A Resume Gets You in the Interview Door – The Rest is Up to You

The purposes of a resume are two fold:

1. Putting your career objectives and experience on paper in a manner that presents you in the best possible light without misleading others as to your experience and capabilities.

2. Informing potential employers of your career objectives and experience so they can use this information to help decide whether or not you possess sufficient qualifications for the job you are seeking.

Everything else that determines whether or not you’ll be hired for the job you want exists outside of your resume. In other words, your resume may get you an interview, but you can’t count on it to get you the job regardless of how well written it is.

What counts during an interview is how well you interview. Here are a few tips to boost your interviewee skills:

• Dress appropriately for the work you hope to perform. If you are a woman applying to work as an administrative assistant in a law office, a conservative suit, silk blouse and low heels are appropriate. If you are applying to work in a veterinary practice, they are not.
One woman who mistakenly wore corporate attire to interview for a position as a veterinary assistant in a large and very busy small animal hospital was aghast when she was asked to assist a client who rushed into the office carrying a dog covered in blood as the result of a car accident. Her stammered response of “Uh, I really can’t get this suit dirty” cost her the job.

• It’s trite but true: You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Whatever your attire, make certain it’s clean and neat as well as appropriate. Make certain your body is clean, your hair is trimmed and your breath is pleasant.

• Be on time—and be calm. Jitters are the norm when facing any new situation. Being late not only send the message that you lack sufficient respect for the interviewer (and by extension, the company and the job) it will give you a major case of the jitters as well.
Traffic jams and crowded parking lots can make you late and sweaty, and sweaty never creates an impression. Ensure a calm and poised appearance by allowing yourself plenty of time to get to your interview.

• Don’t volunteer information. Too often, people interviewing for new positions try to “sell” themselves by volunteering too much information. Doing this can make you appear insecure, and possibly not quite honest as well. The information relevant to your being hired should be on your resume. Volunteering additional information can make you look nervous and make it appear as if you failed to put everything the interviewer needs to know in your resume or on the application.

Make sure that your resume honestly presents your career objective, skills and abilities in the best and most effective light. Just don’t expect it to land you the job.

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If You Are Not Getting Results, Hire a Professional Resume Writing Service

Writing your own resume is tough.

First of all, you have to make sure all the information you put on your resume is factually correct. Then, you have to find a way to write it so that it makes you look like the perfect person for the job you want to land.

These two goals are not mutually exclusive, but they are difficult to achieve when you’re writing about yourself.

So, if your resume isn’t getting you the interview calls you think it should, find yourself a good professional resume writer to rework it for you and shell out a few bucks to get the bucks you want rolling in.

A great resume has the following characteristics:

•    Is about you and about how you performed and what you accomplished in past jobs—especially those accomplishments that are most relevant to the job you want to get.  A good resume should contain enough information that a potential employer can predict how you will perform in future jobs

•    Includes your job objective, concisely stated in fewer than 10 words. Employers aren’t mind readers. Don’t expect them to guess at what you want.

•    Is written in a manner that links your accomplishments with your career objective.

•    Is organized by chronology, not function or skills. Most employers prefer a chronological format because it gives them an opportunity to develop a feel for the progression of your employment life. Only use a functional format if you’re changing you’re line of work and are certain that a skills-oriented format would show off your transferable skills to better advantage.

•    Lists your not for profit achievements as well as your paid work experience. Many times, people entering or re-entering the workforce overlook the importance of the volunteer work they have done because they did not receive money for doing it. Yet the skills they have learned are valuable and the projects on which they have worked made a positive contribution to society that potential employers will recognize.

•    Accounts for gaps in your paid working life. So, you stayed at home for a few years while your kids were young? Don’t ignore the fact, and don’t apologize for not holding paid employment during that time. Unless your interviewer is from a planet where offspring take care of themselves, he or she will understand.  A professional resume writer will find a way to phrase this succinctly and positively.

•    Uses the PAR approach. Great resumes emphasize problem, action and results—the PAR formula. They state the problems that existed in your workplace and describe how you solved them to produce beneficial results.

So, if you’re finding writing your resume is causing you stress or the resume you’ve written isn’t getting the results you want, find yourself a good professional resume writer and let him or her get to work making you appear as capable and desirable as you are.
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A Professional Resume Never Includes Hobbies

Thirty years ago—before many of the personal privacy laws that apply to hiring issues were enacted—including personal topics such as your hobbies, marital status and number of children in your resume was not only acceptable, it was expected.

Then, employers wanted to know a lot about your personal life because they used that information in their hiring decisions—and the unspoken assumption was that if you didn’t include personal information you must have something to hide. Now, the law quite correctly forbids employers from soliciting any information not directly related to your ability to perform the tasks of the job for which you are applying—and the unspoken assumption is that if you do include personal information, you don’t know how to write a professional resume.

Personal information such as hobbies has no place in your resume for the simple facts that it has nothing to do with how well or poorly you may perform on the job. Hiring laws now hold that information about your hobbies, your religion, your ethnic background, sexual preference and other personal matters is personal and therefore privileged. Information that employers once believed they had a “right” to know is now legally held to be your business not your employer’s.

Interviewing and hiring has become a lot more objective, and employers are now only allowed to ask about your work history and your ability to do the work for which you want to be hired. For example, it is reasonable for a potential employer to ask if you have reliable transportation. Asking what kind of car you drive is a violation of hiring law. Asking if you know of any reason why you would not be able to adhere to a work schedule under ordinary circumstances is reasonable. Asking if you would call in sick when your child is sick is a violation.

Obviously, if you’re applying for a job as a golf pro at the local country club, your potential employer has a right to test your skill on the golf course. But here, even though gold is a sport most people pursue as a hobby, you are claiming sufficient expertise at it to charge other people money to teach them how to play.  Or if you are a journalist who pursues photography as a hobby and applies to work at a newspaper, you would certainly be justified to list your photographic experience, but you would include it as a skill, not as a hobby.
Despite all of this, some people are still including hobbies in their resumes, either as filler to make their resume longer or because they simply don’t know any better.

Don’t do it. In today’s business, including hobbies on your resume can make you look downright juvenile and the last thing you want to look like when you are applying for a professional job is an amateur!

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 Why You Should Never Include a Photo with Your Resume

Years ago, before most of the laws banning discrimination in hiring were passed; employers were allowed to ask applicants about ethnicity. Employers who held prejudicial views about a particular ethnic background could even go so far as to turn down an applicant with that ethnicity.

Today, asking about things that are irrelevant is taboo. Not only are employers forbidden by law to discriminate against job applicants because of their ethnic heritage, they may not discriminate against applicants because of age, sex or physical appearance, either.

When you include a photograph with or in your resume, you are inviting potential employers to judge you on the irrelevant basis of your physical appearance—and you’re asking them to do it before they even meet you.

A photograph encourages people to make assumptions about you and you shouldn’t give people that opportunity. A picture will also open you up to prejudices and may keep you from getting interviews. Including a photograph virtually guarantees that potential employers will make some judgments about you based on appearance, even if those judgments are subliminal.

Let’s clarify something here: Physical appearance does not mean you should not arrive at your interview dressed in a manner that allows you to perform the duties of the job for which you are applying.

Unless you are applying for a job in an acting troupe—in which case you will also be submitting a portfolio of photographs or a professional actor’s promotional pack—including a photograph may cause interviewers to disregard the all-important information on your resume.
If you’ve been out of the job market for a few years, be sure that your resume is aligned with today’s resume guidelines. Today, the law quite correctly forbids employers from soliciting any information not directly related to your ability to perform the tasks of the job for which you are applying—and the unspoken assumption is that if you do include personal information, you don’t know how to write a professional resume.

A photograph has no place in your resume for the simple facts that your appearance has nothing to do with how well or poorly you may perform on the job. Employers are forbidden to take physical appearance into consideration when making hiring decisions.

Honor the people who worked so hard to make hiring non-discriminatory by not including a photograph with your resume.

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