With today’s tight job market and positions for college graduates the lowest in 20 years, differentiating you from others applying for the same position will be critical. Writing an exceptional resume will differentiate you from others.

Your resume is the greatest major asset in your career management inventory and job search. Its job is to provide the evidence that you are a candidate that should be seen.

There is no one right way to write a resume. The important point is to keep it relevant and interesting and avoid key pitfalls. Read the full story

Popularity: 3%

You’ve heard the expression, “Getting a job is a job.” No one knows more than you how many hours a week it takes searching, researching, applying, interviewing, reflecting, and so on, to get a job. It’s not easy; but it was never intended to be.

The harder the job, the harder it is to get the job. Essentially this means that if you are an entry level employee, it should be a fairly reasonable process. But if you are at mid-career and have held significant authority and responsibility, it’s going to be a more lengthy and sophisticated course.

As someone who has been in the staffing industry for more than 18 years, I wanted to share an “insider’s perspective” on what every job seeker should know about the process. I’m continually amazed that potentially great candidates for my jobs simply don’t represent themselves as well as they could by not playing by the job-search rules. Read the full story

Popularity: 2%

It’s very common today for employees to take time off between jobs.

This can happen for a number of different reasons such as raising a family, taking care of a family member who is ill, not being able to find the “ideal” job, recovering from an illness, travelling, or simply taking a break after graduating from college.

If there are gaps in your work history, for whatever reason, there are essentially two ways you can deal with them.

Firstly, you can draw the reader’s attention to them by presenting your reasons in the most positive way you can. For example, Career Break – state this and show the relevant positive experiences that you gained during your time off. Read the full story

Popularity: 65%

After you have found a job that interests you, the next step is to apply for it. Let’s cover the basics of what you’ll need to do when applying for a new job.

You will almost always need to complete resumes or application forms and cover letters. Later, you will probably need to go on interviews to meet with employers face to face.

Resumes and application forms.

Resumes and application forms give employers written evidence of your qualifications and skills. The goal of these documents is to prove, as clearly and directly as possible, how your qualifications match the job’s requirements. Read the full story

Popularity: 71%

Download our free Chronological Resume template in Microsoft Word Format

The Chronological CV is the  most widely used format of Resume and is classed by some as being a more traditional and widely used approach to CV writing.

It places an emphasis on your employment history, where you worked and for how long. Your job titles, accomplishmetns and the results that you attained whilst being in this position.

Your jobs are listed in reverse chronological order so make sure you put your most recent job first.

When detailing your previous roles, a  complete record of your career history is required along with a complete education record. Aim to keep your chronological resume to 2 – 3 sides  of A4 in length. Read the full story

Popularity: 63%

Sometimes, when you are writing your CV, your covering letter or accomplishment statements you might find yourself having difficulty finding descriptive words to help you describe the activity appropriately.

Sure ’successfully achieved’ works pretty well but at the end of the day there are only so many times you can successfully achieve something and you want to avoid your CV from sounding to repetitive.

When detailing each of your achievements within your Resume, make sure that you prefix each achievement with a strong ‘doing word’.

You’re the person who was responsible for the achievement after all so make sure you take full credit for each of these achievements within your CV by throwing a nice descriptive verb at the beginning of each of your main achievements.

Here’s a list of descriptive action verbs for you to include within your Resume: Read the full story

Popularity: 41%

Download our free Functional Resume template in Microsoft Word Format

This Functional Resume is designed to to emphasise your main skills, competencies or expertise that you may have in a specific area (e.g. IT, Finance, Project Management) rather than concentrating on employers and dates.

In a lot of cases it would be used to demonstrate your expertise in a particular skill, functional area or field of business.

Functional CVs are a lot more adaptable to certain circumstances, such as a lack of specific experience in a particular field, or gaps in between job changes which you may find difficult to explain.

You need to be aware however that because of these reasons functional CVs are often viewed with suspicion by many recruitment personnel because they often appear to hide some information which often has the effect of making them difficult to follow. Read the full story

Popularity: 55%

Increasingly organisations are using computerised methods to process CVs so you may find that your paper CV is converted to an electronic version by scanning or you may be asked to submit an electronic version by e-mail or via an organisation’s web based system.

For organisations handling a large number of CVs – large corporations or recruitment companies – electronic systems offer a huge cost and time saving. CV management systems can scan 30,000 CVs in as little as 6 seconds!

Many people think that with the advancement of scanning, CV management systems, and keyword searching on the Internet that you must develop a different CV from the one you have prepared to send to contacts via traditional methods. This is not true! You are not creating a different CV, you are merely altering the presentation format for the Internet. Read the full story

Popularity: 29%

Sometimes it seems like the hardest part of writing a CV is collecting the information in the first place – what’s needed and how much?

Although you may encounter a number of different CV formats during your journey to a new career, here’s a start with the main headings to use in your CV (irrespective of format) and a brief description of the level of detail needed under each of these headings.

Read the full story

Popularity: 20%

E-mail has now developed into a mainstream form of communication and it’s hard to imagine how we managed without it. Recruiters will normally ask for you to e-mail a CV rather than fax as e-mail often provides superior speed and quality of transmission.

If you don’t already have an account, you will find it useful to set up an e-mail account whilst you are looking for a new job as it offers you the opportunity to send and receive messages from recruiters, network contacts, companies and other people you will be dealing with.

The best thing with web based e-mail is that you can access it from anywhere, be it an Internet cafe or your own PC.

There are a number of free e-mail services available via the internet. They are free because they are supported by advertising. This type of e-mail account is independent from that provided by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) which is often only accessible via a PC with the ISP’s software installed. Read the full story

Popularity: 28%