Writing an Effective Resume to 
Get You Hired (Part 3) by David Chan
I'm constantly amazed to see how little effort some people put into either professional cover letters or a resume when looking for a job. The resume is the one piece of hard document that an employer has to find out more about you before they decide to further review your background and either phone screen or directly interview you face to face.
For those of you who are eBay shoppers, you don't know whether you should trust buying from someone you've never met. The good thing about eBay is their rating system and the ability for buyers and sellers to see each other's ratings. Think of a resume as your "trust" factor. A well crafted resume elicits trust and a projects capability / aptitude to the prospective employer. They have nothing else to go by, but you resume before they speak with you, so make the right first impression.
Clearly a resume should not be humorous, unless you are trying to get a job as a customer service rep at Disneyland. Think of it as a business document that promotes "you" as the product.
With that in mind, a resume should be:
Informative. It should list your relevant job experience. Relevant is the key word here. As I've said in a previous article, if you are looking to get a job as a telemarketer in a real estate company, your experience as a host or hostess for burger restaurant is irrelevant and very distracting.
Factual. The resume should be to the point and accurate. Misrepresenting your employment or education can even land you in jail. At a minimum, you could also be blacklisted by other employers, because if you are trying to get a job in a small industry, the word gets out pretty quickly.
An effective resume really takes some forethought and requires organizational skills. Here are 3 tips to get you started.
Organizational Tip #1: Gather the information you will need about your past experiences. Put it in a spreadsheet or just jot it down on a notepad. Put this information together before you actually start writing your resume. You'd be surprised to see how large your life experience really is. Think of this exercise as if you were preparing a meal. You wouldn't prepare a meal without a recipe!
Organizational Tip #2: Write down your relevant job experiences. Forget about the rest. This is especially true in today's market. We are in a down market. Companies are very specific about the individuals that they will hire. If you have primarily marketing background, but want to get into sales, you will have a harder time than positioning yourself for a marketing job. Although, marketing jobs in today's economy are generally the first to get squeezed ... more on this topic in a later article.
Organization Tip #3: Make sure your resume is current. I cannot tell you how many resumes that I've reviewed where the candidate put their current employment as 2005 when today is 2008. What a turn off. Some resumes I've seen even have overlapping dates of employment as "current". This faux paux presents the candidate as sloppy and careless and this resume will likely end up in the junk pile.
I have more organization tips on my next article. For now, just get started putting things down on paper or computer as accurately as possible.
Get You Hired (Part 3) by David ChanI'm constantly amazed to see how little effort some people put into either professional cover letters or a resume when looking for a job. The resume is the one piece of hard document that an employer has to find out more about you before they decide to further review your background and either phone screen or directly interview you face to face.
For those of you who are eBay shoppers, you don't know whether you should trust buying from someone you've never met. The good thing about eBay is their rating system and the ability for buyers and sellers to see each other's ratings. Think of a resume as your "trust" factor. A well crafted resume elicits trust and a projects capability / aptitude to the prospective employer. They have nothing else to go by, but you resume before they speak with you, so make the right first impression.
Clearly a resume should not be humorous, unless you are trying to get a job as a customer service rep at Disneyland. Think of it as a business document that promotes "you" as the product.
With that in mind, a resume should be:
Informative. It should list your relevant job experience. Relevant is the key word here. As I've said in a previous article, if you are looking to get a job as a telemarketer in a real estate company, your experience as a host or hostess for burger restaurant is irrelevant and very distracting.
Factual. The resume should be to the point and accurate. Misrepresenting your employment or education can even land you in jail. At a minimum, you could also be blacklisted by other employers, because if you are trying to get a job in a small industry, the word gets out pretty quickly.
An effective resume really takes some forethought and requires organizational skills. Here are 3 tips to get you started.
Organizational Tip #1: Gather the information you will need about your past experiences. Put it in a spreadsheet or just jot it down on a notepad. Put this information together before you actually start writing your resume. You'd be surprised to see how large your life experience really is. Think of this exercise as if you were preparing a meal. You wouldn't prepare a meal without a recipe!
Organizational Tip #2: Write down your relevant job experiences. Forget about the rest. This is especially true in today's market. We are in a down market. Companies are very specific about the individuals that they will hire. If you have primarily marketing background, but want to get into sales, you will have a harder time than positioning yourself for a marketing job. Although, marketing jobs in today's economy are generally the first to get squeezed ... more on this topic in a later article.
Organization Tip #3: Make sure your resume is current. I cannot tell you how many resumes that I've reviewed where the candidate put their current employment as 2005 when today is 2008. What a turn off. Some resumes I've seen even have overlapping dates of employment as "current". This faux paux presents the candidate as sloppy and careless and this resume will likely end up in the junk pile.
I have more organization tips on my next article. For now, just get started putting things down on paper or computer as accurately as possible.
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