Don’t Think a Coffee-Shop Interview Is Easy Many candidates think a coffee-shop interview is as easy as it gets, and yet, it might be the toughest — if you don’t keep your guard up. How tough can it be? You are dressed casually. You’re at a public place on neutral ground. And you’re both drinking…
Everyone seems to worry when it comes time to write their resume. Either that, or they rush through the process and end up with a piece of…well, you know. Don’t let it fool you. Resume writing is not rocket science; in fact, it’s not difficult at all. All You Need Is a Little Knowledge What…
Be Perfect On Your Next Interview — Use The Goldilocks Method I realize this sounds ridiculous, but when you give it thought, a large part of the interview process is about avoiding mistakes. Yes, you have to show them you have the experience to do the job. Yes, you have to be able to answer…
When To Take Resume Advice, and When To Ignore It Most people pretend to listen to advice, but they seldom heed it. And nowhere is this more true than with resume advice. I see a lot of resumes. A few are good. A respectable number are okay. But most are poorly written. I try my…
What Does a Resume Screener Look Like? Before we get started on this, I’d like to ask a few questions. What does a nephrologist do? How about a manufacturing engineer? Clinical psychologist? Disk drive engineer? Pharmacokineticist? Would you know the requirements for each of the above positions? I’d be surprised if you did. But assuming…
How To Beat the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) Have you ever wondered what happens to your resume once you send it off? Most of it depends on where you sent it, and what type of system—if any—they use for screening. Since most companies use ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems), we’ll focus on that process. (We’ll also…
I wrote a post a few months ago about “What To Capitalize on a Resume,” but from the number of emails I receive it’s obvious I didn’t go into enough detail. In this post, I’ll cover a few of the rules for capitalization, and we’ll go into more detail on each of them. These are…
Do you struggle deciding which words to use on your resume? Many people do, which prompted me to write this article. I did another post on impact words for resumes, and also one about how powerful words can be in all of your writing. Today, we’ll explore the opposite side, and talk about the words…
Words can be very powerful. And since your resume is — by necessity — limited to a page or two, it is important that the words you use have impact. Resumes consist of incomplete sentences and bullet points; you can’t afford to use weak or passive verbs. I compiled this list from many sources,…
Hyphens, en Dashes, Em Dashes In order to understand an em dash, it’s important to put it into perspective. That means we need to explore a few details on hyphens and en dashes. The following are definitions from CMOS (Chicago Manual of Style). Hyphen The hyphen connects two things that are intimately related, usually words…