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by Regina Pontow
author of Proven Resumes and Confidence Builders
When creating
a resume, it's critical that you be able to land interviews for
the jobs you want. However, most resume statistics are pretty
bleak--not because people are unskilled--but because many job
seekers have very weak resumes that do not sell them effectively.
With employer's
receiving 100 to 400 resumes for each advertised position it's
imperative that you understand how to analyze an employer's job
requirements and match your background to their needs.
Once you've done
that effectively, you must also make sure that the image your
resume creates matches the salary and responsibility level of
the jobs you want. Many people create resumes that market them
beneath their skill and salary requirements. The first workshop
in my website--23 Free Online Resume and Job Search Workshops--includes
a before resume that marketed Fran at $9,000 beneath her salary
goal and didn't land her any interviews. Her new resume generated
her a 100% response rate for positions in her salary range of
$33,000. Learning how to graph the image your resume presents
will teach you how to tweak your resume until you do get the
response and salary offers you want whether you're in the $20,000
or the $200,000 range.
My background
includes writing over 4,000 resumes and spending more than 10,000
hours counseling job seekers in all areas of their job search.
In addition, I've written several books, books and instructor
materials now used by over 60 U.S. colleges. My materials substantially
increased Employment Security Department client placement and
salary levels, and as a result I was recommended to our state's
governor's board on employment issues. I no longer write resumes
but encourage you to visit my site and learn strategies that
have been proven by over 30,000 job seekers and documented by
ESD offices, college instructors and organizations such as Boeing
Re-Employment.
To learn proven
resume and job search strategies click a topic below, which will
take you to my award winning site that has been reviewed and
linked by leading universities and career centers:
Anthony Peeters
of San Francisco Systems (www.sfsys.com/sfsys), a recruiting
firm, said that the format of your online resume is very important.
He noted that "more and more recruiting efforts are skill-set
oriented, and this should be reflected in the beginning of the
resume in very specific terms". Peeters cited a growing
trend at online resume Web sites. Sites such as Intellimatch
(www.intellimatch.com) use a survey to get a detailed inventory
of skills from the prospective candidate. Peeters tells job hunters
they need to design their online resume to emphasize skills.
Firestone shared tips for making your online resume easier to
read. "Eliminate all formatting and put your resume on individual
sheets of paper rather than a single two-sided sheet." For
instance, some scanners can't handle bold type, underlining,
or changes in font size. |