Posts Tagged ‘resume format weaknesses’

Resume Do’s and Don’ts – Avoiding the Major Pitfalls

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

1. Poor or Inappropriate Formatting: The first impression a resume makes is generally the most lasting. Large blocks of uninterrupted text, small margins, text that is very small, or an abundance of bolding, italics, and “designer” fonts make documents difficult to read.

2. Lack of Focus: An effective resume should indicate to the reader within seven seconds, or less, the candidate’s targeted position and qualifications that match the opening.

3. Use of Self-serving Objective Statements: In today’s economy, hiring managers are not interested in what a candidate wants. Rather, they seek candidates that clearly state what they can do for the targeted company in terms of cutting costs, increasing profits, and enhancing productivity.

4. Poor Data Prioritization: A resume should reveal the candidate’s professional & academic background as it applies to the targeted position or program being sought, and in reverse-chronological order (the last job worked or school attended is listed first within that section).

5. Failure to Showcase and Quantify Accomplishments: Hiring managers will not read every line of a resume to determine what a candidate has to offer, especially if it’s buried within dense blocks of text. Applicants must provide special sections indicating professional or academic achievements and these must be quantified.

6. Including Non-relevant Data: Hobbies and interests, unless directly related to the current job search, should never be included.

7. Inappropriate Length: There is no one correct page length for a resume. The document is as long as it needs to be in order to provide a clear and effective picture of the candidate.

8. Personalizing the Document and using Casual Language: Modern resumes are business documents and should never be personalized with use of “I’ “my” “we” or other personal pronouns.

9. Redundancy of Data: Once information has been provided in a resume, it is not repeated elsewhere.

10. Spelling or Grammatical Errors and Incorrect Verb Tense: Once a spelling or grammatical error is detected by an admissions director or hiring manager, he or she will stop reading the resume.

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.

Reverse-chronological versus functional or combination resumes

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

The skills and experience information in modern resumes can be listed using three separate formats:

1. Reverse chronological

2. Functional

3. A combination of the two

Reverse chronological

Generally speaking, hiring managers prefer that employment data is provided with the most recent job listed first, followed by the next most recent, and so on.  In that way, it’s easy to see career progression from an entry-level position to a more senior status. It’s also easy to detect gaps in dates of employment.  It’s these gaps that cause candidates to select functional formats.

Functional

Functional formats stress what skills you have, rather than where and when you used them.  These formats are best for students who have just graduated from college and have little “real-world” experience; those who have been out of the workforce for long periods because they were raising children; or job seekers who are transitioning from one career or industry to another.  However, sometimes joining a functional with a reverse chronological format makes the most sense – these are called combination resumes.

Combination

With this format, skills that are relevant to the current job search are placed in a special section by function, while the Professional History or Work Experience is presented in a standard, reverse-chronological format. This format offers the best of both worlds, and is highly popular with job seekers and hiring managers.

For more information and to see our samples: http://www.resumeedge.com/resume-writing/resumes/resume-types/index.php?nav=rc.rc