Tips on writing an effective resume

With the job market getting more and more competitive, having an impressive resume is your best chance at getting a great job. Since your resume is the first impression that a prospective employer gets about you and the main ingredient of getting your foot in the door for an interview – you need to make sure that your resume is strong and impressive!

Employers have a lot to do and they don't have time to read through a pile of trash to get to the good stuff. Don't make the mistake of sending them a long resume. A long-winded resume is likely to frustrate an employer who is already strapped for time. If the employer has a hard time reading your resume, he is likely to toss it aside and move on to the next one. Keep it short and concise. A good resume should be about one page in length, whenever possible. You may use two pages if it is totally necessary to describe pertinent work experience.

Keeping it Neat: The Appearance of Your Resume

The appearance of your resume is the first thing the employer will be considering. If it is neat and concise, the employer may assume that you will be an organized, reliable employee. Whereas, a sloppy, unorganized resume tells the employer that you are careless and not very thorough - perhaps even that you aren't capable or don't care about the quality of your work. Check and re-check your resume for proper grammar and for spelling errors. If your resume is full of errors, how can you possibly convince the employer that your work won't be full of errors as well? If possible, have a friend look over your resume to double check for any errors.

Margins, Fonts, and Color

Your resume should be aesthetically pleasing. Use one inch page margins on the top and bottom and 1.25 inch margins on the sides. Avoid overcrowding the text onto the page. Allow a few lines of space between the sections. Never use any fancy or unusual fonts or ink colors on your resume. It should be simple, but professional and easy to read. Choose either a 12 point Times Roman Numeral font or a 12 point Courier font in black ink. Don't make the employer get out a magnifying glass to read small a small sized font.

You should choose professional resume paper, which can be purchased relatively inexpensively at your local office supply store. Stay with a white or ivory colored paper, never a brightly colored one. If you are making copies of your resume, make sure that the copies are clean and presentable.

Words and Language

The language you use in your resume is highly important. The goal of your resume is to sell yourself to the prospective employer in as little time and with as much power as you can muster. Avoid using large paragraphs and large blocks of text. Employers often scan over resumes for bits and piece of valuable information. You resume has a better chance of standing out from the pack if it is written in small, informative sections that are easily read.

Use plenty of action words such as ‘developed', ‘managed', ‘produced', and ‘coordinated' to emphasize your skills and accomplishments. You don't need to use complete sentences on your resume such as, "I coordinated a golf tournament for the company," simply stating, "Coordinated golf tournament" is more powerful and more attention-grabbing.

Listing Your Skills and Accomplishments

Brag about your accomplishments and your skills! This is no time to be shy, tell them what you are capable of doing. A potential employer wants to know what you have accomplished in your past positions - it gives them an idea of what you can accomplish for them in the future!

Be specific about your accomplishments. Don't simple say that you cut the cost of office supplies in your last position - tell them how you did it and how much money you saved your company. Use numbers, figures and statistics whenever possible. Numbers can be impressive!

While you DO want to brag about what you can do - never exaggerate or lie about your abilities or accomplishments. If you do happen to get the job, you don't want to have to worry about covering your lies later on.

Why Should They Hire YOU?

Tell the employer what YOU can do for them that no one else can. Give specific examples. If you can cut the cost of their office supplies by 10% -state this in your resume instead of saying, "I can save you money." Tell them how you can save them money!

What You Don't Need to Say

Unnecessary details can take up valuable space on your resume and make your resume look unprofessional. You should never mention personal information such as your marital status, your age, height, weight, how many children you have, and other personal information that doesn't relate to your employment.

Don't list your hobbies and interests unless you can directly relate them to the position you are applying for. There is no need to say that you enjoy playing golf.

There is also no need to put ‘References Available on Request' on your resume. It is assumed that you do have references and the employer will let you know if he needs a list of references.

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Successful job hunting: the importance of your local paper

In this day and age of the Internet, it can be tempting to ignore the old tried and true method of scouring the local classifieds section when looking for a job. You might think that online job search engines are the best way to find a job, and in many cases you would be right. Posting jobs online is a heck of a lot cheaper and less time consuming than placing ads in the paper, so it is definitely true that searching for a job online is an essential part of looking for employment. However, there are a few good reasons not to count out your local newspaper as part of your job search.

First of all, a look through the newspaper can give you a good picture of the overall job market at any given time. If there are lots of ads posted in widely varying fields, the market is probably pretty good. Employers are hiring, and there are positions available – and this, of course, enhances the odds that you yourself can land one of those positions. If there are not very many ads in the paper, then you may be facing a tight job market – in which case it can be good to adjust your strategies accordingly.

Second, looking through the paper can give you some ideas of specific job titles that might be available in your area. For example, if you have a degree in a field such as journalism, there are a number of titles that you can consider yourself qualified to apply for. You could be a “journalist,” a “reporter,” an “editor,” a “writer,” a “columnist,” and so on. Due to the structure of the majority of Internet Web sites, it can be a little harder to pull the same type of information from browsing job sites as you can pull from browsing your newspaper. Since the newspaper information is all consolidated in one spot that is easy to look over, you can make notes of the different variations of job titles that you can apply for and then later type those job titles into a job search engine.

Third, despite the fact that we are living in a very digital era, do not underestimate the fact that there are still a significant number of businesses out there that do not have a Web presence. This may depend partly on the type of job you are seeking, but if you’re working in a field, for example, that you might land a job with a small business, there’s a chance that some potential employers do not have a Web site or a large digital presence. These sorts of companies might still use the local newspaper as their primary means of announcing open positions – in which case you will not learn of their openings by using the Internet and will thus miss out on a good potential opportunity.

Last, but not least, the local newspaper can offer you some help in your job search beyond the ads in the actual classified section. You should be on the lookout for information in the rest of the paper that might tip you off as to potential openings. For example, if you see an announcement in the paper that there’s a new business opening, consider whether your skills might be matched to the positions they’ll be hiring for – in which case shooting off your resume might get you a jump over other applicants when they later post their open positions. In addition, you might see announcements of career fairs or other events where employers might hire on the spot or schedule interviews. The Internet is indeed a wonderful thing, but it can never completely replace your local paper if you’re aiming to work locally.

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