24 Feb 11 Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Resume
We all know how to write a resume, but what many of us don’t know are the mistakes that we often commit while crafting a resume. There are many mistakes which silently creep into our resume and stay there for long. We may not notice them always, but recruiters do. Such mistakes expose unprofessionalism, carelessness. Make sure you avoid these mistakes.
Long resume
We often make our resumes unnecessarily long stretched over pages. Always remember, an ideal resume should not be more than two pages. For fresher or junior employees pages shouldn’t be more than one and half page. Unless you are into profession for more than 15 years and head superior positions like Managing director, CEO your resume shouldn’t be too long. Make it crisp, compact yet all inclusive.
Random
We often write things randomly, without maintaining order. An ideal resume should never be clumsy in terms of order of happenings in your life. As for example, state your present job on the top, followed by the earlier one, followed by the one before that and ending work experience column with the first job of your life. Same rule goes for other sections like academic qualification. Always mention latest happening first, followed by the earlier ones. It helps the recruiter know what you are doing in present.
Informal email addresses
It’s often seen applicants don’t take resume much seriously and treat it as an informal affair. People often put informal email addresses on their resume like – or . They show immaturity and casual approach of the applicant. Make a formal email account which sounds formal, containing your name or initials and use the same for all job applications.
Alignment
People often commit the mistake regarding alignment of text. People often put text in center alignment. It jeopardizes balance. Put every text towards left of the page, including name and contact information on the top.
Paragraphs
To convey maximum information people are often tempted to write in paragraphs. Don’t do it, it’s dangerous. No one likes to read paragraphs. Put all information in short bullet points or break into points with enough space in between to show distinction of the points. Write in small crisp sentences while conveying all important information like – name of course, name of institute, place, percentage, year of passing.
Once you control these mistakes, your resume can get even better.
Tags: Academic Qualification, Carelessness, Casual Approach, Center Alignment, Ceo, Email Account, Email Addresses, First Job, Formal Email, How To Write A Resume, Immaturity, Informal Affair, Initials, Managing Director, Mistake, Paragraphs, Profession, Recruiter, Resumes, Work Experience
25 Oct 09 Rules of Press Release Writing
Writing a press release is as much a science as it is an art. You cannot afford to go wrong on the science part of the press release writing, if you want to strike chord with the journalists. Your press release will not get picked, if you have not adhered to the set standard for writing press releases, no matter how eloquent your language skills are. Follow the rules written below, and you will see a significant improvement in your press release writing skills. Before you go further, you can click on the following link, if you want to know about structure of a press release.
Rule 1: Length of a press release
A press release should not be longer than one A4 (8.5”X11”) size paper. Divide your press release into 4 to 5 small paragraphs.
Rule 2: Rules related to Quotations
Do not use more than two quotations in the press release. And do not start a press release with a quotation. Quotations should come not earlier than the third paragraph. Only use quotations that come from the person behind the news or from CEO of the company.
Rule 3: Company information
You must include “About the company” at the bottom of the press release.
Rule 4: Contact person
The contact details written at the bottom of the press release should be working. Do not put any phone number of e-mail id for the heck of it. Provide contact details of a person who is in charge of the media releases. This is important because you never know which journalist needs more info and hence end up contacting.
Rule 5: Proper place and date
Start a press release with giving a proper place and complete date.
Rule 6: Include ### sign
### marks the end of the press release, so you should not forget to add this.
I have provided a proper format of a press release in the previous article titled, structure of a press release. Do read it.
Tags: Ceo, Click On The Following Link, Company Information, Contact Details, Contact Person, E Mail, Heck, Journalist, Journalists, Language Skills, Mail Id, Paragraph, Paragraphs, Press Release Writing, Quotation, Quotations, Rule 1, Significant Improvement, Writing A Press Release, Writing Skills
10 Sep 09 Why to Write a Press Release
Do you know what PR is? Well, it could mean press release, I can see you are primed by the title, but it doesn’t exactly stand for that. Then what PR stands for? Page Rank? May be, but the PR I am talking about has not exactly to do with Page Rank, so any guess?
Well!
PR stands for public relation, and press release is a very important tool to accomplish the public relation goal. We will not go deep into describing public relation in this blog post, suffice it to say that unlike advertisement, which is a direct communication from the company, public relation is the third party endorsement of a brand or company.
The essence of successful PR campaign lies in the anonymity of the company who created or ran the campaign. Most of the news that you read in the newspaper is actually a direct outcome of PR.
Why should I write a press release
Well, press releases are written to communicate to the general public the recent developments in the company in question. And by development I mean meaningful development, and not developments like these: your boss moved up to another position, or your CEO just sneezed. Developments that make news should be newsworthy. Some eminent personality of BBC (perhaps, I cannot be sure of who he was) once said,
“If a dog bites a man, it is not a story, but if a man bites a dog it is news.”
Following the lead many companies create the artificial “a man biting a dog” stories to get press coverage, and it get covered.
Why?
Journalists get either paid to do that or they are stupid enough to not separate wheat from chaff.
For whom should I write a press release?
As with any form of corporate communication that goes outside the corporate boundary, the ultimate target audience of a press release is the general public, but this is not what we should be primarily concerned with while writing the press release.
If we do so, our press releases will not be taken. The direct target audience of a press release is the journalist who is going to do his story based on the press release that we will send him about us. If the journalist is not impressed, our press release will hit the trash bin sooner than it should.
The general public is the indirect target audience of a press release. Their interest should also be at back of your mind while writing a press release, or else, why would you write one?
A parting thought
When I started writing this post, I thought this will be a single stand-alone post on press releases, but after reaching to this point I felt, I will not be doing justice to the topic, if I do not cover every aspect of press releases, and this gave me an opportunity to write at least three more posts on the topic. So, be on the look, and meanwhile send in your suggestions either here through the comment box or mail me on bikram [at] biksy [dot] com.
Tags: Anonymity, Bbc, Boss, Ceo, Company Public Relation, Corporate Communication, Endorsement, Guess, Journalist, Journalists, Meaningful Development, Page Rank, Personality, Pr Campaign, Press Release, Recent Developments, Separate Wheat From Chaff, Target Audience, Third Party, Wheat
Low cost and high quality provided by the top Website Hosting providers.
Meet Michael Fertik with Reputation.com.