Work Experience

There are 20 million companies in the US.  Although a hiring manager may recognize a few thousand of these, it is impossible to know what all 20 million do.  For most job seekers, this offers a potential pitfall.  Your past employers may be completely unknown to the hiring managers reading your resume. When a hiring [...]

Continue reading Describing Employers on Your Resume

I’ve written a lot about the importance of accomplishments on a resume. Accomplishments show what you did, while responsibilities show what you’re supposed to do. Because accomplishments are so important to make a good impression, you should separate them from the list of responsibilities. The resume I read this morning did the opposite of this.

Continue reading Separating Accomplishments from Responsibilities

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

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

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

One of the most common mistakes job seekers make is over complicating their background. Unless you are seeking the same job from a similar company, it unlikely the hiring manager will understand all the details of the job. This problem is magnified if the hiring manager is an individual outside your functional area.

Continue reading Describe Your Work Experience So a Child Can Understand It

I write a lot about how important accomplishments are to a resume. They provide the sales pitch to get a hiring manager interested and excited about your background. They also demonstrate your capability in a way that nothing else can.

Continue reading Accomplishments that Hurt a Resume

For most job seekers, the work experience section of the resume contains the meat and potatoes of their background. This is usually the biggest section on a resume, containing half to three quarters of the content. It is easy to add content to your work experience until it is too long. It is more difficult deciding what to delete.

Continue reading How Far Back Does My Work Experience Need to Go?

Two weeks ago, I talked with an individual who retired several years ago. The job seeker had decided to return to the workforce to offset the impact of the financial markets. This individual had spent the last 25 years of his career with the same company and had not written a resume or gone on a job interview in more than 30 years.

Continue reading Retiree Returning to the Workforce

The career progression of most job seekers follows a typical pattern. It starts with an entry level job and progresses to positions of increasing responsibility. At any point in time, the job seeker holds a single full time position. This progression is very common and easy to understand. So, what do you do if your career isn’t typical?

Continue reading Resume with an Atypical Career Progression