Tag Archives: Resumes

13 Insane resumes that landed interviews and jobs

Posted on July 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

Experimenting can be your key to success.  Here are 13 resumes that were way over the edge…and worked.

Here is the link.

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Posted in Attitude, Resumes

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The best resume writing book

Posted on June 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

The best book ever written on resume writing is available free for a few days.

I have posted it at www.dilts.us/books/

When it goes on Amazon, it won’t be free anymore.

Enjoy!

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When is your resume thrown away?

Posted on November 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.  (Gardner)

Hiroshima, WWII:  “I sure wish I could find rice for my family. Hey, what is that lone airplane doing above the city? Oh well, I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Sometimes timing is everything and you are worrying about the wrong problems.  For your resume there is a timing pattern you must understand.  You have to break through the following pattern to get hired:

  1. Your resume arrives along with 100 others.  The secretary trashes 80 after a 10 second review apiece.
  2. The secretary trashes 10 more after giving them 45 seconds apiece.
  3. Her boss gets the 10 remaining resumes and trashes 2 after a 10 second review.
  4. The boss throws away 3 more viable resumes.  He just doesn=t have the time to deal with more than 5.  For the 3 trashed, something is not quite right.
  5. He calls the 5 remaining candidates, starting with the best one.

Can you see why knowing when your resume is thrown out is critical?

Every time you send out a resume and fail to get an interview you should ask, “Who threw away my resume?”

Ask the question of yourself.  Also ask your recruiter and the HR person at the company.  Beg, if you have to.  You need to find out when and why your resume is not being considered.  Also be sensitive to the recruiter and HR.  They may lie to you.  They don’t want to argue.  They want to be powerful and all-knowing.  Play on that and ask for advice as you try to find out when your resume was trashed.

Next time we’ll talk about how to get past the screenings and into an interview.  For now, try to figure out when your resume is being thrown away.

Something To Do Today

Make some calls.  Find out where your resume is being trashed.

Ask some friends, they may be able to give you some ideas too.

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Polar Bear Testicles and your job search

Posted on September 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

CNN had a story on shrinking polar bear testicles.  They went into detail about how it was an indicator of global warming destroying the earth.  I would hate to be the scientist with a bag of bear treats trying to make that measurement.  Then there was a brief blurb about the lowest SAT college exam scores in 30 years.  The SAT scores were just barely worth mentioning.

Which of the two stories caught your attention?  Shrinking polar bear testicles.  It was improbable, bizarre, and got you worried about vague worldwide problems.

Which story was really the most significant for your personal prosperity?  The SAT scores.  It affects every company in the USA.  More money, focus, worry, and concern are being focused on polar bear testicles than on why SAT scores are dropping.

Everything is not of equal importance.  The biggest problem that most job seekers have is that they are very focused on the wrong thing.

Are you focusing on these things?

  1. Finding jobs on job boards
  2. Sending out resumes
  3. Perfecting your cover letter
  4. Creating one perfect resume
  5. New ways to search Indeed.com
  6. Sending out more resumes

They are the wrong thing. Sorry.

You should focus on….

  1. Talking to hiring managers
  2. Talking to the bosses of hiring managers

Those are the only things that count.  If you are talking to one hiring manager a day, you are outperforming someone who sends out 50 resumes to qualified jobs every day.

Networking is the most effective way to talk to hiring managers.

No. Asking someone to introduce you to a hiring manager is not what I mean.  That is great,  but it is also a distraction.  The IMPORTANT networking you can do every day is to find hiring managers, ask them for some help they can easily give, and then stay in touch occasionally.

I haven’t got time to go over the details today.  I’ve done seminars and a hundred articles on how to do that.  I’ll try to publish a slew of them in the next couple of weeks.

Don’t get distracted by polar bear testicles.  Focus on talking to hiring managers every day and staying in contact with them until you have that new job.

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Posted in Finding jobs, Job Boards, Perseverance, Resumes, Time management

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How to write a KILLER resume is coming

Posted on June 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m getting finished on the e-book copy of How to write a KILLER resume.

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Skipped parts – hiding in plain sight

Posted on May 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you hide in plain sight, no one will see you.

My son once hid from our family right by the front door.  Right in the open.  We have coat hooks there.  He hid inside a coat hanging on a hook.  His shoes and a foot of his pants were fully exposed.  Our whole family looked for 15 minutes before someone found him. He hid in a spot no one ever looks at.

Your resume has spots that no one ever looks at: the objective, the summary, and big block paragraphs. 

The objective and summary on everybody’s resume says the same thing.  So I read the first 5 words just to be sure, then skip them.

You say, “Hard worker, team player, and I want to grow.”  So what?  The day I read a resume that says,  “I’m lazy, can’t work with others and want to stagnate,” I’ll show the whole office.  I don’t have time to wade through a bunch of descriptions of things everyone does. 

If I’m going to read your objective or summary it has to be short. One line is best. It has to start telling me about you in the first 5 words.  What is unique about you must come out.  Don’t talk about things I expect in every employee.

Ugly, huge, wordy paragraphs are more than I can handle.  Take the 6 most important points of your paragraph and turn each essential point into one line bullets.  I’ll get those 6 points.  If you bury the 6 most important things about you in a half page paragraph, I will never read them.  If YOU don’t know what the 6 most important things are, YOU have been lazy. 

10 seconds is all that most resumes get before they are trashed.  If they make it past the 10 second screening, they get a 45 second review.  A final few will be fully read.  Don’t hide the most important information.  Make it stand out.  Make sure I read it.

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Try to get your Objective and Summary sections down to less than one line.  If you have a paragraph over 3 lines in length, consider cutting it out or turning it into bullets. 

Remember: Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview.  It is not a complete job history or a confessional.  Its only purpose is to get you an interview.

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Q&A – Where do I put the cover letter?

Posted on April 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Question:  When sending a resume to a company’s website, should a cover letter be part of the resume document or should I write the letter as the email and just attach the resume alone?

Answer: Great question.  That depends on what you want the cover letter to do.
 
If you want it to highlight things not in, or obscured in your resume, it goes as the first page of the resume.  It MUST be in the same document as the resume. (I suggest you also redo your resume to highlight important points.)
 
If you think it has to be read to get someone to even open your resume, it goes as the email that your resume is attached to.  NEVER put it as a second attachment to your resume.  If you do, it will be ignored. 

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Resumes and elephant guns

Posted on January 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the world.  (Archimedes)

 In the old Tarzan movies a “great white hunter” is walking through the African plains followed by a couple of trusty gun bearers.  Suddenly, out of the trees, an elephant charges.  He reaches back and his huge elephant gun is placed in his hands.  He takes aim and waits.  When the elephant is a mere 30 yards away he fires.  The elephant falls to the ground at his feet.

What would happen if the hunter reached back and a bow and arrow were placed in his hands?   Well, there wouldn’t be enough left of the hunter to have a funeral.

For every job there are a few key experiences that will get you an interview.  They are the elephant guns or levers in your job hunt.  If you have those experiences, you will get an interview.

Before you submit your resume for any job you have to ask yourself, “What is the elephant gun for this job?  Is there one?”  You may have to read the job description two or three times before you know.  If you are still confused, call up the company and find out.  Ask for the person in charge of that job.  Whether you get HR (Human Resources) or the hiring manager, ask what the most difficult to find skills for that job are.

We submitted one resume for a job using an elephant gun.  The candidate did not have the college degree necessary.  He was not a CPA and had never been an auditor.   Still, the company phoned back immediately.  They were excited that we had found a candidate with the one skill they absolutely had to have.  He had several years of experience collecting the data to fill out a particular set of government forms.

We knew what the elephant gun for the job was.  The candidate got the interview.

Are you using a bow and arrow resume when you could be using an elephant gun?  You need a lever and a place to stand to move the world.

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Something To Do Today

Find an ad that is picky, an ad that asks for 10 different skills and a lot of experience.  Find out what the elephant gun is for that ad.  Call the company and ask what the most important skill sets are and which are not essential. Find out where the lever can be placed.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Resumes

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