If it’s been a while since your last job search, you may have been introduced to a new tool to look out for called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These systems help employers filter through resumes easier by identifying specific keywords and phrases and eliminating the ones that don’t have them. This makes utilizing top rated resume writing services even more important, since they can identify ATS terms you need to use and ones you need to avoid. The more research you do on ATS, the more misinformation you could potentially read. Here are some of the most common myths we’ve seen and you shouldn’t believe.
Length Makes A Difference
The best executive resume format may suggest keeping your resume to no more than two pages, but the length actually has no impact on ATS. The hiring manager may not want to read a long resume, however. Having a long resume won’t hurt your chances of passing through ATS, but be careful with the length since it will eventually be read by an actual person.
Only Certain File Types Are Acceptable
Most of the newer Applicant Tracking Systems can read resumes and cover letters in various formats. Your goal should be to create a version which is easily readable for humans and another computer-friendly version. The good news is when you submit a resume electronically, the system will prompt you to upload the preferred file type so you can convert it accordingly.
Keywords Can Never Be Overused
You never know which keywords an employer is looking for in a resume. However, one thing you shouldn’t do is stuff it with the keywords you think are most relevant. Incorporating a mix of keywords into your resumes and cover letters is more effective than having a high density of one particular keyword. Keywords can definitely be overused and will make your resume sound unnatural as a result.
Capitalization or Various Fonts Can’t Be Used
ATS generally doesn’t recognize or penalize you for using capitalization, various fonts or styles. Your goal is to make your resume stand out without going overboard, and one strategy is to use these different features. If this is your strategy, then you can proceed accordingly without worrying about not passing ATS. Professional Resume Services is one of the top rated resume writing services because of our well-rounded expertise. We stay on top of all the latest trends when it comes to job searching, and ATS is definitely one of them. We focus our efforts on helping job candidates format their resumes appropriately so they can be ready for any obstacle. For assistance at any point in your job search, don’t hesitate to contact us.
There are many different approaches you can take when undergoing an executive job search. While there isn’t one guaranteed way to make your searching most effective, there are plenty of things you can do wrong to derail your chances of getting an interview. Unless you’re one of the very few people (if any at all) who have the interview requests flowing in, there are some steps to take to master your job search. Visiting the top resume writing services is one of them, but here are some other tips to consider.
Use Relevant Keywords
Learn what keywords are relevant to your industry and sprinkle them in throughout your resume, LinkedIn profile, biography and more. Many employers use an Applicant Tracking System(ATS), so keywords and key phrases are critical. The top resume writing services can help you identify some of these keywords and incorporate them into your resume. If using job boards or Linked are the routes you want to take, relevant keywords are a must.
Make Sure Your Executive Resume is Targeted
When writing an executive resume, you need to target the company you’re applying to and include relevant information to them. To a point, the company doesn’t care what you’ve done in the past as much as they care about what you can do for them in the future. Identify their needs and clearly explain why you are the best candidate to solve those needs.
Network, Network, Network
You can never network too much, but you have to be prepared before you begin your efforts. When you optimize your LinkedIn profile, you can reach out to others in your industry to expand your network. It’s also never a bad idea to attend various networking events in the area to help others put a face to your name. Networking is the best way to tap into the hidden job market and expedite your job search.
Boost Online Visibility
When you optimize your LinkedIn profile, you’ve taken the first step in being visible online. You should also do an online search for your name and see what information is available on you. Employers will do this, so cleaning up anything you don’t want visible could be critical for your chances of landing an interview.
Keep Your Resume Polished
Finally, visiting top resume writing services often will help keep your resume polished and relevant. Sometimes just minor tweaks are needed, but you always need to have it ready to send out when the opportunity arises. A lot of things happen during an executive job search, but the one constant you have to have is a perfect resume. Professional Resume Services goes beyond simply helping people write an effective bio. We want to help you throughout your job search by providing tips and tricks based on our expertise, all while ensuring your resume, cover letter and bio are written for success. Don’t hesitate to contact us at any time if you need assistance with any part of your job search.
Almost everyone has at least one social media account today. So since social media is such a big part of life and business, doesn’t it make sense to include your accounts on your resume? The short answer is yes, but with some caveats. Certain social media platforms are perfect for including on resumes, while others should be avoided completely. Executives have to think about their c-level personal branding with every decision they make, especially when it pertains to social media. Here’s what you need to consider when incorporating social media on your resume.
Best Social Media Accounts to Include on Your Resume
LinkedIn is the number one professional social media platform that should always be included on your resume. However, simply having an account won’t do you any good. Consider working with a professional LinkedIn profile writer to optimize your profile for your job search. If you include your LinkedIn account on your resume, you have to assume the recruiter or hiring manager will look at it. The best LinkedIn profile development services will ensure your profile enhances your resume, and your chances at landing an interview. Twitter is another account that could add value to your resume, depending on how you use it. From a c-level personal branding standpoint, your Twitter feed can demonstrate your beliefs, personal interests and other aspects you normally wouldn’t put on a resume. Just be sure to clean up anything you don’t want others to see before you make your account known on your resume.
Don’t Include These Social Media Accounts on Your Resume
Even though you have a Snapchat account, it doesn’t mean it should be included on your resume. You can get yourself into more trouble than you can benefit from by including a Snapchat account. Other accounts you may want to consider not including are Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. While there may be value in including these, it all depends on how you utilize them. Most people use these platforms as fun, informal and entertaining social media accounts, which have no place for a professional resume. Instead of cleaning these up, it’s best to just avoid them all together.
Social Media Can Make Your Resume Stand Out
When used properly, including social media accounts like LinkedIn and Twitter on your resume can make it stand out and improve your c-level personal branding. The best thing you can do before including it is allowing LinkedIn profile development services to take a look at your profile to ensure it’s in the best shape possible. You don’t want a simple oversight to be the difference in landing an interview or getting passed over. Professional Resume Services dedicates a large amount of time to helping executives with their LinkedIn profile development. The importance of including social media on a resume is increasing by the day, so ensuring your accounts are valuable and professional will help your job search significantly. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at any time for assistance with brushing up your resume or your social media accounts.
Be Prepared For Unexpected Weather Delays on Your Interview Day
The weather can cause havoc on any occasion, and a job interview isn’t immune to being affected. You’ve spent countless hours on your LinkedIn profile development, writing an effective resume and polishing up your cover letter only to see a blizzard or powerful storm system is rolling through your area on your interview day. What are you supposed to do? Instead of letting the weather event derail your interview, take it as an opportunity to showcase your soft skills and make the most of an unexpected and unfortunate situation.
Be Proactive Instead of Reactive
When you see a major weather event is taking place on your interview day, don’t hesitate to reach out to the employer the day before the interview just to touch base. Acknowledge the storm and offer to reschedule the interview if it works best for them. You could also suggest holding a phone interview if it works with their plans. Being proactive by reaching out ahead of the weather event shows your interest in the job and that you’re aware of the events going on around you.
Take Advantage of Additional Preparation Time
Assuming your interview does get rescheduled for a couple days later, take advantage of the time to get some extra preparation in. Check in with your professional executive resume writers again if you need to, or simply focus on your LinkedIn profile development. Just be sure not to put too much focus on yourself. Learning more about the company culture and the current employees can give you the opportunity to ask insightful questions at the interview.
Be Prepared For A Video Interview
During your call with the employer, you may suggest holding a video interview to avoid traveling during harsh weather conditions. But even if you don’t make the suggestion, you have to be prepared for the employer to make the suggestion themselves. A video interview should be treated as formal as an in-person interview, from dressing appropriately to making eye contact and even reducing clutter in the background. With all the time you’ve spent writing an effective resume, you don’t want lack of preparation for a video interview to be the reason why you aren’t considered for a job. Professional Resume Services helps executives with all aspects of their job search. Our professional executive resume writers can’t predict the weather, but they can help you be prepared for a significant weather event that delays your interview. To learn more about how our services can benefit your job search at any stage, don’t hesitate to contact us.
You spend so much time writing the perfect resume, so why do you have to exhaust the same amount of time and effort on a cover letter? The little known fact about resumes and cover letters is they go hand-in-hand in most cases. Some recruiters will look at a cover letter first to determine whether they even want to bother reading a resume. Others will look at a resume first and decide at that point whether it’s worth reading the cover letter. Since you never truly know which is most important, it’s best to make sure your executive resume cover letter is in the best shape before sending it in. Here are some of the details you need to make sure you include in yours.
Personalization
Find out the hiring manager’s name if you can, and address them in your cover letter accordingly. The top rated resume writing services suggest using personalization whenever it’s appropriate throughout your cover letter. This demonstrates you’ve done your homework and the reader will feel more of a personal attachment as well. If you need to, feel free to contact the employer and ask for the name of the hiring manager.
Perfect Grammar and Punctuation
Even a minor typographical error is magnified when it’s in your cover letter. It tells a hiring manager you’re not focused on details, and could be a big black eye when it comes to your chances of landing an interview. Utilize the top rated resume writing services available to you to proofread your cover letter to ensure you’ve incorporated perfect grammar and punctuation.
Your Own Contact Information
With all of the details, experiences and accomplishments you have to focus on in your cover letter, many executives neglect to include their own contact information. The basic contact information you need to include on your executive resume cover letter is your name, phone number and email address. You may also choose to include your LinkedIn profile to provide the hiring manager with an additional resource.
Include The Company Name
Hiring managers can easily spot a generic cover letter from a personal one. Get the full name of the company correct, and spell it correctly. If you use an existing cover letter as a template to write another one, be sure to change the company name appropriately so you’re referring to the right place. Professional Resume Services provides services beyond just helping executives write resumes and cover letters. We want to help you throughout your job search process. When you visit us early on, we will provide helpful guidance along the way to ensure even the tiniest details don’t get overlooked. To learn more about how we can help you land your dream job, don’t hesitate to contact us at any time.
The popularity of video interviews is increasing by the day. With more companies offering telecommuting opportunities and wanting to save on resources like travel costs, video interviews are becoming an acceptable practice. If you haven’t been a part of a video interview yet, you likely will be at some point in the future. You’ve worked with the best professional resume writers to get to this spot, so you owe it to yourself to prepare for a video interview the best ways possible. The good news is preparing for a video interview is similar to preparing for a traditional interview. However, here are some aspects you don’t want to overlook.
Invest in The Proper Technology and Applications
Ask the potential employer which application they use for video interviews so you can download it and explore it ahead of time. Applications like Skype and Zoom are the most popular, since they are easy to use. You also want to make sure your computer is fast enough to handle a video interview so there are no delays or lag times.
Test The App Prior to The Interview
Testing the application involves making sure your camera works correctly, ensuring you can connect to the application and determining whether there are any transmission issues. You don’t want to be struggling with navigating through the app during the interview, so doing your testing well in advance will make the process seamless.
Practice With A Friend or Family Member
You may have shared your executive profile with a family member or friend to proofread, and now you can use them again to practice for a video interview. The things you should be looking for are camera angles, lighting and whether or not there is lag time when communicating. Even a one-second lag time can make it seem like you are interrupting the interviewer, so you don’t want that to be an issue.
Look Presentable
Your LinkedIn profile should have a professional headshot, and you need to match the professionalism in your video interview as well. Just because you are interviewing from your home doesn’t mean you should dress casually. It’s tempting to wear shorts and only put on a nice shirt, since the interviewers will only see your upper body. However, if you have to get up for any reason, the embarrassment of not having on dress pants could be devastating.
Eliminate Distractions
Finally, look around the room and eliminate any distractions you may have. Is there a clock that makes a sound at the top of each hour? What about any clutter in the background? All of these may seem normal to you since you live with them, but can create huge distractions during a video interview. Take the advice from the best professional resume writers and make the room you’re interviewing in look like a professional environment as much as possible. Professional Resume Services is here to help executives develop their executive profile, LinkedIn profile, resume or anything else related to their job search. We can also provide helpful tips throughout the interview process to help you improve your chances of landing the job. Feel free to reach out to us at any time to learn more about how our services can benefit you.
Executives can work diligently and do extensive amounts of research to know what to put on a resume, only to struggle with landing a job. There’s a lot of contradictory information on the internet regarding the best executive resume format, the content that should be used in a resume, and more. When you can sort away the myths from the facts, you’ll be in a better position to have success in your job hunt. Here are a few of the most common myths you may have heard.
A Good Resume Guarantees A Job
There are no guarantees in life, and writing an effective resume won’t guarantee you a job either. In fact, many times a resume won’t even ensure you get your foot in the door for an interview, especially if sending out emails to people who don’t know you or haven’t heard of you. Numerous factors go into sorting through resumes for recruiters and hiring managers, so the only thing you can do is your best when writing a resume. However, it’s important not to get discouraged, because it could be factors other than your resume preventing you from landing an interview.
Include As Much Information As Possible on One Page
Another myth is your resume has to be limited to one page, so you should cram as much information as possible on it. The top resume writing services will tell you a two-page resume is perfectly acceptable and even better, especially if you have many years of experience and a significant list of accomplishments. The worst thing you can do is try to fit it all on one page. The best formats are easy to read and incorporate white space throughout the document, so avoid the temptation to stuff as many words as you can onto a single page.
You Can Never Overuse Action Verbs
Action verbs are important when writing an effective resume. What many people don’t realize is there is a difference between a weak action verb and a strong action verb related to resume writing. Weak action verbs include words like “managed,” “supervised,” and others. They are weak because everyone uses them. The overuse of these verbs make them less important, so it is entirely possible to make your resume sound boring when you incorporate them. Instead, focus on actual results rather than the process you went through to achieve the results.
Resumes Aren’t Too Important Anyway
There may come a time when you hear resumes simply aren’t important anymore. The old saying “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is true to an extent. However, no matter what your connection is with someone, a poorly written resume isn’t going to do you any favors. A quality resume may not land you a job on its own, but a bad one can definitely put you out of consideration quickly. Further, the human resource department will need to have a copy of your resume on file, so thinking you won’t need one won’t help you. Professional Resume Services knows about every myth there is regarding executive resumes. We are one of the top resume writing services because we focus on the facts and research exactly what employers want to see. If you have any questions about crafting your resume, or about a possible myth you may have heard, feel free to contact us at any time for advice.
One of the most under-appreciated aspects of a job search is creating a comprehensive plan and sticking to it. The mistake many professionals make is thinking they can put in a significant amount of time and effort for a couple of weeks and their efforts will be rewarded with their desired job shortly afterward. However, the best professional resume writers will tell you this isn’t always the case, even if you have a flawless resume. Creating a job search plan you can stick with will help you not only efficiently land your next job, but also give you a higher likelihood of getting the job you actually want. Here are some steps to take to create a solid job search plan.
Write Down Clear Goals
Due to the advanced technology today, the traditional pen and paper method of taking notes has essentially vanished. However, there’s something about writing down your goals that make them more likely to be accomplished. Write down big goals you have, as well as smaller goals you want to reach along the way. Some of your goals could be about the role you want at your next job, what culture you want in your next office or how large the organization is. Then you can tailor your resumes and cover letters to those qualities and start working to reach the goals.
Treat Your Job Search Like A Job
A job search is a job on its own. If you have a home office, set it up with all the tools you need to be successful in your job search. Also schedule out your day like you would any other job, whether it’s scheduling time for writing an executive bio, researching words to include in your resume or even taking lunch. The more you treat the job search like a job, the more structured it will be and will help you stay on track.
Reward Yourself When Reaching Milestones
Most people feel accomplished when their boss praises them for reaching milestones, so you should reward yourself for the same throughout a job search. When you’ve written a couple versions of resumes and cover letters, treat yourself to a nice dinner. Or when you’re done writing an executive bio, reward yourself by taking a walk or doing other things you enjoy. Breaking up the job search in these manners can keep the motivation levels high and prevent burnout.
Seek Advice When Needed
You will likely reach a point in your job search where you feel stuck or get discouraged. Before it reaches that point, reach out to the best professional resume writers for advice. Sometimes talking to another professional can give you the boost of motivation or energy you need to remember your goals and get back on track. Professional Resume Services is here to help you throughout your job search. Whether it’s writing your initial resume and cover letter or developing a complete job search plan, we want to assist in any way we can. Feel free to reach out to us at any time throughout the duration of your job search.
If it’s been a while since your last job search, you may have been introduced to a new tool to look out for called Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These systems help employers filter through resumes easier by identifying specific keywords and phrases and eliminating the ones that don’t have them. This makes utilizing top rated resume writing services even more important, since they can identify ATS terms you need to use and ones you need to avoid. The more research you do on ATS, the more misinformation you could potentially read. Here are some of the most common myths we’ve seen and you shouldn’t believe.
Include As Much Information As Possible on One Page