Resume Writing

Experienced professionals often struggle with deciding how many of their jobs to list and how much detail to provide for each. This can be a tough decision. On a two page resume, you won’t have enough room to write in detail about everything.

Continue reading How Many Jobs Should You List

Checking your resume for typos, spelling errors and grammar mistakes is essential. It is likely you proofread it numerous times and had friends check it for mistakes. This effort will hopefully eliminate all errors. Writing cover letters and filling in text boxes for online job applications is a different story. You can’t work on everything you write for weeks or months with numerous reviewers. So, how can you reduce the likelihood of sending out a bunch of typos?

Continue reading Proofreading Tips

I spent several days last week in a training class. Professional development is important if you want to improve in your career. In today’s economy, it is even more critical. Unemployment continues to increase and job seekers continue to become more frustrated with the job market.

Continue reading Sharpening the Saw

One of the greatest job search challenges people struggle with is identifying a wide range of substantive accomplishments to include on their resume. Accomplishments show what you did. Part of the difficulty lies in how companies measure performance.

Continue reading Using Metrics to Write a Resume

Demand forecasting is the activity in a company that predicts the level of demand customers will have for a company’s products. This activity usually garners very little attention from outside the company. For most job seekers, demand forecasting is far from their thoughts, and yet, a close look into the metrics of demand forecasting uncovers an important lesson for resume writing and interviewing.

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As a job seeker, there are hundreds of skills, experiences and accomplishments you can discuss on your resume. Sustainability and environmental initiatives are just one category of priorities you can highlight. So, should you market yourself on the cutting edge of sustainable business practices?

Continue reading Sustainability on Your Resume

I’m in Toronto at the annual APICS International Conference and was able to attend a session with bestselling author Jason Jennings. Jason’s presentation was excellent and included a number of insightful ideas about leadership. One statistic jumped out to me when I heard it.

Continue reading Are You Engaged in Your Career

Most jobs have well established titles and easy to understand responsibilities. Some, though, are unique. What do you do if you work in a role that has little or no equivalent at other companies? Do you list your job title, change the title to something more commonly used, or skip it entirely? The resume I read today struggled with this dilemma.

Continue reading Resume Without Job Titles

A functional resume can be effective in a few rare situations, but more often, this structure will hurt your job search chances. Job seekers like the functional format because it allows them much greater flexibility in highlighting the information they think is important. Unfortunately, using a functional resume can cause a hiring manager to eliminate you from consideration before they understand your potential.

Continue reading Top Five Reasons to Avoid a Functional Resume

Making a resume look pretty can be important. Unfortunately, one format will not work in every situation. You will need an ASCII version in addition to your MS Word version.

Continue reading ASCII Resumes