Getting a job is hard. It is even harder when you have just graduated and have little or no work experience. In this case your education and your skills will say more to your potential employers than your small amount of work experience.
The skills you gain at a job are very useful in other jobs and therefore are good to put on your resume, but what about the skills you have gained while at school? Well, there are many that are just as useful in the work field and you should let your potential employers know that you have those skills. Here are some examples of skills that will help improve your resume:
Computer Skills: Knowing how to use a computer is pretty much a necessity nowadays. Luckily, you can learn those computer skills at most schools and therefore you can put those skills on your resume. It will make your employer’s life easier if they don’t have to teach you the basics of computers when they hire you.
Teamwork and Leadership Skills: Whether you were on a sports team, student council, choir, band, or involved in theater, you probably gained some very good skills in working with other people and being a leader. This is important because you will be working with all sorts of new people and eventually leading people and the fact that you know how to work with and lead people is important to your potential employers.
Various Field Specific Skills: Depending on what you are applying for you may have some skills that are more specific to that job. That will be up to you to decide which skills are applicable and helpful in landing the job.
Now you have an idea of what skills you have and which ones you can bring to the table even with little or no work experience.
Job interviews are a tricky thing to master, if you don’t know what you are doing. You want to show off your skills and accomplishments as well as showing your personality, however, that can work against you if you don’t go about it the right way. You need to make sure that you don’t come off as entitled. Even if you feel that way. If you put off the attitude that you expect the job to be handed to you, you are not going to get the job and you will make a fool out of yourself. So how do you do it? How do you show off your accomplishments and skills without coming off that you feel entitled to the job? That is what I hope to help you with.
Be polite: The best thing you can do is use proper manners. Don’t interrupt and be polite and respectful. This will go a long way in your interview.
Make it about the employer: Don’t praise yourself. Instead praise the company and your potential employer and emphasize (don’t praise) your skills that could help you work well in the company.
Look like you care: It is simple enough, but people often forget this. You need to look like you care about the company, the job, and most importantly, the interviewer and their time. Dress professionally, sit up straight, and give eye contact. This will all show that you care more about them than yourself. Which is always a desirable trait employers will look for.
If you follow these simple guidelines you will avoid coming off as entitled. Have the right attitude and you will succeed in your interview.
Everyone has different needs when writing a resume due to their education, skills, and work experience.That means not everyone will have the exact same resume format. You need to find a format that will work to make you look the best to your potential employers. If you have no clue what format to pick, don’t worry. That is what this post is for. To help you pick the resume format that will be the best for you.
For (almost) anyone: For the most part, anyone can use a chronological resume format. This is the traditional format that will list your most recent employment first and go in reverse chronological order to your very first job (if you have the space to go back that far). This is fairly simple and most anyone can make it work.
For someone with no work experience or a large gap in their work history: A functional resume format is a good idea for people like this. It focuses on your skills rather than your work experience. If you go this route make sure to put detail into your description of your skills.
For someone with some but not a lot of work experience: A combination format would be best in this case. You would list some of your skills (like in a functional resume) first then follow with your work history (like a chronological resume). This will show employers you have the skills they want while also providing them the work history they are used to and, probably, prefer.
For someone applying to only one job: In this instance you would want to have a targeted resume. A targeted resume is tailored to fit with the company and job position you are applying for. Your objective will be specific to the company. The work experience you choose to put down will be similar to the job you are applying for.
Hopefully, you will be able to find that one of these formats works for you and makes you look the best on paper so you can get an interview and maybe even get the job.
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.
It is inevitable that your experience, skills, and achievements will change and increase.That is just a part of working and progressing in your career. With career progression comes the need to update your resume to reflect your career highlights and history. Since most people don’t really think about updating their resume until they are looking for a new job, job seekers today need to make sure that resume updates are made only after careful thought and time have been put forth. Quick updates could mean making critical errors, and we all know that errors on a resume don’t lead to an interview-errors lead to the trash pile. Here is some food for thought to ponder before you start making revisions to your resume:
If you are rushing to put something onto your resume last minute, chances are it will not look as good as the rest of your resume. You will not take the time necessary to edit and make sure that the piece of information you have just put in matches the flow of the rest of your resume. If one part of your resume looks different from the rest of the document, employers may take this as a sign that you do not give attention to detail, or that you are disorganized.
If you put something on last minute, more likely than not you will forget what it is that you have just put on. This means that in an interview, if you are asked about the addition, you may need to scramble to figure out what exactly it is and why you put it on your resume in the first place. That scrambling looks, to your interviewer, like you don’t know what they are talking about (which could make it seem like you never did it in the first place), and it will make you look inadequate and incompetent. Not a good first impression!
Quick fixes lead to quick errors. Job seekers are more likely to have spelling, spacing and grammar errors when making quick edits. Read your changes over several times and ensure you don’t have typos. Better yet-try a second set of eyes. Ask a friend or colleague to review your changes just to be sure you didn’t miss anything. If you have errors on your resume, the employer will expect that you will make errors in your daily work, and may not see you as a strong candidate for the position, regardless of your skills and expertise.
All in all, it is just better to add additions right when they happen. Make your resume a living document. Receive an award? Add it to your resume. Complete a professional development class? Add it to your resume. Keeping your revisions current will give you time to know exactly what is on your resume and why you included certain information. Doing so will save you from bumbling and looking unprofessional in an interview, as well as will make your resume look more impressive overall.
One of the most important things employers are looking at in job candidates is which candidates care about the company and will help the company succeed. You want to be able to show potential employers that you are the person they have in mind. Creating a targeted resume is a great way to do that. A targeted resume is different than a traditional resume because it is created with the specific company in mind as you write every aspect of the resume. This will impress your potential employers because it will show them that you not only are thinking about their company, but that you also did your research and know what you are talking about. Follow these steps and you will be on your way to creating a great targeted resume:
Do Your Research: Take some time and research the company you are applying for, and even the specific job you are looking at. This will make it easy when it comes to actually writing up your resume.
Start With Your Objective: Start your resume by writing an objective that uses the company’s name and expresses that you want to help said company succeed. This will give the great first impression that will keep your potential employers interested in what you have to say.
Make Sure Your Experience Matches Your Objective: Now that you have an objective to guide you, you need to make sure that every entry in your work experience shows your potential employers that you can live up to what you stated in your objective. This also goes for your achievements and accomplishments. Try to choose work experience entries that are similar to what you are applying for.
These steps will help you create a targeted resume simply and effectively, a resume will help you land the job and impress your potential employers.
When you are writing a resume you are in the mindset of showing yourself off and you want to make sure that your potential employers know all the impressive things about you that can get you the job. Unfortunately, adding all those impressive skills, experiences, and accomplishments could fill up your resume with too much information and make it uninteresting to your potential employers. So how do you know if you have too much information? Here are some ways to tell if you have too much information and help you fix your resume so it doesn’t have too much information.
Does your resume read like a letter? If your resume has commentary that adds interesting information making it read like a letter, then you have gone in the wrong direction with your resume and you need to edit so that your resume doesn’t have that extra commentary. If you feel the commentary is necessary, then add it to your cover letter.
Does your resume go longer than three pages? If your resume is longer than three pages, you may have too much information. For technical resumes or even some senior executive resumes, it may be more acceptable, but for the typical professional or executive 2 or even 3 pages is best. The reader doesn’t want to browse through your novel to get to the good stuff. Keep it clean, concise, relevant, and focused.
Does your resume give skills, experiences, or accomplishments that do not apply to the job? If they don’t apply to the job description, leave them out. There is no reason to have things on your resume that won’t help you get the job. So edit them out and get back to the things that are applicable and impressive for the job.
These tips will help you edit your resume so you have the right amount of impressive information to get you to the interview– and hopefully the job!
Job interviews can be terrifying.It is one of the few times when you know without a doubt that you are being judged. Without judging you, how can potential employers know if you are a good fit or not? They can’t. They will go over everything in your resume and your work history with a fine tooth comb. They will call your references and they will make sure that you are worth their time and effort. Because of this, you need to be careful. You need to make sure that you don’t have anything in your past that could come back to haunt you and cause you to lose future job opportunities. This means that no matter what stage of life you are in or where you are in your career you need to be thinking ahead. Think about what effect the things you are doing today might have on your future. Here are some things that are obvious to avoid: bad talking your boss or superiors, being late, being unprofessional, etc. Those are things almost everyone knows to avoid, but there are some things people might not know, such as: talking about coworkers or superiors on Facebook or other social networking sites, posting vulgar or obscene things on your profile(s), or lying on your resume. All these things can be found out by future employers and harm your ability to keep your job and get a new job in the future. If you simply think ahead before you do anything, then you should be able to avoid doing something that could harm you later in the road and you won’t have to live up to it in an interview. Remember, you are being judged. Don’t give your potential employers anything they can judge badly.
