In order to make your resume stand out, you want to add some of your own voice to it. It makes it more interesting to potential employers.
That’s not as difficult as it sounds. You essentially want to provide potential interviewers with a glimpse into your being through your work history, education, awards and accomplishments, and the manner in which you speak about these. That means you want your personality to shine through right from the first word.
But of course, you also want balance. In other words, don’t go off the deep end trying to be creative. That could be a turn off.
Start with your objective. What do you want to accomplish with your resume? Don’t simply write “To secure a job in ____________” where you fill in the blank with your industry. Instead, make the objective focused on the goals of the company you are interviewing with and put your personality into it. Something like this:
To become a member of a forward-looking team that respects individuality, creativity, and critical thinking.
This kind of objective tells your interviewer what you have to offer without being “I” focused and tells them what you are searching for in an employer (forward-looking). Plus, it adds a touch of your own personality.
When you use words that you would use in your normal speech, that’s your voice. It makes your resume more personal and increases your chance of making a positive impression – and getting the interview.
A resume is used to show off your best qualities to an employer. It shows your skills, work experience, and accomplishments. With all that information, how do you emphasize your best features? You can tailor your resume and pick only your most impressive entries, but you can also use keywords that will help you stand out and impress your potential employers.
Keywords will do a few things: they will keep your resume focused, they will make certain traits stand out to employers, and they will make your resume different than your competition, making you stand out even more.
- Keeping your resume focused: Keywords will keep your resume focused because everything you list or say will go back to reinforce those keywords. This will make your resume coherent, consistent, and focused.
- Make certain traits stand out: Instead of your potential employers looking at many traits that are desirable, using keywords, especially those found in the job posting, will make specific traits stand out so that they know exactly what they can expect from you as far as skills and expertise go.
- Make you stand out among the competition: Not many people know to utilize keywords in their resume, so if you do, then your resume not only stand out, it will be picked up by scanning machines used by recruiters and employers to week out non-candidates.
So now that you know how keywords can improve your resume, you need to know how to utilize them.
- Pick out about three keywords you would like to use. A few good ones could be, Customer Service & Relations, Operations, Information Technology, Sales & Marketing, Staff Leadership, Finance, tc. The keywords can be anything that make you stand out and emphasize the things you are best at, but they should also relate directly to the skills/qualifications outlined in the job posting.
- Insert the keywords wherever appropriate into your resume. Keywords can be incorporated into your career summary, your skills (keyword) list, your professional experience, and accomplishments. Make sure that potential employers see these keywords and have a clear understanding of your areas of expertise.
Using the appropriate keywords throughout your resume will help to ensure that YOU will be the candidate called for the inteview.
After spending hours of distributing your resume, here it is. You got an interview. The one and only chance to prove that you are exactly what the company is looking for. Talk about stressful. Here are a few tips that should help you make the most of that first job interview.
- The first thing you need to remember is to smile. Not only does it ease the interviewer, but they will take on the attitude you put forth, which will also help to ease your nerves.
- Talk confidently. Yes, it is nerve wracking to go to a job interview, but don’t let your interviewer know that you are nervous. When you speak do not use fillers, such as “ummm,” or “hmmm.” Using fillers like those will make it seem like you do not know what you are talking about.
- Be yourself. Yes you need to smile and be confident, but do not become someone you are not just for an interview. If you are hired you will be working side by side with these people and they need to know that the person they interview is going to be the same person they get when they hire you.
- Practice these things before going into your interview. Think about what are some logical questions they might ask you at the interview and answer them out loud while looking in a mirror so you can make sure that you are smiling. If you think about what you want to say before you say it in the job interview, then you should be able to eliminate those unhelpful fillers.
While there are many other factors that go into securing your job, such as creating a professional and accurate resume before your interview, if you follow these tips they should help you make the most of your interview and, hopefully, help you land the job.
One of the most powerful tools you can use in your job search is networking with other people. It is not just networking with other professionals within your industry-networking can also take place with friends, family and acquaintances who will put you in touch with people who can help you with your career. However, networking must be done with an element of finesse. It can be so obvious to others with whom you network that you are just using them for their knowledge, contacts, and their career positions. In order to prevent this perception, you must be willing to reciprocate, to help the people with whom you network, either now or in the future.
You also have to be careful about distributing your resume to those with whom you network. Feel out the situation. How is the conversation going? If you feel comfortable, ask the other person if he is willing to receive your resume in case he knows of an available position. If you are doing an informational interview that you arranged with a contact, you should not be pushy and try to turn that interview into a job interview. Use this type of interview to find out about career trends, types of companies that may have job openings within the next six to 12 months, and to learn about other people with whom you may network.
Be careful-people who graciously agree to speak with you in an informational interview may get offended if you try to push your professional resume at them-if they are interested in you, they will let you know. Always be prepared by carrying a copy of your resume and other job related documents with you-a good tip to remember wherever you are out networking.
In the vacant job market today just getting as far as a job interview is an accomplishment in itself. To get the best possible chance of securing a job interview for a vacant position you are interested in there are a few things that you need to make sure you have in place first. One of the first things you will need is a current resume of your work history. The potential employers should already have a copy of your resume when you first applied for the job, but do take a copy along to the job interview with you.
Make sure that on the day of your interview you have everything planned beforehand. Leave yourself plenty of spare time when making travel arrangements. You need to take into consideration hold ups in the travel network whether you are traveling by road, rail or air. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a traffic jam when you need to be at an interview 10 minutes later and you know you are twenty minutes away from your destination. Bad time management does not reflect well on you by your prospective employer.
Try not to be too nervous on the day of your job interview. Remember that you must have qualities that the prospective employer is interested in for you to have been invited to the interview stage. There are usually hundreds of applicants for any vacant job and employers have the luxury of being able to invite for interview only the best of the best applicants.
Many companies require prospective employees to complete a job application form when you get to the interview. These documents are fairly easy to fill out, but there are some things you need to be aware of. The application has two common areas, your personal information, which is basically a repetition of your resume and questions that assist the interviewer in determining if you are a good fit for the position.
It may seem redundant to document your name, address, and employment history when it is already available on your resume, but it gives the employer additional insight. It allows the person you are interviewing with to compare the information you have stated on your resume with everything you state on your application. Any inconsistencies are subject to further investigation, either in an interview setting or with phone calls to past employers and/or educational institutions.
Be honest and concise when answering the questions. Answer specifically what was asked and do not offer additional information. One reason to steer clear from providing additional information is that employers are looking to see if you can follow directions. Another reason is that you don’t want to provide everything the employer is wanting to know about you at one time. Do not put “see resume” on the application because it shows you do not follow directions.
The purpose of a job application form is to identify the job for which you are applying and the salary you expect. One of the best ways to handle this question is to do your research on the company before you ever get to the interview. If you don’t have an ad to work from, find out what jobs are available before you walk in the door or send your resume in. Make phone calls.
The second question requires the same legwork as the first question. Know what the position typically pays. You should have a general idea what employers in your area and in your field are currently paying for employees who do the work you expect to do. In addition to this, think about what you are willing to accept as a minimum salary. Sometimes it’s good to list a range on the application rather than a specific figure.
Finally, consider what the opportunities are for advancement and what the benefits package involves. These are also major aspects of a career that cannot be overlooked. Although a benefits package doesn’t offer a dollar benefit that you can easily identify with, there is a significant amount of money the employer is paying for your insurance. A solid career advancement plan is simply delayed earnings potential.
Application forms are commonly used in many industries and companies ranging from very small family operations to large multi-million dollar corporations. Do what needs to be done in order to assure yourself an opportunity to get a face-to-face meeting. Get your foot in the door. Get the interview. It is worth filling out another piece of paper, no matter how closely it resembles your resume if it means you might get the perfect job.
The number one dreaded question during the interview process is “what salary requirements are you expecting.” This question alone can either make or break the interview. Not only that, it tends to make a lot of interviewees freeze up and say the wrong things.
It is very easy to under or oversell yourself. If you are afraid of stating too much, chances are you will undersell yourself and make less than you were anticipating. After all, companies use this question to feel their applicants out. And, of course, if they can get you for a lower wage, they will.
It’s not going to go well if you ask for too much income. For instance, you can’t possibly expect to hire on as customer service but expect to be paid $20 or more an hour. Just won’t happen.
Interview process protocol dictates that you should never bring the subject of salary up yourself. Wait until they do. You only address it when the potential employer brings it up.
A good answer is that you are negotiable. That way, the both of you can meet in the middle somewhere with their requirements. At this point, you need to make sure what salary you can budget for with your personal expenses.
A good idea is to do research for the type of position you are applying for and see what the going rate for certain positions are. You don’t want to be out of the ballpark by asking for too much income when the trend is lower for the same position.
It’s all about negotiation. You may not get exactly what you want as far as wage goes, but you may also be offered a different position that offers more after they evaluate your skills. So, remember, don’t blow it by over or underselling yourself.
It has happened to all of us. Everyone has experienced a bad job interview sometime in the past. Anything from being late, botching answers to key questions or not being able to show knowledge about the company. Although the proverb is true, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, you do have an opportunity to make up some of what you lost in your bad job interview.
Often, people are their own worst critics, but this can actually be a good thing. When it comes to a job interview, you might be seeing things that weren’t actually there, or at least, that weren’t nearly as bad as you perceived them to be. Try to put the interview into perspective. Obviously, things like arriving late are negatives that will count against you but maybe other issues could be worse. Did you stumble through some questions? Did you fail to impress your interviewer with your knowledge of the company? Are there several things that were on the tip of your tongue that you were never able to express? Answer these questions and you’ll be able to tell yourself whether the interview was as bad as you first thought.
Think of it this way. Maybe that job was not the right one for you anyway. Did you feel like you weren’t able to connect with the interviewer? Did you feel out of place in the office? Were the questions exceedingly simple and not a challenge to you? Sometimes our instincts will show us in subtle ways when something is not right.
If you’ve decided that you did do very badly in the interview but still want the job, you can do damage control. The first thing to do is to analyze what went wrong. Write a thank you note or recovery letter. This is a way to follow up your bad job interview with concrete examples to back up your less than stellar answers to the interview questions. This is your chance to set the record straight and take back the initiative. Put together a concise, hard-hitting letter, using verifiable facts to back up your case wherever you can. When your prospective employer receives the letter, they will know, even if you didn’t show it in the interview, that you very much want the job and further, that you’re uniquely qualified for it.
There are any number of reasons why you can have a bad job interview. Often, it’s not as bad as you thought, or the interview will have given you enough of a perspective to convince you that the job wasn’t for you after all. But if you have a bad job interview for a job you really want, writing a timely, fact-filled and enthusiastic recovery letter can show the employer yet again that you are the best person for the job.
