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

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23 May 10 How to Write a Good, Captivating CV?

A Curriculum Vitae is an ‘advert’ to sell yourself to the employer. It’s also known as ‘Resume’. A CV is sent to the employer while applying for the given job; or while enquiring if jobs are available with the employer. A CV should reflect you at the best possible way, as it’s your written representation and first chance to impress. An employer may receive thousands of CVs, but choose only the good ones. So give your best shot while crafting your CV. Follow the given tips.

General guidelines

A CV has to be typed in word-processor, well formatted on a piece of A4 good quality paper. Print should be clear. Do not use too many variants of font sizes and styles. Make the headings bold/underlined. Don’t hesitate to leave plenty of white space around. It should look neat and professional. Use bullets wherever subsections are required.
Use spell-check command after completion of writing. Accurate spelling and grammar are essential.
A CV should not be more than 2 pages long. Be concise yet informative; as CV is appetizer not the main course of food. Just put relevant and important things on paper. Each page should be printed on a separate sheet of paper.
Don’t write ‘Curriculum Vitae’ on top, that’s quite obvious.
While applying for a specific job, bring your relevant skills on paper. Don’t unnecessarily add irrelevant skills in your CV.
Be honest and truthful. Don’t omit information (which you don’t want employer to know) and neither communicate inaccurate and misleading information. Addition and deletion of information may actually drag you into problems.

Things to be included in CV

Personal Details
- This would include name, address, phone number, email id, website.
Educational Qualification
- Mention names of institutes, names of courses, marks achieved and year of passing. Most recent one comes first.
Work Experience
- The recent work experience first. Name of the employer, designation, duration and year of working, job responsibilities, clients worked with – are to be included here. Even part-time jobs or summer trainings can be included.
Awards and Achievements
- If you have achieved any title in your career or academic span, feel free to flaunt it here in detail (title, year, cause, provider’s detail). Even small achievements, titles and awards earned can be mentioned.
Skills
- Languages known, computer-knowledge, driving skill can be included.
References
- It’s recommended to put names of two references – one academic (teacher or project supervisor) and one person from your employer (your ex-colleague/supervisor/manager). Make sure you take permission of the given people before including their names. With due permission give their names, contact information, work information briefly.

Tags: Accurate Spelling, Address Phone Number, Advert, Appetizer, Cvs, Educational Qualification, Enquiring, First Chance, Font Sizes, Important Things, Quality Paper, Relevant Skills, Resume Cv, Spell Check, Variants, White Space, Word Processor, Work Experience, Write Curriculum Vitae, Write Cv

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11 Apr 10 Best-Kept Secret Twitter Tips for Job Search (Part 4)

So far in the series, we have talked about branding your profile on twitter through customizing your background, setting your URL, and writing your Bio, etc. In the fourth part of twitter tips series, I am going to talk the content part of branding. I will tell you how you can keep yourself in the good book of your prospective employers by being responsible in twitter usage.

First tweet then follow

What most people do after joining twitter is they start following as many people as they can and as soon as they can. This is a very bad strategy to increase your twitter follower count. A good one is to start with posting informative and entertaining tweets followed by following people in the fields of your interest. This way you will get more active followers who will give you more opportunity.

No spamming please

Do not start tweeting in bulk as people with “spammer” tag does. Act with moderation and tweet only what is really, really important. If you want people to hire you for a job then do not post stuffs that will take away from your image.

Talking of quality content, I will recommend you to record a video of you talking about what you do, what is your qualification, and how much work experience you have, etc., and tweet this video cover letter once or twice a day.

Do not act desperate

This will not do any good. Tweeting too much may force people to ignore you, if not unfollow you. There is no need to post your résumé five times a day. Tweet your résumé or video cover letter maximum twice a day. That is enough.

You should not deviate from this tweeting practice for even a single day. Have patience, result will come.

Tags: Branding, Cover Letter, Follower, Followers, Job Search, Letter Maximum, Moderation, Patience, Profile, Prospective Employers, Quality Content, Single Day, Stuffs, Tweet, Tweets, Twitter, Video Cover, Work Experience