Author: Admin

  • A Few Words About Resume Writing Services


    The resume writing pro

    If you’ve never written a resume, you may wonder if it is easier to learn how to write a well-written resume and complete such a task yourself, or hire someone else to do it for you. Resume writing services concentrate on developing and writing resumes for professionals in any industry, with any caliber of experience. These services consist of professional resume writers who are skilled in formatting resumes; but they are also skilled in creating winning statements and cover letters that draw attention, and they know how to customize a resume to the industry or field in which you are interested.

    In addition to their writing skills, resume writing professionals are familiar with the scanning software used by most companies for reviewing resumes to detect certain key words. If you are unsure of whether or not a resume writing service will be a worthwhile investment for you, consider the following circumstances and how the job/position you’re seeking will be impacted by the quality of your resume:

    • If you have never written a resume and you don’t know anyone who can assist in the process;
    • If you have not written a resume in years and are unsure of the appropriate format that translates well online
    • If English is not your first language, or if you know that you typically have problems with spelling or grammar.

    How a resume writer can help

    A resume writer can be of assistance by first collecting your information and understanding your career objective; and if you have an existing resume, even if it is not the most up to date, you should make sure that you give it to the writer as a starting point. When you work with a professional resume writer you can expect that they can help you in composing your career objective statement, listing your responsibilities in a concise manner, and perfecting the final document.

    Additionally, a resume writer will be able to help you address any concerns a potential employer may have about your resume document, such as explaining a change of career or gaps in your professional history. There are really no downside to using a resume service to compose a well-written resume for you, but there are certainly some things you should consider in order to get the best service for your money.

    While some people recommend writers who are accredited or certified as professional resume writers, this is not the key to finding someone who will do a great job on your behalf. Make sure that you speak with the writer, and have him/her address any concerns or questions you have about composing your resume. They should be able to provide you with a sample of a “before and after resume” they have recently completed for a client, as well as professional references.

    To hire a resume writing service

    Don’t be afraid to ask questions about their writing process; and ask about their background also (e.g. what other writing services do they provide?), as well as their writing and editing process, turnaround time and a detailed explanation of their fees. If you receive a draft of your resume, and you are not satisfied with the format, or there are discrepancies, ask for the writer to address your concerns before accepting the final document.

    The costs will vary, depending on the professional’s experience; but make sure that you understand what is involved in the cost. It is also in your best interest to talk to a couple of different professionals, so that you can get a better idea of the cost range. Most importantly, however, make sure that you feel comfortable with the writer and the terms of your agreement with him/her before you decide to hire that service to work on your resume.

    Trust and understanding will result in the best working relationship you can expect to establish with any resume writing service, which will ultimately result in producing the best resume for your career objective. So do your research, ask your questions and, most of all, make sure you are comfortable with the particular service, and then put your chosen resume writing service to work on your behalf and in your best interest.

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  • Avoiding Some Typical Resume Mistakes


    Resume information complexities

    If you have ever written a resume for yourself or tried to write one for someone else, you’re probably fully aware of how difficult such a task can be; made even more complicated by the large amount of information that often goes into a resume. From the individual’s career objective to listing his/her qualifications, a resume should be personal, it should convey confidence and it should be presented in the best possible way to impress a potential employer.

    About resumes, cover letters and interviews

    However, in view of the fact that creating a winning, well-written resume is not easy, it is of crital importance that the resume writer pays special attention to some of the most typical mistakes made in resume composition, and take the necessary steps to avoid and/or eliminate them. Some of those mistakes are elaborated upon in the following paragraphs.

    Including references to personal web sites

    You may wonder why referencing a personal web site may be a mistake, since you might have a sample of your graphic design work on a site that you want your potential employer to see; but this is a good idea only if the site you are referencing is limited to work-related content.

    Unfortunately, many people make the mistake of including their personal web sites, most of which contain information that a potential employer may find irrelevant and therefore, in his/her view, is a waste of company time if not inappropriate altogether.

    As a rule, do not include your personal web site if it contains yours, or other photos that may be viewed as inappropriate; including jokes (even if they are clean), or your blog. In other words, if the site you have is entirely for personal purposes, it’s best leaving it off your otherwise well-written resume.

    Include a link to your web site if the pages are set up specifically to showcase your professional portfolio, a copy of your resume, reference letters, presentations, photos taken for professional use, or your web development skills.

    Using small fonts to compress content

    Sometimes you just cannot squeeze all the information required on a resume into a single page, especially if you are presenting twenty or thirty years of education, experience and skills; because it will not format will and can otherwise be very challenging.

    As a rule, well-written resume should not exceed two pages; but in recent years it has become commonplace for professionals to change jobs frequently, and if you’re a member of this group, you know that listing all your experiences, as well as your career objective, education, qualifications and references, can certainly take up a lot of space.

    However, you should refrain from using a small font in order to fit everything into your resume; because there is not a single area in your resume that should have a font size of less than 10 points. Keep in mind what font type you are using and stick to the basics.

    Arial and Times New Roman are the standard font type for resume writing, and are therefore recommended for use in writing your own resume. So instead of changing the font size, review and revise your resume to make sure that statements made are more concise.

    Employer and school listing errors

    Some critical errors that are sometimes made on a resume without the realization that they’re being made is the preparer’s failure to refer to past employers and/or school(s) they attended by their full and correct names; and this should be avoided in all instances; so do not use variations of company and school names; and don’t use abbreviations unless they are in fact part of the name.

    In other words, if you have attended New York University, list the complete name, not just NYU – even though it’s commonly known and your employer will likely recognize it. You definitely do not want to appear sloppy, or unable to pay attention to details.

    Lengthy descriptive paragraphs and typos

    In order to list those responsibilities you’ve had in your past professional experience, it is best to use bullet points that begin with action verbs; such as managed, developed, etc. You really don’t need to use full sentences, and you certainly don’t need to use a paragraph format.

    Using full sentences in a paragraph format make the information in your resume overwhelming and difficult to review quickly; so make your statements brief and clear; and don’t add words simply to fill in space.

    What may be the most important factor in achieving a winning and well-written resume is proof reading; and since you want to put your best foot forward it is absolutely unforgivable for your resume to contain grammar and spelling problems which by themselves are enough to give your potential employer the impression that you are not detail-oriented, or even negligent.

    About resumes, cover letters and interviews

    Of course it is understandable the difficulty in proofing a document you have been working on so closely; so use spell check – but be ware, it will not catch everything – and ask your friends/family for help, or meet with a career counselor. Do your best to present the most polished resume to your potential employers, and begin with eliminating simple mistakes.

  • The Objective Statement: Unique and Effective


    About the objective statement

    As you may already know, the career objective on many standard resumes is often listed as just “objective;” but such a listing is, in fact, a statement of your career goals, and the message intended is generally a simple one: that you want to get a good job which will allow you to utilize your experience and education in a way that will maximize your earnings.

    However, this is the most difficult part of a resume to compose, based on the restriction of one to two sentences in which you are expected to convey your professional expertise.

    In other words, conveying a clear and concise message which includes expectations from a job and an organization, as well as goals for your professional growth in a space of only one to two sentences is really not an easy thing to do, unless uniquely descriptive terms are used; and in order to use such terms you will probably need to devote extra time to consulting your dictionary and thesaurus several times during the process.

    This exercise can almost be compared to getting an intelligent point across in 140 characters; and we all know that many of those tweets are a far cry from intelligent.

    Misconceptions about the objective

    The extra time, study and frustration involved in composing an effective objective statement cause many people to make the mistake (often repeated) of not listing one at all, thereby relegating themselves to join those who operate under the false assumption that an objective statement is not necessary in a resume, because it states the obvious: that your objective is to get the job for which you are applying.

    But such exclusion and rationalization is misconceived, because employers are looking for an objective since they want to know what you are really looking for in order to determine whether or not you’re a good match for their company.

    Another common mistake many individuals make when preparing their resume is including a career objective that doesn’t actually express their goals and qualification. For example, a statement like the one which follows is commonly used in resumes:

    “To obtain a position where my experience and education can be utilized and expanded.” But take a closer look at this statement and you’ll find it doesn’t say anything specific about what is being sought in terms of professional growth.

    Generic statements send wrong message

    When preparing your resume, make it a point to avoid the use of generic statements like the one above; because such statements will hurt you more than help you in your job search. Using such statements will cause your potential employer to be be left with an impression that you don’t have a set a goal in mind, which essentially defeats your purpose for preparing a well-written resume in the first place; don’t you agree?

    By now, and in view of the above, you should have a pretty good idea of what not to do about including or omitting an objective statement on your resume; but how about some ideas that could be helpful in your day-to-day resume preparation tasks and job search goals?

    The following paragraphs consist of a few ideas you may find helpful when creating your own winning career objective that should get your well-written resume noticed and get your foot in the door.

    Objective statement writing tips

    First – Make your career objective personal. In other words, think of your whole resume as a sales tool with your career objective as your opening statement; because you want your employer to know what you want, and not just restate what other people want.

    Second – You want to state your commitment to your career goal; because if you are unsure of what you want, how is your employer expected to believe that you really want the job at their organization, and you are not just applying because you want to get out of your current work environment? Don’t be afraid to state what you want from a job and from an organization.

    Chronological Resume Template: Resume Solution, What you Need to Create your US and Canadian Resume (Template, Resume, Functional, Jobs, Opportunities)

    Third – While you want to state your commitment, you also want to show that you are willing to take action to achieve your goal; so indicate what direction or action you are willing to take in order to accomplish your career objective.

    Fourth – What might be the most important factor in a successful career objective is being specific about what you are looking for in a work situation; because while you can say that you are looking for a “challenging” environment, this doesn’t mean anything to your employer, since people define challenges in various ways. So avoid using generic and broad terms and simply state what you want, as well as what you’re willing to do to get it.

    Woman in a neon triangle

    Sample: An effective objective statement

    Keeping these criteria in mind, let’s revise the above career objective statement so that it effectively states what you want:

    “To obtain a position of a sales representative in a health insurance industry, where I can utilize my management and customer relations skills, with the opportunity for performance-based advancement.”

    Knock ’em Dead Resumes: A Killer Resume Gets More Job Interviews!

    The above statement – revised from the earlier generic one – tells a potential employer that you know what kind of job you want, what experience you have in order to get the position, and what you are willing do to become a successful professional with the company.

    Thus, you have just created an effective objective statement which transforms into a winning career objective to enhance your resume and increase your chances of landing the job you really want.

  • Measuring the Listing of Experience on a Resume


    When writing your own resume

    For those who write their own resumes instead of paying a service to have one written for them, the goal is always to create a document that is as complete and professional as it would be if a professional resume writing service had written it; and in so doing self preparers [sic] have been known to embellish areas in an otherwise well-written resume in an effort to impress potential employers, but instead, end up defeating the intended purpose.

    One of the embellishing mistakes made most often is that of the individual’s professional experience; so if you are one who prefer to write your own resume, make sure to consider the following questions before you begin writing:

    • What is your career objective?
    • Are you changing careers?
    • Are you looking for professional growth?
    • What experience do you have that will help in meeting your professional goals?

    To get started in developing your resume, list all of your previous experience in chronological order, starting with your latest job on a piece of paper, in order of dates of employment, job title, full company name and location of your employment. At this point you can take a look at what you have written down and then consider (calculate?) just how much experience you have acquired based on the dates you’ve written down.

    Good “best practices” rule

    It has become more commonplace to change jobs more frequently and, as a result, folks are not able to build their careers in one place or with one employer; and as such, it is possible that someone with ten years of professional experience following college has had over three jobs.

    Although this lack of continuity in employers does not seem that important to include on a resume, it certainly becomes significant to an individual with over 30 years of experience. It is for this reason that you should set limits on what you include and what you exclude from your well-written resume in the professional experience section.

    Ideally, a well-written resume should not exceed two pages; and depending on the type of jobs you have held, as well as your responsibilities in those jobs, two pages don’t seem to account for a lot of space. So a good “best practices” rule to adopt when listing your experiences is not to exceed your most recent five jobs, despite the period over which you held them.

    Always keep the length of your resume in mind when you’re deciding on the number of jobs you will list; and if your last five jobs and accompanying responsibilities will exceed one page, then consider paring down the experience to three of your most recent positions.

    Avoiding embellishment

    You could also consider the time you spent at each organization for which you have worked and– list up to the last ten to fifteen years of experience, if that appears a more suitable fit to the resume document.

    In other words, it is not necessary to list every job you’ve ever had in order to showcase your qualifications and years of experience; but if you have a long professional career, just focus on the last three to five jobs and use the profile or summary at the beginning of the resume to highlight the number of years you have spent working, or the number of years you have spent in a certain industry acquiring specific skills.

    Chronological Resume Template: Resume Solution, What you Need to Creat your US and Canadian Resume (Template, Resume, Functional, Jobs, Opportunities)

    When listing your experiences, it is important that you do so in chronological order without skipping any of the jobs you have held; and while you may feel that certain jobs are not particularly complimenting to your current career objective, you should not avoid listing them on your resume.

    Work on highlighting the responsibilities that are transferable across various industries in stead of omitting particular jobs or employers which might result in gaps being created in your employment history.

    Resume quality over listing quantity

    It is important to understand that leaving any unexplained gaps in your work history will raise questions by your potential employer; so don’t create gaps on your resume by listing your experience out of order or skipping jobs you have had.

    Finally, make sure that your cover letter accounts for any additional qualifications you would like to bring to the attention of a potential employer that you didn’t include on the resume.

    Your well-written resume should be concise, well written, and designed to sell you as the best candidate for any job you pursue. Just remember: It’s quality over quantity that actually counts.

  • Managing the Job Experience Deficiency Factor


    The resume: important, complex

    Resumes are thought of – by some people – as a collection of their education, skills and professional experience typed on a sheet of 11 x 8 paper; and many employers accept resumes in the place of job applications for certain available positions that need filling within their organizations.

    But because of the importance placed on these documents by employers and others, it is important that you have a well-written resume when searching for a job, because contrary to what some people think, your resume is much more than information typed on a sheet of 11 x 8 paper.

    As you probably already know, creating a resume is not an easy task, even if you are a professional with years of experience and multiple skills – specialized and otherwise. However, structuring a resume when you are looking to completely change careers, or when you are fresh out of school, is much more difficult because you do not have any experience – or very little – to highlight and therefore cannot present an adequate employment chronology to a potential employer. However, if you are pursuing a career change, and nothing from your past professional experience qualifies you for the new job you are seeking, you can highlight those qualifications that can be transitioned across multiple industries.

    For example, if you managed people, no matter the type of business, you should highlight this skill under your experience. Rather than omitting, or not highlighting, your professional experience – even if it is not directly related to the job you are seeking – you should consider writing a professional profile, or summary at the start of your resume.

    Skills and education emphasized

    The summary will allow you to address your career change by highlighting your skills, as well as to convey how they relate to your career objective. This is also a situation where it is okay to reference any volunteer or community service work in which you have participated if such reference can be helpful in promoting your qualifications for the job. Keep in mind that many employers place emphasis more on accomplishments and quality of work than on the number of years an applicant may have been in a given position.

    about resumes, cover letters and interviews

    So if you are fresh out of school, and lack the necessary experience of full time job or professional, don’t let that be the cause of you being discouraged when creating your resume.

    Instead you must focus on highlighting any skills you have acquired, as well as inherent and your education; but you should avoid using a professional profile or summary; but rather, list your career objective, and start the resume by listing your education. Make sure also to mention any awards or honors you received while in school.

    Following your education, list all the skills that will qualify you for the job you are seeking; and make sure to mention any courses you’ve taken, such as project management or business communication which you can apply at work; and while you should avoid listing any experience, you can certainly title the section “Pre-professional Experience” and divide it into categories applicable to your career objective. In other words, don’t say “I spent a summer working at The Gap.” Use a sub-heading of “Customer Relations” and list any responsibilities where you have provided customer service.

    Your winning resume

    Tap into any community service, volunteer, or school club positions you have held in order to highlight your abilities and showcase that you are the best candidate for that job; and don’t be afraid of not having the right experience, or not having any professional experience to include in a resume.

    Focus on what you can do and what you do have, rather than what you don’t have the experience in doing, and you will have a winning, adequately structured and well-written resume.

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  • Errors to Avoid in Addressing a Cover Letter


    Cover letter errors: Fixable!

    It may surprise you to learn that most mistakes in the cover letter that accompanies a resume are made in the address line; and while many professionals spend extra time to revise their cover letter in an effort to make sure it is personalized to the position for which they are applying, they seem to disregard a very important and prominent area of that letter, which is its address line.

    This can be very problematic since the address line in a cover letter is the first piece of information a potential employer sees in that resume package. Think about it in the sense that if mistakes are made in the address line, it is very likely that the potential employer will discard your letter and you will lose an opportunity to be considered a candidate for the job you really want.

    However, there is good news: these errors can be avoided, and in the following paragraphs we discuss a few frequently repeated errors, as well as items which should be added, deleted or corrected before that cover letter is sent to a potential employer along with your well-written resume.

    To whom the letter is addressed

    Not addressing your cover letter to a person is a big mistake in the world of cover letters, as generic greetings such as, “To whom it may concern” or “Dear Human Resources Team,” are not looked upon favorably; and if the job description or posting does not include a contact person, it will be necessary to do a little research and find out who the appropriate contact person is for the job you are seeking. In addition, you must avoid addressing the letter to a job title.

    You can call the organization or send an email to the human resource department to find out exactly who the hiring manager or the job recruiter is, and address the cover letter directly to that person. However, if you find it futile or impossible to find out who the appropriate contact is, you should simply take the most recommended course of action by leaving off any kind of generic greetings and simply begin the cover letter.

    Spelling of the organization name

    Misspelling the name of an organization to which you are applying for a job is really a bit careless and should not happen; but unfortunately is occurs more frequently than you would expect; and even if the cover letter is being addressed to a specific person, it is important (it’s recommended) that the company name and address be still included in the cover letter. So it is a definite plus to always make sure that the company name is spelled correctly.

    Hiring managers and recruiters know from experience that misspelling the company name is a common mistake, but they also know that it’s the easiest one to avoid; so triple-check the company name on your cover letter, because if your potential employer receives the letter with an incorrect spelling of his/her company name, your letter will never make it past the first person who receives it. Let’s face it, an incorrect spelling of a company name, essentially makes that company the wrong addressee, right? Think about it!

    Immediately stating your purpose

    Make sure your first sentence explains why you are contacting the company, because if it doesn’t the reader might choose not to read any further. This is a common mistake, as many people assume that stating why they’re contacting the company regarding employment is unnecessary due to the fact that it is already stated on their resume.

    However, this is not the case, so let your potential employer know exactly why you are contacting them; and identify the job you are interested in by stating its title, as well as and how your qualifications make you an ideal candidate for it.

    Your first statement needs to be straight forward, energetic, and positive; and it should invite the employer to read through your cover letter in its entirety. Keep in mind that bland and generic opening statements will most likely result in disinterest on the part of your potential employer, and your resume will not get pass the first review.

    Since the goal of a cover letter is to create interest in your resume and, by extension, in you as a candidate for the available position, to not insure that your cover letter is professional and error-free will defeat your purpose of sending it in the first place.