Testimonials in your resume—or on LinkedIn or similar social media sites—puts you steps above competitors. Testimonials that focus on your skills and accomplishments highlight your potential as an employee.When choosing testimonials, you are looking for:◾Short testimonials. It may be tempting to include long-winded accounts of your skills, but it’s important to choose quotations that are brief and pointed, to increase...

What was your “oh my” moment—the moment when you realized that you needed a professional resume writer?For a management trainee who wanted to move into a managerial position, that moment occurred when an interviewer wanted to know what he meant by “sense background.” The word was supposed to be “science,” but his spell-checker changed a misspelling (“scence”) to “sense.”A director of programs and projects realized that prof...

I have a friend who is conversational in three languages. That impresses me no end. But when she showed me her resume, I was surprised to find that she never mentioned her talent in languages. As a professional resume writer, one of my tasks is to help job seekers recognize hidden talents that actually have very high value for companies. My friend made four statements that I have heard over and over again from job seekers w...

Before hiring managers and recruiters can offer you a new job, they have to understand your old job.For example, if hiring managers or recruiters never heard of the company you work for, they might find it impossible to judge your contribution or your fit for their own company. What industry did you work in? How large was the company you worked for? What did the company produce or what service did it perform? By including t...

I know that we all face contradictory feelings about our accomplishments: sometimes we boast about them and sometimes we hide them; sometimes we are annoyed because no one recognizes them and sometimes we demand recognition we barely deserve.Those contradictory sentiments often show up in the resumes that job applicants bring to me for my professional review and rewrite.A recent college graduate started out his resume by sa...

The headline on your resume (the line immediately under your name and contact information) briefly describes the position you want. It might make the difference between a resume that is read and one that is ignored. Keep the following rules in mind.Rule 1. Do not block yourself from consideration by focusing on a job title that is too narrow. First, your skills, accomplishments, and education might fit you for many differen...

To begin, we should define that word “accomplishment.” Here are three examples of what a resume accomplishment is and is not:◾An accomplishment is not the same as a task. For example, the task is “filing”; the accomplishment is computerizing 5 years of paper files to make access more efficient and widespread throughout the company.◾An accomplishment is not the same as a skill. For example, the skill is the abili...

When you enter the job market, whether or not voluntarily, you may be overwhelmed by advice, options, and technologies. You may be panicked by the need to find a job—any job—quickly. You may experience difficulty matching your qualifications and goals with the positions available in the marketplace. Here are four steps you can take to bring a chaotic job search under control:◾ Write down the skills and accomplishments...

The medical and healthcare fields include jobs that require many different areas of expertise, including physical therapy, clinical research, mental health counselors, and equipment technicians. But all resumes for individuals in the healthcare or medical fields have to:◾Include specific techniques used and the environment (patient’s home, laboratory, hospital, private facility) in which they were used.◾List all...

Hiring managers and recruiters troll online looking for candidates even before positions are posted. When you submit an application, they evaluate information from both your resume and from your online presence. It is up to you to control the information they see online. For example:◾Photos are not recommended for resumes but they occur everywhere online. When you are job hunting, you want those photos to reflect your...