Resumes And CVs
What is a "Curriculum Vitae" or "CV"?
A curriculum vitae is typically used in the academic realm. Professors, most often, will put together what's called a curriculum vitae. It's a detailed history of education, work experience, publications, usually scholarly publications, and scholarly presentations. It's a much more comprehensive version of a resume, and not something that is necessarily used in the corporate or executive world, but primarily in the academic and scholarly world. THIS IS NOT REALLY TRUE
What is a "resume"?
Your resume is your brochure. It is your marketing piece. A good resume is going to cover a lot of different things that you might not think should be on your resume. For example, foreign language skills, computer skills, civic experience and volunteer experience or continuing education but not just your professional background. A good resume will highlight the quantifiable things you have done in each of your jobs, and by 'quantifiable' I mean how much money were you able to save the company, how much money were you able to make the company. That can be translated all the way down to, 'I streamlined our office filing system which increased productivity in my department by 33 percent.' Okay, that's a great, great bullet point to have on your resume. And so if you think about your resume as a sales tool, it has to sell you, it has to market you, it has to be strategic, and it really has to tell your story. Don't be afraid about spilling over two pages if you need to in order to provide your complete background to a potential employer.
Does everyone need a resume?
Regarding resumes and CV's, everyone absolutely needs a resume because you never know when an opportunity is going to present itself or if someone is going to need to know about your professional and educational background. Your resume is that key component of your career that you can use any time, any place and anywhere. So by all means, spend the time. If you have to spend some money to get a good resume put together, by all means do that. Make sure you have a resume and make sure that your resume is always updated and ready to go in a moment's notice.
What information do I need to include in a basic resume?
On your resume--in addition to your name, address, telephone number and email address--you want to have a clear-cut objective, a summary of your work experience, your professional work history, education, civic and volunteerism experience, foreign language skills, continuing education, educational background, a lot of different things that go on a good, basic resume.The other thing that's very important to include on your resume are testimonials. Testimonials are those one-paragraph references that you can get from previous employers and heavy-hitter people that you know in your circle who provide these for you and you put those on the last page of your resume. That helps the employer to not even have to ask you for references because they're already there.
What are the most common resume mistakes?
There are three major mistakes that I see frequently. Number one: typos, grammatical errors, punctuation, spelling - those are an absolute no-nos. Resumes that are generic. One-size-fits-all resumes are also typically tossed in the trash can because they aren't specific enough to a particular career, industry, or job. Third, resumes that are too wordy. Definitely you want to make sure that everything that you put on your resume is concise and to the point.
What are the top resume tips?
Great resume tips - make sure you write these down. Memorize them when you go to write your resume. You need to have a clear-cut objective; tell the prospective employer what type of position you're looking for - if it's marketing manager, vice president of whatever, administrative assistant, be clear and up-front. Try to make sure your objective is in line with the position you are applying for. Provide a good summary paragraph of who you are, what you're all about, and list some areas of expertise or specials skill, so if you happen to be a great writer, a great communicator, or a great problem solver, let the employer know that you have these skills and that you bring those things to the table. Also, make sure that you bullet point specific accomplishments under each position you have held, so that they know that you didn't just have these certain responsibilities, but that you also were able to accomplish a lot of different things in each position.
What is the best style of resume?
There are a number of different types of resumes. There is the skill based resume, the chronological resume, there is more of an essay type of resume. I say toss all of those out. I don't use them and I don't recommend them. Employers like to see resumes that are very easy for them to read and to use. If you think about someone who gets 100 to 200 resumes on their desk every day, that's a lot of reading. It's a lot of information to have to go through. So if you can make their job easy for them by using a lot of headings, bullet points, making the resume skimmable and easy to read, that's going to make your resume really stand out from the competition. So keep the resume chronological. What's your current position? What did you do there and then go back from there. Then make sure you include your education and your continuing education, things like that, and any other types of experience that you've had. If you've had internships, if you've been involved in different types of committees and maybe you've gotten a lot of leadership experience because you volunteered with the Boys and Girls Club. That's important information to include on your resume as well.
What is an "industry-specific resume"?
An industry-specific resume is one that is highly targeted and focused to a particular niche. Whether that be health care, banking, accounting, whatever that might be. Every resume should be industry-specific. Every resume should be specific, not only to the industry, but to the particular position you're applying for. It needs to be that focused and that targeted in order for your resume to stand out from the competition. Generic resumes are not the way to go, because employers simply don't have time to glean from a generic resume. "How can this person fit into our company?" They want to see those key words that match up with the job description they are trying to fill.
How do I create an industry-specific resumes?
Well if you've had experience in any particular industry and let's just say healthcare. Maybe you've worked in a number of different types of healthcare positions, your resume is already industry-specific and so what you need to do from that point is maximize the infomation that you can provide for every position you've held and then also think strategically in terms of "How can I beef up the experience that I have in this particular industry? And so that might include joining different types of professional healthcare associations. If you are a nurse joining different types of nursing associations, maybe writing a couple of articles for nursing publications, that sort of thing. That will really help beef up that resume and will take you to the next salary level very, very quickly. But again, it is all thinking strategically. How do I leverage what I have been doing into where I want to go?
How do I create a resume if I've never had a job?
With regards to resumes and CV's, if you've never had a job that does not mean that you don't have experience. A lot of times people, particularly my college students, will be very, very concerned about “How am I going to get a job if I don't have any experience?” However, when we sit down and talk about it, they've been involved in athletics on campus, in a sorority, different types of committees, volunteer work, internships, and so you'd probably be amazed if you really sat down and went through the last five years of your life and listed everything you've done. I'm sure you'd find that you probably have more than a one-page resume, probably a two-page resume. So, you can certainly maximize any type of volunteer work that you've done, even if you've been babysitting, or providing other types of child care. That counts as legitimate employment and legitimate experience. So, you might want to get with a professional resume writer who can help translate your life experience into an actual resume for a job.
How do I tailor my resume if I'm changing my career?
If you're changing your career, it's absolutely critical that you restrategize your resume to fit the new career. There has to be something so that the employer can connect the dots between your old career and your new career. Whether that is getting an internship in your new career, joining professional associations that are associated with your new career, volunteering in an area that is associated with your new career, make it make sense to them. That's very, very important. So anything that you can possibly do that is associated with the direction you want to move into, by all means, get involved and include that information on your resume.
How do I structure my resume if I've had several jobs?
If you have had a lot of different jobs but they have been in the same industry you can certainly lump them together on your résumé under one heading. For example, let's say you worked in the education field and you had a number of different positions between 1990 and 1999; maybe you had eight different positions there. What you can do is simply create a heading on your résumé that says professional experience dash education, underneath that in parenthesis put 1990 to1999 and list those positions underneath that heading. What that does is that it creates a completely different perception in the mind of the perspective employer; rather than looking like you've job hopped it looks like "Wow! This person has mastered lot of experience in the particular area. She's a very strong candidate; we want to interview her."
What is an "objective statement" on a resume?
With regards to resumes and CV's, the objective statement on your resume should be nothing more than the title of the position for which you're applying. For example, Vice President of Marketing, Human Resources Manager, Clerical support, Public relations coordinator. Keep the objective statement short and sweet and make sure your keywords match the keywords that they're looking for in their job posting. Particularly, if you're applying online that becomes even more important where they're scanning your electronic resume for those particular keywords.
