The days of a paper resume are gone! If you were considering stuffing your resume in an envelope and affixing postage, think again. HR professionals and recruiters alike expect a properly formatted, professionally written resume with an accompanying cover letter to be submitted online. Your online proficiency doesn’t stop there. You must also have a significant personal and professional online presence. The best way to find out what the majority of recruiters will discover about you is to Google yourself.
Maintaining a consistent and professional name for each of your online profiles is important. Unless you have a very unusual name, it may not be in your best interest to use only one initial with your last name as you could end up lost in a sea of people with the same handle or possibly mistaken for someone with a less than stellar reputation. Consider establishing your online presence using your full name, Harold J Smith, rather than H Smith to differentiate yourself. Eliminate all of the dots and dashes and numbers that are often automatically generated and use your proper name. Most online networking sites give you the option to customize your URL and generate one based on the user name you choose. How does this relate to your resume? A resume written in 2009 must contain your Linkedin address with your contact details.
Also included in your resume is your email address. The question to ask in 2009 is not whether or not you have an email address on your resume, but how old is your email address and is it professional? Today there is no excuse! Email addresses are easily acquired and they’re free. If you haven’t updated yours in years or you’re still using the one you created using a nickname, create a new one that can be used professionally. Recruiters are interested in forward thinking individuals who stay current. An AOL address is perceived as outdated and a Hotmail address lacks professionalism so update your resume with an appropriate email address.
First impressions are key to your success and the contact information you provide on your resume is your first impression on paper, or rather, on the computer! Without an impressive resume it is unlikely you will be given the opportunity for a job interview. If you want to be taken seriously in your pursuit of an executive position and increase your chances of a job interview, submit a professionally written resume with at least one online address and a professional email address.
Martin Buckland
Elite Resumes
Good points. But I would say a paper copy is still a good idea if you can get a person’s actual mailing address. What a great way to stand out from the crowd. Use nice, medium weight bond paper.
A few additional thoughts…your resume should be a brief and concise summary of your relevant skills and achievements for the job field you are targeting.
It should show that you are a proactive person that determines what needs to be done and takes decisive action.
Every point on your resume should make the reader say “this is what we are looking for”.
It should not contain other information not relevant to your career goal, no matter how proud you are of it (this is the classic mistake). They don’t care if you won a sewing competition in high school, or that you were a dancing instructor in 1992 – if you are going for an IT job.
It possibly could contain recent community service. That shows you are a community minded person which is good. But this should be impressive. You don’t say you participated in a walk a thon 5 years ago. Boring!
You do not list job descriptions. This is the second classic mistake. You need specific examples of what you did personally, skillfully worded as achievements (to the greatest possible extent).
You do not rely too much on flowery, essentially meaningless things like “team player” or “well organized”. Everybody says that. Many people have whole sections of their resumes devoted to goofy phrases like these. Bad idea. You need actual specific examples of being a team player or well organized.
You need to translate things into quantifiable, measurable results whenever possible. Claims need to be backed up, or else you are just blowing smoke. Now some things can’t be, I realize that. But try to quantify wherever you can.
You do not “grasp at straws”, listing weak or unimpressive points.
You do not try to cram your resume full of keywords. If there was a magic list of words that could get you to the top of a search engine result everyone would know about those words and it would be a meaningless exercise. Basic keywords will identify you in a search.
Contrary to the popular resume trends of the month, you might need a career objective. The first person reading your resume could be a junior HR person. The company might have hundreds of vacancies across the country. They are not going to sit there and try to figure out if you want to work on the sales desk or apply for the director of marketing. You need to tell them, and a career objective is a good way to do that. Then they can say – “this person wants to be a sales rep. Well we are looking for those – we will put this aside to read later.” Career objectives are not necessary if it is obvious what you want to do.
Listen to advice (including mine) with a critical mind. Do what makes sense to you, and don’t follow anybody’ else’s silly rules for resume writing.
That is a start. You could write a book on this.
It should be a brief and concise summary of your relevant skills and achievements for the job field you are targeting.
It should show that you are a proactive person that determines what needs to be done and takes decisive action.
Every point on your resume should make the reader say “this is what we are looking for”.
It should not contain other information not relevant to your career goal, no matter how proud you are of it (this is the classic mistake). They don’t care if you won a sewing competition in high school, or that you were a dancing instructor in 1992 – if you are going for an IT job.
It possibly could contain recent community service. That shows you are a community minded person which is good. But this should be impressive. You don’t say you participated in a walk a thon 5 years ago. Boring!
You do not list job descriptions. This is the second classic mistake. You need specific examples of what you did personally, skillfully worded as achievements (to the greatest possible extent).
You do not rely too much on flowery, essentially meaningless things like “team player” or “well organized”. Everybody says that. Many people have whole sections of their resumes devoted to goofy phrases like these. Bad idea. You need actual specific examples of being a team player or well organized.
You need to translate things into quantifiable, measurable results whenever possible. Claims need to be backed up, or else you are just blowing smoke. Now some things can’t be, I realize that. But try to quantify wherever you can.
You do not “grasp at straws”, listing weak or unimpressive points.
You do not try to cram your resume full of keywords. If there was a magic list of words that could get you to the top of a search engine result everyone would know about those words and it would be a meaningless exercise. Basic keywords will identify you in a search.
Contrary to the popular resume trends of the month, you might need a career objective. The first person reading your resume could be a junior HR person. The company might have hundreds of vacancies across the country. They are not going to sit there and try to figure out if you want to work on the sales desk or apply for the director of marketing.
You need to tell them, and a career objective is a good way to do that. Then they can say – “this person wants to be a sales rep. Well we are looking for those – we will put this aside to read later.” Career objectives are not necessary if it is obvious what you want to do.
Listen to advice (including mine) with a critical mind. Do what makes sense to you, and don’t follow anybody’ else’s silly rules for resume writing.
That is a start. You could write a book on this.
http://www.cutting-edge-resumes.com