Archive for the 'CV/Résumés' Category

Archives for CV/Résumés

Writing a resume without a specific job in mind is like jumping off a diving board without knowing how deep the water is. Your chance of success is small and you could even hurt yourself.

We all know that a resume is the primary tool for marketing your skills, knowledge, and experience to prospective employers. Most people make the mistake of treating their resume simply as a 1-2 page career history.

A more accurate perspective is to see the resume for what it is: an advertisement for a wonderful, complex, intelligent, educated, hard-working individual who can contribute significantly to a company’s success. However, as an advertisement, it cannot possibly communicate everything about who you are.

The resume is just a sample—a taste of the challenges and successes met, particularly throughout your work life. Each piece of the resume needs to be significant, positive, and effective. Each achievement, phrase, and word carefully selected to meet the goal: generating an interview.

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Archives for CV/Résumés

What do job seekers and astronomers have in common? Dumping your résumé into a corporate receptacle is like plunging into a black hole in cyberspace.

Okay, not always, but often enough to be a problem. In a fit of Christmastime career-ennui a few years ago I submitted my résumé to a market research company known for mapping the vendor universe and never heard from them again.

My theory about this process, never verified, was that my résumé lacked the requisite keywords such as graduate degrees. Several weeks later my follow-up phone call was never returned, nor was a follow-up e-mail. Come to think of it, though, the company’s voice-mail system couldn’t have been looking for keywords. The downstream impact on me: I journeyed from feeling admiration to humiliation in about one week.

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Archives for CV/Résumés

Are you buzzword compliant? Maybe that’s the problem – in the careers field they’re no longer called buzzwords. They’re called keywords, and without them, your résumé will slide into a black hole in cyberspace from which no search engine can find you.

Sounds dire, but getting the right words into your résumé is pretty simple according to Wendy Enelow, executive coach, résumé expert and author of more than 30 careers books including some on keywords and search engine optimization (SEO). “You can be the single most talented integrated-logistics manager but if you don’t have those words in your résumé you will get skipped over,” says the Virginia-based author.

To be clear, no one equates keywords with actual job experience or accomplishments. But in this highly competitive, technological age, the résumés that stand out are the ones that satisfy filtering software.  As for keywords, says Enelow, they are no more or less complex than “nouns and noun-phrases that describe what you do every day in your position.”

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Archives for CV/Résumés

Video résumés may seem like the next big thing to hit the job world but many hiring decision makers such as HR chiefs, recruiters and executives would rather hit the eject button than view another one.

Until video presented itself, the pre-interview screening process of comparing one résumé versus another was comfortably black & white and decidedly lacking in color. Consider the fairness of an automated résumé screening process where candidates with the right keywords rise to the top.

Still, it’s tempting to call video résumés a classic example of a disruptive technology that rubs old school managers the wrong way. But it’s really not a technology issue – it’s more a matter of process. The video résumé potentially biases an otherwise black & white talent judgment by recruiters and hiring managers.

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Archives for CV/Résumés

Would you create and distribute a video résumé or hire someone who sent you one?

Video résumés can be more revealing than a job seeker intends. That hasn’t stopped a few thousand mostly young job candidates from posting them on You Tube or e-mailing them to recruiters and employers. Most of the early video résumés have been criticized by corporations and recruiters who not only dislike the uneven content and quality but concede that they are ill-prepared to work with them.

You can’t screen a video résumé using today’s candidate tracking software.

Worse, hiring managers are concerned that seeing a candidate’s photo or video may bias their judgment and possibly result in more discrimination. 

Still, Alexsey Vayner exceeded his wildest expectations: his infamous “Impossible is Nothing” video résumé has received nearly a half million streams on You Tube. Much more typical is this sub-minute effort by Chrissy Harvey. One impatient wag commented back to her: “Great, tell me how many offers you got so far?”

Where do you stand on video résumés? Is it yet another disruptive technology or a set back for diversity and fair employment practices? If you know of a good video résumé, send us a link.