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When my wife, Alice, and I were newlyweds, she wanted to apply for a job, but felt she didn't have a good enough resume. I helped her with a resume, and, believe it or not, she got the job before they met her, based on the resume! She was kind enough to write up her thoughts about my resume writing and other employment skills and it is posted on the website. Click here. Alice's Testimony
Great resumes get your dream job. Quick and Easy Cover Letters How can you tell a bad (worthless, trashy, junky, hunk of toilet paper) resume? That's easy; did it do it's job? Yes or No; there is no in-between. A resume should be used for just one purpose one time. Usually, it is used to get interest up to obtain an interview. If you deliver 1 resume to 1 potential employer, and do not get an interview, the resume failed!
A good resume looks different from someone's who always gets fired. If the only details on your resume are job duties, you will look like you were fired because everyone that got fired from that job had the same job duties!
To begin with, here is one of many "before and after" resumes I have done. The "before" is what the client brought in, the "after" is what I produced after talking with the client. In this case, the client used to install door knobs for a contractor and had just completed truck driving school. He was well groomed, and interviewed well. When I asked him why he wasn't hired, he said all the employers said he was uninsurable because he had no commercial driving experience. First, look at both resumes and then we will talk about why I made the changes.
Who were his potential employers? Usually they would NOT be human resource specialists; they were truckers who now had to do management functions. What did they need from my client? - proof that he had commercial driving experience. In his case, I asked if the doorknobs he installed were already at the job sites, and he answered that, no, he brought them with him. I then changed his job title from "Hardware Installer" to "Delivery Driver", showing his commercial driving experience on the resume in a format that was easy to see. Notice the radical change of format of the resume.
He took the new resume back to the same employers, and was hired the next day!
One of my most successful resumes is also one of my strangest. We put this resume in a fax machine and broadcast it to 30 companies at midnight, and he was hired by 9am!
Now, here is my current resume. This one is my master copy; I edit it heavily to submit it to a specific potential employer. It is 2 pages; I would probably reduce it to 1, but that would depend on who was going to read it. Notice the subdued use of color and the strong accomplishment statements. I would be interested to hear which accomplishment statement gets your attention the most; e-mail me!
