Amazing Resumes

For many, the interview is the single most stressful part of the job search process. Any number of things can go wrong, and a big part of being successful is avoiding simple mistakes. The following is a list some of the most common mistakes known by job interview coaching professionals that occur during an Interview.

1. Trying to wing the interview: Practice! Review the resume, cover letter and get a list of general interview questions, a friend, a tape recorder, and a mirror and conduct an interview rehearsal. Practice until your delivery feels comfortable but not canned.

2. Not clear on what you’re interviewing for: Be familiar with the job description so you can draw on your experiences, talents, strengths and abilities to connect with company needs. Make sure if they requested a key selection criteria that you have it prepared. Highlight how you’re suited to that particular job.

3. Not listening: Focus on the question that is being asked and don’t try to anticipate the next one. It’s OK to pause and collect your thoughts before answering a question. Pay special attention to technical or work process related subjects that are unique to a given firm or organization. The interviewer may have provided information you will need to answer the question earlier in the conversation. Employers will be looking for your ability to assimilate new information, retain it, and, most importantly, recognize that information as useful to you later in the interview.

4. Not asking meaningful questions: Have at least 3-4 intelligent questions to ask the recruiter. It’s OK (it actually leaves a positive impression with the recruiter) to have them written down in advance and to reference them at the appropriate time. Interviews are an exchange of information, and not coming in with questions shows that you did not prepare for the whole interview.

5. Lack of enthusiasm: Maintain eye contact, greet the interviewer with a smile and a firm handshake (not too weak, not too strong), and show common courtesy. Don’t be afraid to display your passion for the job/industry and to show confidence.

Resume writing can be a real task for anyone, even if you have several years of experience in your job. Resume writing is in part an art, but mainly it is a science that plays upon the psyche of the reader. Leaving your resume written unscientifically will jeopardize your job prospects. There are many professional resume writing services available both on the Internet and probably in your town. But if you want to do it yourself, here are the sure-fire tips that will definitely make your resume better:

Five Tips to Write Your Resume

1. Plan your resume to target the industry in general and the interviewer in particular. Doing this quickly brings the focus to:

a. Your Qualifications Summary: Be practical with this part; avoid making goal statements because they may be out of line with a particular company’s positional standpoint. Also, don’t get your personal goals and qualifications mixed up; this section is about your qualifications, it should stay away from any statement about your personal goals. This may seem obvious, but it is a mistake that is often made.

b. The Goal Statement: This is the section for your statement on the goals you want to achieve. Here again, avoid mistakes like â??… to serve the organization as long as possible and grow to greater heights’. The reality is, your employment’s longevity is riddled with many practicalities and ever-changing market dynamics.

c. Your Salary Expectations: Your resume is not the place to have this discussion. Unless, of course, you want to torpedo your chances of either getting the job or getting a higher salary. Leave this section for oral negotiation.

2. Never write vague descriptions like â??10 years experience in store management’. Instead, explain what and how you did in stores. A chemical store and an engineering materials store differ hugely in functionality. A description that applies to the former will not to the latter. Just like you were selling something (and you are!), it is better to be specific. Apply this principle to your specific career.

3. Your experiences are not true testimonies of your abilities until you make them link together. How do you do this? By highlighting verifiable and practical justifications. What you talk about in the interview must match the highlighted strengths on your resume. If they do not, you’ll just raise red flags.

4. Letting typos, grammar errors creep in suggests an unorganized character and uneducated behavior. It might not be fair, but that’s the way it is. Since your resume is in fact, your advocate, you must get the most mileage out of it by having it edited or proofread by others, if you can’t do it yourself for some reason. Do it twice or three times if necessary, but get the job done to perfection.

5. If you are a fresh grad, a new set of rules apply to you. As you can’t possibly be show extensive work experience, you need to highlight your educational achievements and extracurricular activities, in place of the experience and accomplishment sections. You can use this to your advantage by reflecting on your leadership skills- for example, if you were a football team captain, organizational skills and accomplishments- or if you were an editor of your school magazine, your meticulous attention to detail.

The way you write your resume can either make or break your job candidacy. Also, if your resume will be posted on the Internet on some of the popular job boards, this means that it will be visible by nearly everyone. Not writing your resume properly, then, has the potential to sink your job prospects entirely. Don’t let this happen to you.

By following the resume writing tips above, you will position yourself as a strong candidate and make your resume stand out from the crowd.

For one, sales cover letters are pretty much identical to business cover letters in their format or rules, but differ crucially in their content. Your cover letter reflects directly on your ability to “make the sale”.

Sales Cover Letter Basics

So here are the basics of sales cover letters. Sales cover letters must be written on a clean bright white paper and must be delivered to the addressee in an equally decent, stiff envelope. It must have contact information and three paragraphs neatly typed in their designated places. Cover letters are completely devoid of trivial things such as spelling and grammatical errors. So, it goes without saying that the letters must be proofed and edited a couple of times to thrash the trash. So if you think the language or tone of the letter needs drafting and redrafting, just go ahead and do it. But at the same time, remember that the cover letter must be limited to less than a page long to ensure complete reading.

Selling Ice Cream To Eskimos

Making the big bang with HR is the fundamental quality of sales people. The fact is, all companies need sales people, all the time – the question is why they should hire you. In the body of the sales letter, usually the second paragraph, including a couple of examples of selling under trying, extenuating circumstances to hesitant/unwilling customers and making it the focus point of the entire cover letter will turn the tables in your favor. But this should be done with aplomb without throwing off the balance of the rest of the letter.

Dedicate a few lines to explain how you beat the competition – which eventually becomes the point of discussion among every company executive. Employers will be only too happy to invite you for an interview if you can prove that you can bring in money regardless of the circumstances. Sales cover letters should exhibit the character traits of successful sales people – friendly and pushy in nature and being able to effectively convince others into buying their products. Sales people are some of the most prolific speakers with a good command of language skills and voice modulation. They also get friendly with people easily and love to talk.

The bottom line is that landing a sales position is all about the money. If you can show in your cover letter good sales figures and compare and contrast positive figures before and after your tenure, then you will have a good shot at landing the interview. Balance this with examples of your aggressiveness, determination and ability to outwit the competition, and you will be well on your way to landing your next sales position.

It’s no longer a secret that the old-fashioned ways to find a job are flawed. And for good reason.

You see if you’re serious about finding a good job . . . and you want to do it NOW rather than months from now . . . then you have to do it differently from the way you heard it should be done.

For example, most people think they have to write a resume first. And so they spend countless hours writing and re-writing . . . tweaking and fine-tuning. Until they’ve got a document that they feel truly represents the best of what they’ve done and presents a solid work history.

Then they’re told they should distribute that resume as widely as possible . . . to companies, want ads, online job sites, agencies and recruiters. And then wait for the invitations to interview.

The problem with this approach is very simple. It doesn’t work! At least if you don’t want to wait months for an offer to materialize.

First of all, employers don’t care what you used to do for someone else. They want to know what you’re going to do for them. So your resume masterpiece will probably get trashed, if it even gets to the decision-maker’s desk at all.

Secondly, your resume will initially be screened by a personnel staff member or a lower level management assistant—not by the person who will make a hiring decision about you.

Thirdly, when you rely on your resume to find you a job, you’re putting yourself right in the middle of all your competition. You’re just one of thousands of resumes in circulation for that job opening.

So, like I said, if you’re serious about finding a good job in a short period of time, you can’t rely on your resume to get it. You have to use non-traditional, alternative approaches.

Basically, alternative strategies have a different starting point. First, they show you how to identify the companies and then the right hiring decision-maker that match up with your interests and skills. Then they show various techniques for getting in front of those employers without them seeing you as a job candidate.

These unique alternative strategies walk you through, step-by-step, the ways to establish rapport and chemistry with that person and bring him/her to the point where they can see you as a comfortable member of the team.

Now, the exciting news is, if you follow this non-traditional plan, you can be entertaining job offers in as little as 14 days!

Like it or not, your cover letter is the first document that creates an impression about you (good or bad). Because first impressions really count, you need to take a careful approach to writing cover letters in order to avoid rejection. Here are the 10 major don’ts you need to avoid:

1. Don’t use cover letter templates, however good they may be. There are three things you must know that go against these templates: 1) they are stale & boring 2) most templates are likely to have been downloaded from internet 3) therefore, yours will be exposed as being identical to many. Use samples to get ideas on how to write your own unique letter.

2. Don’t write a lengthy first paragraph that will only bore the reader. A lengthy first paragraph also dilutes your impressive qualities and eventually weakens the entire letter – this is the last thing you want to happen.

3. Don’t exclude your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP. Remember that the cover letter is your sales letter; you should highlight your main strengths and prepare the reader psychologically to want to read further.

4. Don’t write a vague letter without mentioning specifics, such as the job title and job code/number if you are responding to an advertisement.

5. Don’t address your cover letter â??To Whom It May Concern’. It shows that you don’t care enough to do your research to find out who is receiving the resume packages.

6. Don’t use fanciful fonts. Don’t unnecessarily use capitalized or bolded words, or grandiose phrases. Don’t send the letter without nixing silly spelling or grammatical mistakes.

7. Don’t use cliché language such as “As afore mentioned, I am enclosing…” This will only irritate the recruiter. Instead use simple phrases such as, “enclosed please find my resume.”

8. Don’t include personal information like your race, sex or marital status in the cover letter. These things are against the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and as such will not impact the decision whether or not you are called for the interview.

9. Don’t use copies of the same cover letters with just the address and date lines changed to send for similar jobs. If you don’t customize the entire body, the letter may either be irrelevant or a mistake may silently make it into the final draft.

10. Don’t brag or make statements that can’t be quantified. You should be humble, yet accurate – employers these days often verify your statements for accuracy (and uncover exaggerations).

The trick with the cover letter is to capture the reader’s imagination as soon as they begin reading. This entails keeping your cover letter neat and tidy with a simple format, and avoiding common errors, such as the 10 listed above.