Interesting post and news this week on Monster.com and Microsoft Office Online, “Four steps to your next job,” creating a new partnership to help the active job seeker. In the example they start to cite a specific individual’s pain and launch into this combined marketing program. A suggestion is made to utilize the Microsoft Office templates to help develop your resume. Now, unlike many of my peers or other resume writing service providers, I am not opposed to this and thus writing a negative post. Nope, I think it’s a great idea if you have no resume to work with and/or can’t afford or are unable to seek out help.

Living in “the land of resumes” as the electronic age has provided to HR and recruiters alike, I can tell you that a resume DOES make a difference in your job search. Having just the right ingredients, as Greg Miller has pointed out in previous posts, makes all the difference in the world. Too much and it’s usually overlook, not enough and it’s overlooked. I say equally important are the style, format and key selling points.

Take for example sales people which I work with on a daily basis as one of our key niche areas. When a client looks to our firm to help hire a true sales professional they are looking for a resume and candidate profile that speak sales. Duh say most of you. Duh is right but how come I still see what accumulates to the hiring manager or client as a non-professional? No stats or highlights on their successful sales career, recent accomplishments, numbers, ranking related to peers or their industry, deals won, and so forth. What happens is a lot of time spent with me or my team in creating a separate document or re-writing their resume to reflect these highlights that all VP of Sales or CEOs are looking for in true professionals!

As I wrote about in both ATS issues and resume formats, having a very complex format or even the new Office 07 .dox can be detrimental if the recruiter or hiring authority on the other end is not able to open it. That’s it, game over, done. Well not quite as if you get your career coaching from me, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up! Would you rather start with a tool which helps your job search or a template which might inhibit it?

In short, templates are a great tool and how I got my first job as a recruiter coming out of the military with no resume (boy that was a sad resume), but I strongly suggest seeking guidance in some fashion to help put you ahead of the pack. The best templates are those with simple and standard formatting. The templates I would stay away from have text boxes, rows, columns, etc.

Good luck in your career search!

Chris

For assistance with your resume from The Wellington Group staff visit The Career Store or Get in Touch.

OK I SAID! Now that I got that off my chest let me point you to the root of my angst. Recruiting, like any other profession, has it s own social media / networking sites where we all get to share insight, tips, tricks and yes even humor. One such site is ere.net. The post getting all the attention today was “Bullet Point to the Head” by Matt Charney.

Matt’s post was very well written and very much on target. Just look below the article at all the comments. Everything from “I can relate” to “no, that is not me.” In my years of living as a professional recruiter I have seen his comments in-action more times than not. Too much perceived work on a recruiter or even HR’s desk so they have to fly through resumes as fast as they can, learning tricks to skim and weed-out in what they feel is an expeditious manner. Why, because they are lazy.

Don’t believe me, ok. But here is a true fact. Most large HR groups, Staffing Firms and Professional Search Groups receive so much resume traffic they have to hire staff just to filter and scan or purchase software to totally remove the human component. I can remember weeks at Manpower where we might receive 5,000 applicants. In addition to this the recruiting publications are now telling HR and Talent Manager they NEED to automate. Check out the latest Talent Management article on “Make HR Happy.”

On top of this, many of today’s recruiting demographic has the technology / MTV curse of “if it’s not instant it’s not worth my time.” So, they expect every candidate to have a resume laid out in a similar fashion with all the goodies at scan level in 2.3 seconds. The trouble is that many professionals are great at their jobs but not with working on their resume (see my previous post on 8 Musts for an Effective Resume). Lazy recruiters are grab-and-go, great recruiters are diamond miners, polishing off the mud to find the sparkle below…many times at their own expense.

What is the solution? I think the bump we hit in the economy helped create some of the cure, causing recruiters and HR to transform their skills or try performing it from the unemployment line. The other solution, better management of both corporate and third-party recruitment practices. Accountability to the primary goal, recruitment and review with the intention of uncovering the best talent for the right job.

Chris

To hire The Recruiting Guy as a speaker or trainer visit The Recruiting Guy or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.

First and foremost, this blog title and piece are based on the tried and true principals of Napoleon Hill in his 1937 book titled Think and Grow Rich.

As a consummate learner and researcher, I am always intrigued to find nuggets of information which to both share with jobseekers / clients and apply in my practice. This information caught my eye as many of his suggestions from 1937 still hold true today, but seem to be lacking in numerous resumés we receive, from new grads to seasoned executives!

“Eight Musts for an Effective Resume”

1. Education
2. Experience
3. References
4. Photograph
5. Apply for a specific position
6. State your qualifications
7. Offer to go to work on probation
8. Knowledge of your prospective employer’s business

While some of these principals may seem odd or “old school” I view them as genius. Education, Experience, References, Qualifications and Applying to a specific position with a resume that matches the employer’s needs or the job description are all crucial to setting yourself apart in the current sea of competing candidates. Going to work on Probation is great for new grads and may be stated in your Cover Note or in the resume. Employers may not take your up on the offer, but they will love the commitment.

Most HR Professionals and Professional Resume Writers would tell you not to post a picture on your resume, and I agree. Current ATS systems, HR tracking tools and OFCCP / EEO regulations may present an issue with this type of information. What I do suggest however is putting a nice, professional picture on your social media sites such as LinkedIn or Facebook. People want to work with and hire people, the more true and real you can be the less “mystery” of your candidacy becomes for that hiring manager or recruiter.

I will suggest you go to the library and check out this book and use it as a tool or guide for your career search. After all, your resumé in many instances is THE FIRST IMPRESSION of you to that new potential employer or to the recruiter with the job opening.

Good luck in your career search!

Chris

 For assistance with developing your perfect resume or cover note from the TWG staff visit the Career Store or contact The Wellington Group @ info@twgrecruiters.com.

 Are you keeping up with the future of being recruited? Part 1

Ok, so we don’t refer to WWW or the “World Wide Web” any more. In fact the internet has become so common place in our global society that I can talk via Polycom phone with Egypt in the morning and my family in remote Alaska in the evening without ever dialing a phone number.

WOW, technology has come a long way in a short amount of time. But as such, so has the way in which technology is used for finding a job, or better yet the job finding YOU! For example, a Plant Manager in what was once thought obscure nowhere is now expecting us to “paste and send a LinkedIn profile” of his ideal candidate(s) for a junior food processing engineer along with their resume.

Think about what I just wrote above for it was not that long ago when the Plant Manager of this facility was taking resumes from the people I was assisting via FAX. Yes, FAX. Now he wants to see what others have said about this person via social media on the internet. Better yet is the fact that he responded to my tweet about the new Facebook app for my Blackberry Bold.

So, what does that mean for you in both an active and passive job search (to be wanted is great, to be wanted when you have a great job means growth)? The hard fact is that having a professional social medial account which highlights your experience, education and accomplishments can get you to that wanted but not looking status much faster and in better standing than your peer at XYZ Company who still thinks the internet is a joke.

Your homework, pick a great social media site that people can find you on and build out your network, profile, career accomplishments and references so that next growth opportunity finds YOU before it finds someone else.

Chris

^{For assistance with you new resume visit the career store or contact The Wellington Group @ info@thewellington-group.com.}

Microsoft Word 2007, MS Works, and PDF Resumes Formats

Could Microsoft or PDF be hurting your job search?  The short answer to this question is YES.  We all know that technology has enhanced both the ability to directly seek out a new position as well as allow easier access for a hiring authority or recruiter to find you, but it is not error-proof! With the advent of auto-applying, auto-parsing, or auto anything that takes your beloved resume, that tool you put so much work and effort into, and automatically scans your information into an Application Tracking System (ATS) or mainstream job board. As you send out your resume or upload it into an on-line tool, there is a chance the format you are using does not allow the receiving party to perhaps view it at all. Most systems have either not been upgraded to work with Word 07 or PDF’s and many have never been able to interface well with MS Works.

We have experienced this challenge ourselves at TWG. Our main tool to keep track of candidates, resumes, client needs and such will work with PDF, Word 2007, MS Works format, but only if the user’s computer has all of these tools loaded on to it. In other works, like most main-stream system, we can see the true text version but when going to the original format you need to have that software loaded in order to see all the various formats available today. We see this as a short term challenge while we await the updates to our international tool to auto-convert to the original document to the proper viewing format.

So what is the solution to ensure that your resume does not get deleted, unsuccessfully parsed or just over-looked as the person on the other end is not able to open it? If your have access to Microsoft Word, I suggest that you save your resume in an older version of Word. For instance, if you have Word 07, do file, save as, and select 97-03. If sending in PDF you might want to follow-up with a phone call to ensure they were able to receive and open your resume. If all you have is MS Works or some other word processing tool (MAC for instance) you may want to take the time to see who in your network can convert your resume to MS Word 97-03.

Better yet, when applying for the job and or asked to send in your resume stop and ask, “What format does your system accept?”