I Don’t Know How To Say This… Your Resume is Appalling

There are a lot of businesses out there that claim to know how to review a resume. In fact, there are a lot of entrepreneurs who think this is a great way to make an extra buck (even I was considering charging $50 for the service!). I’m not one of those guys – I think it’s unethical to take advantage of the desperation unemployment tends to engender.

The Economy looks to be getting worse. It only makes sense to learn how to review your own resume or to be able to offer a friend the same.

Wax On, Wax Off, Wax On…

The only reason a resume exists is to show what you can do for an employer. This can only be accomplished by making all the information intuitive, simple to understand, and easy to find. Things to look for:

• Name and contact information at the top, easy to read, easy to understand.
• Most important information closer to top.
• Consistent formatting.
• Emphasis used only when necessary.
• Action verbs used for every skill.
• Bullet Points line up.

Develop an Eye for Detail

On a resume, it’s the little things that matter. The difference between $50,000 a year and waiting in line at the unemployment office can often be as little as mistaking “their” and “there” and “they’re”. Worse than grammatical errors are spelling errors – unforgivable in an age with spell-checking available to anyone just slightly more diligent than a slug.

Less annoying but still bad is inconsistencies in period use at the end of fragments – particularly in skill or achievement lists. Either use them or don’t – pick a way and stay consistent. Along these same lines, failing to line up the bullet points on lists is just plain dumb. Every list on the document should be formatted so all the items of the same level are in vertical alignment.

Brevity is Appreciated

In an economy with 13% unemployment (including the soft-stats), every job is likely to receive stacks upon stacks of resumes. The hiring manager needs to see a resume that is concise and to-the-point. The goal isn’t to use as few words as possible, but instead to present the content in the clearest, most concise way possible. Eradicate waste! It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” He invented the light bulb wrote the damn Declaration of Independence (thanks Josh – wow, I must have been stoned); he’s worth listening to.

Wording and the order of sentences is key.

• Always put the most important things first in lists.
• Always list the most relevant job first.
• Always put the action word first.

Following these very basic guidelines can prevent a lot of job-search heartache.

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Show Notes:

- If they don’t care about mistakes on your resume, they probably don’t care about you!

Five Resume-Success Tips for Millennials:
1) Spell Check
2) Limit Yourself to One Page
3) Do Not Include An Objective
4) Use Action Verbs!
5) Use a professional e-mail address to put on your resume and check it often.

Join the show:
Email – PsychoticResumes@gmail.com
Voicemail – (206) 426-1248
Web – www.PsychoticResumes.com

Guess What Happens if you get an A?

The best way to get a read on if your resume will do well is to be preemptive. Do your homework. Investigate HR sites and see what they consider annoying. You might never know if your “sly compliment” was actually interpreted as a sexual advance… and they will most certainly never say so. If you never knew that “love” was not an acceptable thing to call your interviewer, you might be prone to making that mistake if you were, say, a swashbuckling Englishman with a taste for women and employment. But people still tend to do it anyway. And why? All they had to do was read the blogs of the people that were going to hire them.

You can generally avoid stupid mistakes (or at least big pet peeves) by visiting the blogs and websites of the people who are actually reading your resume and cover letter, the ones who are actually doing the interview with you, and so on. They, like everyone else, tend to spill the beans on the worst of the worst that they encounter. While it may seem only like common sense to not flirt like a drunken sailor, make eyes like a Hooters girl or beg for a job like a junkie searching for his next fix… people still do it.

Hiring managers, also sometimes known as “HR” (they tend to conglomerate together in something called a ‘Department’ and make rules about things and make you watch those awkward videos about places you can’t touch…) are usually the ones to read your resume and call you back for an interview. So, to help you out, I’ll list some of my new favorites here that look at things from the opposite side of the cover letter:

• I Hate HR – very well written and concise. A lot of HR-specific content, but good tips and hints here and there to make the read worthwhile for a job seeker.
• Not Hired – hilarious doesn’t quite cut it when talking about this site. They find the worst of the worst resumes/cover letters/etc… a definite must-read.
• Important Elements of Resume Writing – multiple points of interest in this article in particular, and on a few of the other articles on this site. Good place to get info.

Read through those sites… enjoy it… and then realize the most important thing you can ever realize about job searching: you are your own worst enemy. The HR people… they’re allies in disguise.

Sometimes Mom Just Won’t Do…

In today’s job market, it sometimes seems that who you know is more important than what you know. This is especially true in certain industries that favor word of mouth as a way of finding new talent.

There’s no better source of word-of-mouth advertising for the awesomeness that is you than your references. So, looking forlornly at the reference section of your applications, wishing you could remember the names and phone numbers of people who would sing your praises like MJ offering candy to little children out of his limo… well, that’s just not right and neither is having no references.

Your first objective, then, is to create a word document with your references in it – at least five. If you can’t find five people to sing your praises, you need to start leaving your apartment more often. Maybe get a tan. A healthy glow tends to attract people to you. Glowing in the dark because you never leave the fluorescence of your computer screen… does not.

Anyway… everyone has friends or somebody who can speak well of them. But picking the right people for the job is important – and I don’t mean the job of talking about you, I mean the job that you’re applying for. Think about it – does your mom know anything about particle physics? Well, then, don’t ask her to be a reference for you when applying as a repair man for the Large Hadron Collider.

Matching up the job requirements and your references can be a tricky deal – your co-workers, especially early on in your career, might not have any clue what your career is about. They might not know what your style of work is. If you find yourself in this predicament, and usually this means you’re a student or a recent grad, Facebook or LinkedIn stalk a few of your former classmates. Ask them if they wouldn’t mind speaking about you (it helps if you worked on a project with them, or at the very least, asked to borrow a pencil from them at least once). In fact, and maybe tellingly, the best way to get a reference from someone is to offer to be a reference for them. Quid Pro… something. Row, I think.

While we’re on the topic, Mom, though she’s undoubtedly a great person (I mean, she did pop you out, right?), really should be left off your list of references. This is equally true of all your family members, even if you worked for the family diner back in high school. You should stick with classmates, co-workers, and good friends who have worked on something with you (personal projects, believe it or not, are okay – they show insight into your personality).

The other important factor in picking out references is honesty. Hiring managers can tell when someone’s taking them on a ride. It’s perfectly good to have someone say nothing but good things about you, but more poignant is someone who can point out a fault you had and what you did to fix it. This little bit of honesty is important, because it points out that you not only work on improving yourself, but that you are so confident in your skills that you’d allow someone on your reference sheet who wouldn’t just blow smoke all day long.

The final tip to ensure your success: provide all your references with the most recent copy of your resume and a little description of the job you are applying for. Tell them what skills the interviewer is looking for in you, what kind of job it is. Some of your references may not want this sort of “guidance”, but most will appreciate the effort so that they can effectively communicate the right praises in the right way.

So, to sum up:

• Know your references
• Chose relevant references
• Avoid mom, but call her anyway (she misses you)
• Supply your references with information
• Trust your references to say the right thing

Good luck out there!

Forgetting to Spell, Grammar, and Idiot-Check

• Everyone has done it at least once. You’re in a hurry, you need to get that resume out before someone else takes your dream job. Well, forgetting to spell, grammar and idiot-check can make the difference between “excellent stocking skills and excellent stalking skills.” Both are useful for work involving a women’s clothing store, but only one will get you hired.

Of course I couldn’t put everything I wanted into this article. There are plenty of other topics to talk about, including how to include references – or if to include references on the resume. To use or not to use an objective statement. This and more will come in later articles, and of course, you can always check out each of I Am Nick Armstrong’s main pages for more information and inspiration.

Think you have more to add? Leave your own here!