem
• Help the company become more competitive
• Build relationships
• Expand the business
• Attract new customers
• Retain existing customers

I suggest you answer the following questions:

• What problems did you solve?
• How did you improve your organization?
• What innovative ideas did you introduce (and what were the positive results)?
• How did you make a difference?

When you re-focus your resume spotlight to shine on what you have to offer instead of just listing what you’ve done, you will be much more marketable.

photo by Samurai John

The post How to stand out on your resume appeared first on Keppie Careers.

I recently presented a webinar for The Career Summit about how to build a bridge to your next employer, and keywords (how to find them and how to USE them) play a huge role in paving the way to a new employer.

It is crucial for job seekers to identify the words that employers are using to look for them and to use those in their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, Twitter bios and Facebook bio.

You don’t want to waste any words on your resume. Earlier this week, I asked, “are you a job seeker or a French fry?,” making the point that job seekers need to select words carefully to be sure they make sense and will attract employers.

The best place to find keywords that are most relevant for your targeted organization is in job descriptions. Study job descriptions on job boards, via LinkedIn and any place that employers advertise opportunities. The descriptions don’t need to be for jobs you’d actually apply to do. For example, maybe the job is in Omaha, and you plan to stay in Miami. If the description itself is relevant to what you want to do, that information can be useful to inform your materials.

Review job descriptions and identify the nouns and noun phrases. (Remember from grade school — a noun is a person, place or thing.) Focus on being as specific as possible. For example, assistant (a noun) is not as specific as administrative assistant, or executive administrative assistant (noun phrases). Technical skills (including software), degrees and other specifics related to the job may all be keywords.

For example, a job description for a sales manager position for a fitness company includes the following keywords (among others):

• Personal sales,
• Model for team members,
• Weekend production,
• Sales Department Head,
• Sales team,
• College degree,
• Member adviser

One way to be sure you are targeting keywords is to highlight all of the keywords in a variety of similar job descriptions and then incorporate all of them into your resume. Include acronyms (for example IT) as well as complete words (information technology). You should probably have at least 25 targeted keywords or phrases included in your resume.

Some fun tools I suggested during the webinar to help you visualize your keywords are Wordle — (http://www.wordle.net/) and Tag Crowd (http://tagcrowd.com). The picture accompanying this post is a Wordle representation of that sales manager position description.

You can see in the Wordle that words such as team, success, sales, benefit and healthy are highlighted. (Yes, I know that healthy is an adjective!) That would suggest those words should appear (among the others) in your resume. The bigger the word appears in the word cloud, the more significant Wordle considers it. Consider creating a word cloud of your job descriptions and comparing it to one of your resume. It’s not scientific, but it does offer a visual way to identify if you are including the details you need to land the job.

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So, when I was speaking to a prospective client who told me he had been to a LinkedIn workshop and had his resume reviewed, I asked him to share a bit about what he had already learned, as I never want to confuse a job seeker from the get go with contradicting information.

Then, he told me that someone had advised him to suggest he was a “seasoned” professional in the headline of his resume. That’s when my coaching self control hit a road bump and I knew I needed to explain why he should not say he was “seasoned.”

I asked, “Are you a French fry?” (Actually, I didn’t really ask that. But, our discussion did hone in on that question.) Think about it: what is the chance that anyone has included the word seasoned in his or her applicant tracking system software (that scans resumes and helps identify the best ones) as a “grab this person if you find him” word? I’m thinking not very many.

I explained to the prospective client that it is so important to choose each word on the resume based on 1) the fact that it describes you (the job seeker) and clearly outlines what you have to offer (your skills and accomplishments – as they relate to the employer’s needs) and 2) the chance that the employer has flagged that keyword as important for the job.

Think about this when you get advice about your resume. Don’t just blindly incorporate information or words because someone mentioned them — think about what those words will be doing to help you get where you want to go.

Stay tuned for more advice about writing targeted job search materials!

photo by Gudlyf

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This month’s question (in a nod to Halloween this weekend): How to avoid scary career/resume mistakes? How should job seekers ensure their resume/career “costume” fits / attracts the right target audience?

Both questions are so important! I’ve been working on several webinars, and have been thinking a lot about targeted search and how to be sure your materials are perfectly suited to your goals. (This is more important than you might realize for a successful search.) But, since that is the topic of my presentation for the Career Summit, I’m going to hold off on those tips. You can still register for the Summit (and listen to anything you missed via the archives). I present on November 17th.  Learn more in THIS post about how the Career Summit is for you if you are looking for a job).

How to avoid scary resume mistakes?

Have you ever written an important document and sent it off, only to find that you included a silly error? Like, “I’m looking forward too meeting you” or “Its nice the the market is recovering.” (Can you find the errors in those sentences?) Your resume is as important a document as any, and the list of potential errors long.

I recently spoke with several hiring managers when I attended the Society for Human Resource Management-Atlanta’s conference, and each said that an error on a resume indicates a careless prospective employee. It may seem harsh, but when there are so many applicants for each job, weeding out candidates whose resumes don’t seem detail oriented is one way to screen them.

Are you relying on your spell check to catch your errors? You may want to think twice!

How often are words misspelled only to inadvertently form other words? You don’t want to advertise that you were distinguished as the “best manger of the year.”

I headed up the career center at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. You can only imagine how many of my students were touting their credentials as something slightly indecent! (Think public without the all important L!)

A tip to consider: create an exclusion dictionary in yourMicrosoft Office program. This personalized dictionary will flag a word as misspelled (such as manger), even though the main dictionary knows it as a proper word.

Thanks to Lindsay Olson, who blogs about recruiting and PR, for sharing this fun video that she saw on Rowan Manahan’s blog, Fortify Your Oasis. The video offers an exaggerated example of why you can’t assume that your spell check is a good editor!

Be sure to read through your resume, and have a trusted friend review it as well. (Or a professional!) You never know when “public” may become indecent.  The list goes on and on: their/there, and/an, faculty/facility, board/bored.

In the meantime, take a look at this video for a good laugh!

Be sure to visit my colleagues’ posts on the subject:

Where Are the Wild Things, Anyway?, @WorkWithIllness

Is Your Job Search Making You Feel Like a Smashed Pumpkin?, @DebraWheatman

Hiding in Plain Sight, @WalterAkana,

Don’t make these frightful resume mistakes, @LaurieBerenson

How Not to Be a Spooky Job Seeker, @heathermundell

A Tombstone Resume:Eulogizing Your Experience, @GayleHoward

The Top Ten Scary Things Job Seekers Do, @barbarasafani

Oh, Job Search Isn’t Like Trick or Treating?, @careersherpa

A Most Unfortunate Resume Mistake No One Will Tell You, @chandlee

Oh no. Not the phone!, @DawnBugni

Halloween Caution: Job Seeker Horror, @resumeservice

Boo! Are you scaring away opportunities or the competition? @MartinBuckland @EliteResumes

Your Career Brand: A Scary Trick or an Appealing Treat?, @KCCareerCoach

How to avoid mistakes on your resume, @Keppie_Careers

Sc-sc-scary Resume Mistakes, @erinkennedycprw

A Flawed Resume is a Scary Prospect, @KatCareerGal

Job Search Angst: Like Clouds Mounting Before a Storm, @ValueIntoWords

Does Your Career Costume Fit You?, @expatcoachmegan

Photo by PumpkinWayne

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