resume writing tips

Cleaning Up Your Resume | No BS Job Search Advice Radio

Cleaning Up Your Resume | No BS Job Search Advice Radio

by

EP 987 A few things to do to upgrade your resume ESPECIALLY if you are an experienced person.

[spp-transcript]

ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, all as well as executive job search coaching and business life coaching. He is the host of “Job Search Radio,” “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” and his newest show, “No BS Coaching Advice” and a member of The Forbes Coaches Council.

Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? Visit www.TheBigGameHunter.us and click the relevant tab on the top of the page.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com offers great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.  

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Like me on Facebook.

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle on Amazon and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.” If you are starting your search, order, “Get Ready for the Job Jungle.”

Don’t forget to give the show 5 stars and a good review in iTunes

If you want to know how to win more interviews, order “Winning Interviews.” You’ll learn how to win phone interviews, in-person interviews, the best question to ask on any interview and more.

Would you like to talk through a salary negotiation or potential negotiation you’re involved with? Order and schedule time with me.

Do you have questions or would like advice about networking or any aspect of your search. Order and schedule time with me.

Would you like me to critique your resume. Order a critique from me

For more about LinkedIn, order “Stacked: Double Your Job Interviews, Leverage Recruiters and Unlock LinkedIn.”

Jeff’s Kindle book, “You Can Fix Stupid: No BS Hiring Advice,” is available on Amazon.

You Are a “Manager,” Not a “Manger”

by

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter encourages you to not be lazy and to spell and grammar check your résumé.

 

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you today about not making some of the common mistakes I see in resumes. Here is what I see time and again.

People don’t use the spellchecker with the result being that they describe themselves as “mangers” instead of “managers.” They are the “liason,” instead of the “liaison” for their firm or department. They “lead,” when they should have said “led.” And then there is my personal favorite one. They “asses,” instead of “assess.”

From a grammar perspective, people make a lot of mistakes as well. They use, “your,” instead of, “you’re.”

My point in all of this is not to be obnoxious but to point out that every time that you make a mistake in your resume, there are hairs on people’s next that bristle. You’re trying to make a good impression on someone. They start to asked themselves, “What’s going to happen when this person comes on board and you’re not trying to make a good impression. Where the screw ups going to occur?”

I want to encourage you to use Microsoft Word’s spellchecker and grammar checker. Spellchecker is perfect; grammar checker sometimes depends on the context.

When all is said and done, you want to make sure that the resume that you submit comes across perfectly. And that there are no grammar mistakes. Sometimes you have to make a visual examination of the resume because, in some of the examples that I gave, there were no spelling mistakes. Your usage mistakes as in the example that I gave of, “mangers,” versus “managers.”Manger would probably go through because it’s spelled correctly; managers the word that you intend to use.

So be conscious and you make a visual scan of your resume to make sure that no mistakes go through because certain words are spelled correctly but are being used incorrectly. Definitely, run the grammar checker. There are times that you may use a bullet point, for example, that isn’t the full sentence. Thus, you want to visually check the language to make sure that everything is accurate. This way you will make a great first impression by comparison to the lazy people who don’t do this.

I have to say lazy because what’s the big deal! You are running a spellchecker and a grammar checker. Is this so difficult to do?

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Editing the Résumé That Is Too Long

by

Jeff Altman , The Big Game Hunter explains how to edit an overly long résumé.

 

[spp-transcript]

Today, let’s talk about pruning their resume that is ridiculously long. I know in some fields and some academic settings, it seems essential to have a 10 page resume. In industry, that isn’t the case. You want to get your resume to two or 2 1/2 pages in length. Why? Because no one really cares about what you did of the Stone Ages except to see if you had a career progression.

Here’s what you need to do.

  1. Look at the most recent 10 years. That is the area to emphasize. Anything before that you can summarize by saying, “Prior experience was as a (fill in the blank) and (list two or three firms) between “list the dates). So what you’re doing is indicating what you did prior to 10 years ago with a quick summary.
  2. What if your resume is three or four pages and that’s just the past 10 years? Let me ask you a friend question. Will anyone care what you did nine years ago? Yes, you did it but will this relate to the kind of position that you are going for now? Is there any experience for any skill needed from 10 years ago that is pivotal for what you are going for today? Probably not. If there is, you have to include it and risk going to along resume. However, I must in all candor say that, in most fields, it’s completely irrelevant to  the kind of position you’re going for today and your ego is getting in the way.

You have to go in with a critical eye and ask yourself, “This is the kind of job them going for. What’s the background of people that they are looking for? Are the keywords going to pop up for what I did 10 years ago and not call me anyway or is this relevant to what I’m doing now?” If it’s irrelevant, get rid of it or minimize. You can do much shorter descriptions of your work or from anything in your past then what you demonstrate today.

When most firms evaluate someone to determine whether they will interview them are looking at just the past few years. The filler is the old stuff and, if you look at their behavior, they are not reading a resume. They are reading screenshots on a computer screen. It is rare when they print out a resume to read it. How many page downs do you think they do? Not a lot.

The most important work is the past few years. As you get past that it becomes progressively less relevant to them. Take a hatchet to it. Cut it down. You have to do it. Not doing it will only hurt you in the end.

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

The Best Way to Discuss Metrics in Your Resume

by

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains how to discuss your performance metrics in your resume for greatest effect.

[spp-transcript]

I want to talk with you about framing metrics in your resume in ways that are very powerful.

What to know how powerful it is? Google has written about this formula. Let’s talk about the power of these metrics.

What you do is write about what you’ve done by comparison to the average individual in your organization and how you went about doing it.

For example, in the quote that comes from Google, “Wrote editorials for the New York Times.” That’s one way of saying it but it isn’t particularly effective.

“Had 50 OpEds published by comparison to six by most op-ed writers, as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.”

What they are doing is showing what they did in comparison to the average and then how they went about doing it.

So, if you’re administrative assistant,, you might talk about call averages or support effectiveness, or supporting X number of people or output that you have by comparison to others. If you are a programmer, he might speak in terms of code. If you’re an architect… You get the idea.

The idea is to compare yourself to the average and how you went about doing it. It’s a powerful metrics and method even Google recognizes and looks at when they are evaluating people.

[/spp-transcript]

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell you as much as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com changes that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

You can order a copy of “Diagnosing Your Job Search Problems” for Kindle for $.99 and receive free Kindle versions of “No BS Resume Advice” and “Interview Preparation.”

Why You Should Put Contact Info on Your Resume

by

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter explains the importance of putting contact information on your resume.

 

[spp-transcript]

There’s been an annoying trend in resume writing that people of been doing. I want to see if I can help put an end to it. It’s the absence of an address, city, state and no ZIP Code. Just a name and sometimes it’s only a first name and first initial of the person’s last name and a phone number.

Just start by providing your location and your phone number, particularly if it’s a mobile number, may not correlate to where you are. As a result, you need to include the city and state and ZIP Code. Even if you don’t want to provide an address that I understand some people have a security issue about giving up her address, but city state and ZIP Code should be essential for every resume.

Why?

Because recruiters search for candidates, we usually start by looking for people in the geographic area around the client. Without providing ZIP Code, we have no way of finding you.

Well, I gave you my city!

ZIP Code is more specific and more effective for searching. After all, where was your area code would serve as a good substitute, now with portable phone numbers, you could be like me–someone with a 516 area code who lives nowhere near that location. How would someone know?

So please make sure to include city state and ZIP Code on all of your resumes.

As for not including your last name, I understand that you have a concern about bias by people who will reject you based upon having a last name that they might judged to be unpronounceable. I will simply say that whenever I receive a resume of someone who only includes an initial, I personally am annoyed because I don’t have an easy way to identify this person. After all, some of them don’t even include a phone number or email address to reach them.

And, if you are concerned about bias, for bigoted people you are signaling to them that they should reject you. If they are going to reject you based upon your name not your qualifications, they will do it whether you offer your name or not.

Frankly, only including the initial of last name is assumed to indicate that you are working in the United States on an H1B visa. It is in your name or national origin that is causing you to be rejected. It is your residency status, unfortunately.

Let me also add that applicant tracking systems are also unhappy with seeing simply a last initial. Often they spit out such applications and reject them.

Help recruiters help you. Make it easy. Always include city state and ZIP Code in your resumes and your full name on it, too.

[/spp-transcript]

 

Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.

The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.

JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.

Connect with me on LinkedIn