Crossroads Career Network Resume Writing Dos and Donts

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Crossroads Career NetworkResume Writing Dos
and Donts

• 9/23/06

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Yes, they actually wrote this.

• Here are my qualifications for you to overlook
• Seek challenges that test my mind and body, since
  the two are usually inseparable
• An obsession for detail I like to make sure I
  cross my Is and dot my ts
• Note Keep this resume on top of the stack.
  Use all the others to heat your house.

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What a resume CAN and CANT do

• Can get you past the initial screening
• Cant tell the reader that this is exactly the
  person I want to hire!

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Screening Process

• Definites, Nos, and Maybes
• Go with your gut reaction
• Read the Experience section first
• Review the maybes and pick one/two to interview

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What employers look for

• Growth in responsibility 67
• Previous employers 15
• Stability 11
• Other/Dont know 7

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Resume balance sheet without any liabilities

• What to look for?
• Achievement and profit mindedness
• Patterns of stability and career direction
• Specifics in job description
• Willingness to work hard
• What to be wary of?
• Lengthy descriptions of education
• Obvious gaps in background
• Trivia in the personal section
• An overabundance of qualifiers
• Sour grapes
• Slick resume

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Value of writing resume

• Process of putting it together
• OR
• Result of that process

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12 Cardinal Sins

• Unprofessionalism
• Carelessness
• Cuteness and cleverness
• Irrelevance and fluff
• Misrepresentation
• Vagueness
• Overkill
• Underwhelming
• Longwindedness
• Editorializing
• Overpersonalizing
• Resumespeak

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Yes, theres more

• Education curses in liberal arts, curses in
  computer science, curses in accounting
• I am a rabid typist
• Instrumental in ruining entire operation for a
  Midwest chain store
• I have become completely paranoid, trusting
  completely nothing, and absolutely no one
• Dont take the comments of my former employer too
  seriously, they were unappreciative beggars and
  slave drivers

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Resume styles

• Chronological
• Functional
• Combination

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Writing and Organizing

• Writing it
• Avoid the first person pronoun I
• Keep sentences short
• Use plain English
• Use bullet statements
• Go from general to specific
• Organizing it
• Heading
• Objective
• Summary
• Experience
• Education
• Other
• Personal

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So what do you do with it?

• Networking
• Internet
• Mail

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And finally

• My mother lives with me she is a CPA and can
  travel
• Im extremely loyal to my present firm, so please
  dont let them know of my immediate availability
• Note please dont misconstrue my 14 jobs as
  job-hopping. I have never quit a job
• Objective Post as communicative expert in which
  coordination as an administrative responsibility
  in pertinence to my related background in light
  of the relevance to the duties are coherently
  applied.

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Questions?