Why to have a Good Resume?

Well just read the news located next to this text and you will see exactly why you should have a good, updated, resume. The news says it all. Fear and Uncertainty driving employers, as well as poor decisions, to cut back on staff in an effort to save money they are not making anyways. So instead of innovating and diversifying, they are cutting staff and limiting their options.

Do not let their decisions run your life!

Welcome to the New World of 2009. Do not let their fear stop you from being who you are!

Update that resume, keep it posted, hold open options, fight for improvements, learn new skills and UPDATE THAT RESUME!

If you have a good resume, posted in several locations, updated and easy for OCR programs to read, then this is not for you.

If you do not have a good resume, it is not posted, and not updated, then read on. This article will help out in some simple formatting tips as well as ideas as to some of the content for your resume. Also links to major career sites and news feed to help judge the current situations.

As the job alerts from various sites come into my mailbox daily, I see there is work out there, companies hiring, so now is the best time to refresh the look of your resume, enhance the personal brand that is YOU and look for the work that will fulfill, no reason not too now in this economy, it is rebounding daily.

In town here I see new construction starting here February of 2009, strip malls are filling with new businesses now, catch the oncoming wave.

In the new stimulus package massive sums of money are going into construction, renovations, etc. Time is now to position yourself if you are in those industries, get your face back in front of employers.

As you check the job postings in online sites such as Monster and Careerbuilder, there are a plethora of options. Now is the time to update that resume and repost it and find the new opportunity that is waiting.

This is the How to Portion of making a Good Resume:

How to have a Good Resume

There are several main formats to follow for a good resume. It depends on what is intended for the resume as to what format to follow.

The main ones are

• Chronological: Experience in order of time
• Functional: Listing of Skills and Experiences with a short section on past employers
• Combined: An amalgam of the two main formats

Chronological lays out the past in order, most recent to oldest, detailing the time frame, company, location, and the specific duties in each position.

Functional lays out the skills and experience, with a small section at the end for the detailing of the past employers.

Nuts and Bolts of the Resume Making:

Most start with a Template. Word from Microsoft has several that work well enough to start with.This does work well as it takes the guess work out of it, and with the dominance of Word in the Work Environment it is an expected and common format.

Some tips though. The tables in the templates make it difficult to update later on. Tabbing and spacing is taken out of your control. Everyone elses resume looks the same as well. So chose one of the templates that are a bit plainer, no sense making it harder than it already is.

Make sure to not place your Contact Information in a Text Box or in a header. Most searches will not check those so you can be excluded simple as that. Same with OCR software used by headhunters. It can make it more difficult to scan and perhaps your resume will be discarded.

Things to include in your resume are

• Numbers
• Accomplishments
• Specificsand details not generalities
  

Generic Statements about being a Team Player used to make it. It used to be enough to make the claim and then spout the corporate speak in the Interview. Now you need to prove it in what you did driving your Team, specific ways you saved money for your previous employer, how many employees you had working for you. Numbers talk louder than Platitudes, use which ones you have.So make sure you can nail it down and show sustained growth, new experiences, training and expanded experience.

Be honest. Sure you can spin it nicely, but everyone checks references, runs background checks, does pre-employment drug screening, why mess it up by lying or omitting something. Make sure your Social Media is clean for your employer. Vitally necessary.

Unless you were fired for some reasons, the main reasons to leave a company are due to downsizing and because you left for better opportunities. If you were fired then leave that for the interview portion of job hunting.

So keep the resume professional looking, make sure it is as factual and full of hard data possible, and update it as jobs and duties change.

Note:

In the past creative resumes, in layout, format, were rewarded. In today's world simpler ones work better. Just remember that if you have a cute resume, that the scanning and OCR software commonly used to look for resumes in a database might have a difficult time locating yours.

Remember that a lot of Human Resources Departments just do keyword searches on the resumes in their databases, if you have all soft words, no action, nothing in there specific to what you want to do, to who you are as an employee, your resume will NEVER be found in those organizations.

Straight, to the point, remember you as the candidate have, most likely, a single visual scan of your resume. If you do not let them know right away up front your skills, then most likely the Recruiters will not find you at all.

For another point of view this Blog lists 15 Blunders to avoid on your resume

A couple of other sites to find Resume Templates

Free Resume Templates

Resume Templates on Microsoft

On Careerbuilder there is a feature now when someone submits to a position, stating a resume can get a free review.

The results from my own resume are in, and I believe the points are valid and can aid anyone.

There were 4 suggestions in general made about my most recent resume. Paraphrased versions follow

1. Do not use Objectives
2. Consistent format in the resume
3. Do not use I, Me, We (1st, 2nd, 3rd person references)
4. No dates over 10 years old

The advice stated to not place an objective statement. To instead use the top portion to emphasize skills and to sell yourself.

The format should have all dates, titles, job layouts, etc in a consistent format (Mine needs some work here I realize)

Remove personal references, keep it as business and professional as possible

Avoid dates over 10 years old. Items like when college or high school graduation was. This can help to avoid unintentional age dating and bias.

Support for Former and Current Military

There is a free Resume, Job, and Career Guide available Through Careerbuilder (a Much better source for career options than Monster.Com is right now)

Here is a link to the Get Hired online Magazine

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