Finding the job you want takes many steps and involves many decisions. This checklist is designed to help you along he way and guide you to the appropriate sources.

Knowing What You Want

• Choose your ideal work environment-large corporation, small business,
  government agency, etc.
• Choose your ideal location-urban, suburban, or rural.
• List your three most useful job skills and know which is your strongest.
• Know whether you want to work with people, data, or things.
• Know if you want to work with others or work alone.
• List your favorite leisure time activities.
• Know what kind of reward is most important to you in a job-money,
  security, creative authority, etc.
• List some of the main career areas which might interest you.
• Know whether you enjoy new projects or prefer following a regular
  routine.

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You’ve found an ad for an entry-level position at XYZ Inc. With your skills and qualifications, you fit the bill perfectly. But XYZ requires an online application—and that means (you think), you fill out a cookie-cutter application that distills your skills so that it appears you’re one-of-a-million applicants, not one-in-a-million. And then—when you click “send”—your application swirls away into the black hole of electronic waste.

Should you or shouldn’t you use an online application? And if you do submit your resume online, how can you get it the attention it deserves? Read the rest of this entry »

Omit needless items. Leave all these things off your resume: social security number, marital status, health, citizenship, age, scholarships, irrelevant awards, irrelevant associations and memberships, irrelevant publications, irrelevant recreational activities, a second mailing address (”permanent address” is confusing and never used), references, reference of references (”available upon request”), travel history, previous pay rates, previous supervisor names, and components of your name which you really never use (i.e. middle names).

Be concise. As a rule of thumb, resumes reflecting five years or less experience should fit on one page. More extensive experience can justify usage of a second page. Consider three pages (about 15 years or more experience) an absolute limit. Avoid lengthy descriptions of whole projects of which you were only a part. Consolidate action verbs where one task or responsibility encompasses other tasks and duties. Minimize usage of articles (the, an, a) and never use “I” or other pronouns to identify yourself.

Don’t sell yourself short. This is by far the biggest mistake of all resumes, technical and otherwise. Your experiences are worthy for review by hiring managers. Treat your resume as an advertisement for you. Be sure to thoroughly “sell” yourself by highlighting all of your strengths. If you’ve got a valuable asset which doesn’t seem to fit into any existing components of your resume, list it anyway as its own resume segment.

Begin sentences with action verbs. Portray yourself as someone who is active, uses their brain, and gets things done. Stick with the past tense, even for descriptions of currently held positions, to avoid confusion.