Williams - Resume: The Winning Resume: Get Hired Today With These Groundbreaking Resume Secrets

Having a well thought out resume is very important and most of us know that, but the problem is that writing a resume is not something we do on a regular basis. Most people do n t even look at their resume for years at a time, not until they need or want to find a new job. Most of us know how to create a basic resume. We know that we should list our work experience, the positions we have held, volunteer work, and special recognitions, but many people forget about strategy when it comes to resume writing.

Instead of writing the resume for the reader, it is written for the person who is writing it, which is a huge mistake. The resume has to be written for the reader, which means you need to focus on the things that are important when preparing to write your resume.

When we are taught how to write a resume in high school, we are told that we should include all of our clubs, groups, awards, and work experience. 35 years later,potential employers do n t care so much about all of that information.

You have to keep your resume up-to-date, but it does not need to include everything there is to know about you. When you are sitting down and deciding what you are going to put in your resume, you need to first understand that it is best if you only have one page if possible. This means that you need to avoid putting in unimportant information. This includes high school grade point average, high school sports, high school anything,as well as your appearance, what your first job was (it does not matter that you work at Mc Donal d s the summer you turned 16) and so on.

Of course, these all have an emotional value to you as the writer. They will always be accomplishments that you are proud of but remember, you are writing a resume for the potential employer, not for yourself.

So who is going to be looking at your resume? The first person who is going to read your resume is going to be the business secretary, then it will move on to HR or a recruiting manager, who will decide if you are a potential candidate. Those are the first two steps your resume has to get through before you can get called in for an interview. Once you have the interview, the resume does not matter as much, but if your resume does not make it through the first two steps of the process, you will not get an interview and you will not get the job.

You need to emotionally detach yourself from the resume. It may feel good to put all of that information on a piece of paper, look at it, and say, Look what I have accomplished , but that is not what is important to the reader. If you want to make a list of your accomplishments, by all means, do so, but on a separate piece of paper.

If you find that you are putting some type of information down on the resume,hoping that it will grab the reade r s attention, you need to ask yourself if the information is important or if you are putting that information on there to make you feel good. If you are worried that the resume is full of irrelevant information, the best thing you can do is hire a professional to go over it with you.

The reader also wants to see the information in a specific order, which would be reverse chronological. Of course, many of us were taught that our resumes should be in chronological order, but the fact is that the reader wants to see the most recent information first. As I stated previously, the fact that you worked in fast food when you were 16 means nothing when compared to the most recent place you have worked.

Listing your information in chronological order could very well cost you the opportunity you have been looking for. Remember, people do not have huge attention spans, there is just too much to get done so you want to place the most impressive information (i.e., your last job) at the top of the page so you can guarantee the potential employer has a chance to look at it before becoming distracted or losing interest.

You also need to understand that your reader is not dumb and you cannot try to hide huge gaps of unemployment in your resume. They will not go unnoticed. Instead, make sure that you provide information about that time period. Also, donot try to use flashy words such a s avant-gard e thinker. You may think that it makes you look smarter, but it is going to get nothing more than an eye roll from the reader. Stay professional, but conservative at the same time. You do n t want the potential employer thinking that you are the type of person who tries to show others up.

You need to understand that today, you are going to be competing with a ton of other people and it is not the reader's intention to include your resume in the small pile of potential hires but to exclude it. This means that they will be looking for any reason that you would not be a good fit with the company or that you would be a risky hire. For this reason, you need to make sure that you are only including relevant information and that you do not look as if you are trying to build yourself up. Ask yourself , If I were looking to hire someone, would I consider someone with my resume ?

When it comes to providing relevant information for the reader, what it all boils down to is knowing what the reader will be looking for. If you are applying for an office job, there is no need to go into a lot of detail about the daycare you worked out. Just list the irrelevant jobs and give more detail about the relevant ones, or give details about the job duties you were responsible for that pertain to the job you are applying to.

To finish up this chapter, I want to make sure that you understand that you may need more than one resume if you are applying for jobs in different areas. Make sure that your resume is focused on that particular area and that you write a separate resume for each field you will be applying in.