Great Resume is your magic to a great interview
There’s no magic to getting the job interviews you want, just a great resume. A great resume follows some simple but crucial guidelines.
- Determine who is reading your resume
- Write what the reader wants to hear
- Make your resume easy to read
- Write a resume with substance & depth
Determine who is reading your resume
Who is reading your resume? A human resources manager? A department manager? A headhunter? That reader – we’ll call him or her a Manager – knows the type of person they’re looking for before they read the deck of resumes in front of them. That Manager is looking for someone with certain experience, certain skills, and certain training.
Your resume is not the only resume on their desk, it’s 1 of 50 or 1 of 100. The better the position and the better the company you are applying to, the more resumes your resume will be competing against. Remember that the Manager is looking for a specific type of person. They’re not going to interview 50 candidates. They will interview 4-5 candidates, You want to be one of those 4-5 candidates.
That Manager knows the type of person they’re looking for. If you don’t write what they’re looking for, your resume will be tossed out. If you write exactly what the Manager wants to hear you will be one of the 4-5 interviewed.
Write what the reader wants to hear
When most people write their resume (90%+) they are not thinking about what the Hiring Manager is looking for, they’re thinking about themselves. They write their autobiography. The Hiring Manager is not interested in your life story. 
He or she is not looking for a friend, a spouse, or an interesting person. The Manager is looking for someone that demonstrates they can best do the job available.
The Hiring Manager wants to hear what they want to hear. This resume has to be honest, but it also has to focus on the part of your background that is relevant to what the HR Manager is looking for.
If the Hiring Manager reading your resume is thinking “big deal, there’s nothing here that I need”, they will read 1/3 of the page and toss it. If that Manager while reading the resume is thinking “wow… this person is doing exactly what I need,” you’ve got the interview. It should not be a coincidence that the Manager is finding what they are looking for. Your resume needs to tell him or her exactly what they want to hear!
Make your resume easy to read
Too many resumes are written in the traditional paragraph format that is not easy to read. The Manager has 50-100 resumes and they will not read the paragraphs. They’ll scan 1-2 lines of each paragraph and probably will not find what they are looking for because they didn’t spend the time reading it.
Writing your resume in a bulleted format will enable the Hiring Manager to scan your resume.
Bulleted job descriptions are 3 times faster to read than the long paragraph format.
In 20 seconds they can read a bullet formatted resume.
It would take 60-90 seconds to read a paragraph format.
It’s well documented that employers spend only 20 seconds on the initial reading of a resume.
Write a resume with substance & depth.
Making your resume easy to read doesn’t mean simplifying your job descriptions down to 2-3 lines like on many resumes. If you summarize your jobs down to 2-3 lines the Manager will think you are lazy and don’t do much on the job. On the other hand, if you give 8-12 bullets describing your recent jobs the Hiring Manager will think that you really take on significant responsibilities and are a good employee. The bullet format enables you to say a lot and still be easy to read, as opposed to the paragraph format where the more you say the less is read. Bulleting is a win-win technique. It enables you to say a lot about your jobs and it is still easy to read.
Categories: Tips for writing resume, cover letter Tags: best resume format, CV, CV formats, Guides to resume writing, how to write a resume, Resume, resume writing tips, tips for resume writing
Create a Successful Online Resume
Creating an online resume can help DOUBLE and increase the chances of finding a better job through using online jobsites.
The Internet has now made it possible to find out that specific jobs are available to meet individual requirements in almost any area of the world. However, an awful lot of time can also easily be wasted as there are so many job postings out there promising this and that and failing to deliver. This is why it is worth learning about quality online resume building.
Create an Online Resume
In order to use the Internet effectively to seek employment, it is essential to take time to create an online using a friendly online resume builder. This saves an enormous amount of time as there are plenty of guides and tips available and it can simply be emailed or posted straight onto an job-site.
An online resume building should not take long to sort out as it is pretty much the same as a traditional resume with a few pre-formatted styles.
The following resume writing tips should help on create a polished and Internet-friendly online resume: avoid using any fancy fonts, ideally stick to Times New Roman, and avoid graphics, artwork and the use of underline, italic or bold features. Also, try to keep everything as clear as possible and for online resumes it is crucial that the very first line contains only one’s name.
Why use the Internet to Find Employment?
Especially in today’s difficult economic climate, it is harder than ever to find and maintain long-term employment. In previous years it was a matter of signing on with a reputable high-street job agency and check in the local paper to see which types of positions were available. Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer employment adverts in the paper and unless one gets to the newsagents at the crack of dawn every morning it is not the best place to look.
The Internet provides up to date employment job postings at the click of a button, making it easier than ever before to hunt through both civil service jobs and those in the private sector. There is no longer any need to waste time heading into town every day to check in with employment agencies as they are now conveniently and quickly accessible online.
Online Resume Databases
After having created and polished an online resume, the next step is to find reputable resume databases for submission. Popular sites offering plenty of advice and practical help include Monster.com and Hotjobs.com. When emailing a resume to a company ensures that one has been given either the human resources email address of that of a specific contact. Due to so much junk mail and anti-viral software it is better to use copy and paste rather than adding a resume as an attachment. This way one can be absolutely confident that the email has got through.
As highlighted above, using the Internet to find employment can save a significant amount of time, providing one uses reputable resume sites and employment agencies. A well constructed online resume will help clearly and effectively communicate one’s key skills and experience thus increasing the prospects of being successful in finding work.