Have you tried looking for a new job lately? Well just so you know, the process of looking for a new job has changed considerably. There was once a time when professionals would print out their resume and mail them to hiring managers, well those times are well in the past. In today’s busy world, resumes and cover letters are largely uploaded via the Internet or emailed directly to a company’s human resources department.
How you send your resume is not the only facelift that any job seeker must make. Just over the past decade, resumes themselves have gone through a change too. Therefore, you might want to tweak your existing resume in the following ways to increase your chances of finding a new job – especially if you’re a professional!
- Show accomplishments rather than responsibilities – A majority of hiring managers have been doing their jobs for some time that they have become knowledgeable enough to understand the responsibilities of certain positions. For example, let’s say your previous employment was as a Regional Sales Manager. Instead of listing or summarizing your responsibilities, put what accomplishments you achieved during your time with that employer. It is recommended that in this area you be as specific as possible, listing any sales goals you exceeded and awards you might have won. Your achievements are what set you apart from other candidates with similar work histories, so use your resume to highlight those achievements instead of listing your responsibilities.
- Keep things brief – Briefness should be your best-friend when emphasizing your accomplishments on your resume. Utilize your accomplishments on your resume, but make sure that you keep it short, sweet and to the point. That should be enough to secure an interview, and that’s when you can go into greater detail. But try to keep your resume to one or two pages.
- Remove older positions – This is especially important if you’re a seasoned professional. I can guarantee you that after reading about your accomplishments as a Regional Sales Manager and an Operations Manager, no hiring manger wants to see an old position, such as a long-ago college internship . On the other hand, if you have long since changed careers, you may not need to include much about your previous positions in another field, especially if your work experience in your new field is extensive. Hiring managers likely won’t be interested in a past work history if it’s irrelevant to your current field.
- Consider a new format – The times of sending your resume via snail mail has really past. In fact, I don’t know of many job postings were the hiring manager is asking for that; therefore, you probably won’t be printing your resume as a Microsoft® Word document and mailing it to prospective employers. You may want to consider a different format when submitting your resume via a company’s Web site. Word documents might be acceptable, but such documents can easily become encoded in the uploading process or won’t be readable especially if the hiring manger has a different version of Word than you do. Consider uploading your resume as a PDF or as plain text, as such formats are less likely to become scrambled during when they are uploaded or downloaded.
- Upload your resume to a professional networking site – Having your resume on a professional networking site is starting to become more a norm than it was a few years ago. In fact, many hiring managers have even told me that they have started to ask for the applicants LinkedIn® profile instead of a resume. I am sure that many of you are hesitant to upload your resume to a business networking site such as LinkedIn®. It could be because of fear that your current employer will feel that you are looking for a new job, but I can assure you that so many professionals are now members of such sites that it’s no these type of sites are no longer associated with a job search as much as it is an easy way to keep in touch with professional contacts. In addition, many recruiters rely on sites like LinkedIn to find qualified professionals, which only makes it easier to find your next job.
Having trouble or don’t have enough time to update your resume or even manage professional networking sites? Call Masoba Innovations Resume Writing Service at 877-462-4055 or visit them online at www.epresume.com. They can help update, re-do or create your new resume. All resumes are provided in a PDF format for better uploading and they can even upload all info to all professional networking sites for you.
Complete Awareness 