Archive for the ‘Professional’ Category

Should You Bother Including a Cover Letter?

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Hiring managers routinely receive hundreds, perhaps thousands, of responses from applicants for any given job. To avoid having your resume sink in this sea of paper, it’s imperative to stand out from the crowd and make a good first impression. A compelling cover letter that employs five essential rules will convince a hiring manager to read an applicant’s resume.

Rule #1 — Appearance

The resume and cover letter must be aesthetically pleasing and consistent in appearance. This would include using the same heading and fonts in each.

Rule #2 – Target Your Audience

Always use the hiring manager’s name in the salutation. If the contact’s name isn’t provided in the job posting, a bit of Internet research or a well-structured phone call can produce results.

Rule #3 – A Strong Opening

A dynamic opening paragraph is essential to capture and retain a hiring manager’s interest. Pared down to essentials, for a quick and effective read, it should include reference to the position being sought and a brief statement as to why the applicant feels qualified to fill the job.

Rule #4 – Showcasing Accomplishments

Include a bulleted area to emphasize accomplishments pertinent to the targeted job.

Rule #5 – A Proactive Closing

Always initiate further action at the end of a cover letter. A proactive closing indicates that the applicant will call within a few days to see if a time might be scheduled to meet.

Overcoming Age Discrimination

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

You’ve heard the saying, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.” Well maybe so, but employers don’t necessarily think that way when scanning resumes. Unfortunately, many of them shy away from hiring seasoned people because these pros are perceived as inflexible, over-trained, and worst of all, too expensive.

Your resume can overcome this obstacle in subtle ways that establish your capabilities. For instance, to overcome age discrimination, consider limiting your experience to 15 years for a managerial job, ten years for a technical job, and five years for a high-tech job. Leave other experiences off your resume or list it without dates.

Your goal is to only use information that is directly relevant to the job you are seeking. This is honest as well as fair to your prospective employer. After all, if you’re a 50-year-old applying for a job in accounting, why would your prospective employer care that you worked as a counselor for five-year-olds at Camp Gichi-Goomi when you were 16 years old? That’s exaggerating the concept, but you get the point.

Minimizing Lengthy Employment Gaps

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

What do you do if you have gaps between jobs? It’s not that you decided to drop out for a while to find your inner self. Perhaps you were laid off at the beginning of this historic recession and like millions of others have had difficulty finding a job in your industry or in a new area. Perhaps you had a baby and took some time off. Maybe you suffered an injury or had to take care of an aging parent. Whatever the situation, many people have employment gaps for very legitimate reasons. A resume doesn’t explain why the gaps are there and employers often don’t take the time to find out. How do you get past this?

If you have gaps in your employment history, consider highlighting what you did during your time off. Perhaps some volunteering, part-time consulting, or freelance work encompassed the skills or experience the company is looking for.

You could also use a functional resume rather than a reverse-chronological resume. When you write a functional resume, you list your skills as they apply to a specific job. With this format, your resume explains what you can do, what you have learned, and what precise abilities you bring to a new job. Although not many job applicants use this format, it is often far more effective than the reverse-chronological resume in answering the prospective employer’s most important question: “What skills do you have and how can they help me in my company?” This format is especially effective for job hoppers, career changers, people just entering the job market who have little work experience, and applicants who have been out of the job market for an extended length of time.

How to Tailor Your Resume for Maximum Impact

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

A STEP-BY-STEP APPROACH TO TAILORING A RESUME:

1. Use online resources to determine job requirements within the targeted industry: Search online job sites such as HotJobs or online versions of newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times for employment openings. Then match your skills/knowledge/abilities to their requirements.

2. Prioritize data within the resume that meets the requirements stated within the job opening. Don’t hope that hiring managers will search for this data – they won’t.

3. Determine what’s most important to the employer – educational background or professional experience – and list it in that order: The key is to place relevant information first.

4. Pull out industry jargon (also known as keywords) from the job posting. Failure to provide keywords, especially when submitting to large corporations that use scanning software, will result in the resume being dismissed.

5. Use the appropriate formatting and tone as it relates to the targeted job: A conservative approach would be employed at law and accounting firms. The entertainment field or high fashion world would warrant a more stylish/casual approach.

6. Include ONLY what is relevant to the targeted position.