Four Key Resume Tips

[ChazzPrattUSAA]

Have you had the experience of realizing after proofreading your resume several times, a glaring error appears? To add insult to injury, you then realize you’ve just sent your resume out to several job announcements with the error. Don’t let this happen to you. Any errors on your resume can result in a less than favorable first impression! You don’t want your resume to be ignored; you want your resume to gain attention and interest!

Here are four key resume tips to help you improve your hiring chances as well as some additional information to assist in creating this all-important document that tells your story!

Resist Resume Spamming

Some people enjoy posting their resume anywhere and everywhere, without regard to seriously considering whether or not they’re qualified for the job. For this person, applying for jobs is like playing a video game where the player with the most resumes posted wins.

Don’t waste your time! As a matter of fact, don’t waste the prospective Company’s time either. I know sometimes things look bleak and the job prospects seem slim to none, but why plaster your resume everywhere and expect to get hired? Consider spending some quality time honing your resume, modifying it, or otherwise starting over from scratch to get a set of resumes that hit the target job you want.

If you find yourself playing the Resume Spamming game, you probably need to regroup, review, and renew your approach to getting your job-hunting program together.

No Ridiculous Email Address

An important part of your resume is your contact information. Have a ridiculous email address? You’ve got to change it and change it now! The generally accepted format for a professional email address should be FirstName.LastName@EmailProviderName.com. Look at any company executive’s business card and you’ll probably see something similar to this or maybe FirstInitialLastName@CompanyName.com. You should consider doing the same.

In similar fashion, the emergence of Avatars and other identifying photos on Email accounts means you need to check to see what else gets sent when you press Send. If you have any non-professional photos attached to your Email account (i.e. Profile Picture) you may wish to delete the photo. Be sure to carefully consider the Auto-Signature features at the bottom of your emails, consider deselecting those too. Keep an eye out for these and other Email-related things that can hinder your progress.

Proofread and Spell Check!

A must to making a good first impression is using spell check on your resume as well as your cover letter. Why ruin your chances of making a positive impression by sending a cover letter addressed to a misspelled company name, much less the wrong company. Your attention to detail needs to be at the highest level here.

The same goes for the spellings of people's names you’re interacting with during your job search. Imagine your dismay when you learn you misspelled the email address of the Hiring Manager. They never got your email and you never got the job. Just take a deep breath, check things over, and then when all is correct, press Send!

Save As Trick (Today’s Date)

When applying with multiple, targeted companies, you might wish to use this nice little trick in order to keep versions of your resume straight. When you write or re-write your resume, use the Save As command and add today’s date on the end of your document title.

For example: Save As “John Doe – IT Security Manager Candidate – Top IT Company – MM-DD-YYYY”, doing so will make it easier for you to locate the latest version of your resume. Since it has the date updated in the title, you’ll quickly know which version to edit in case you’re asked to revise your resume in some way during your conversations with Human Resources.

This Save As trick can also help when applying for several positions at the same company. Of course, you don’t need to resume spam (as mentioned above), but there may be some situations when submitting for more than one position makes sense. Keeping track of the resume by date or even by date AND job number might be helpful. Reduce stress later by keeping things organized in your computer and know what was sent when. This approach can help!

Finally, if you haven’t read my previous article Biggest Resume Tip I Ever Learned, please check it out. You can learn more about the importance of using numbers to quantify things on your resume.

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