Great Resumes Must Be Created I learned long ago that writing the perfect resume was not much different than cooking. If you’re making your favorite dish—let’s say lasagna—you don’t just throw any old thing into the pot. If my wife caught me putting carrots in her sauce, she’d cut an appendage off, and she wouldn’t…
Right Aligning Dates in Word I read a lot of resumes, and one of the more common problems I see is that the dates are not aligned properly. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not a huge deal, but it does make the resume look cleaner and more organized if you right align the dates. And…
Cover Letter Basics I’ve seen a lot written lately questioning the value of cover letters. Some articles go so far as to say including a cover letter is detrimental. I say bull… nonsense. I’ll address that issue in another post; for today, we’re going to deal with the finer details of writing a cover letter….
From a candidate’s perspective, it doesn’t matter much whether you believe in it or not. You are more than likely going to face an interview team who puts at least some degree of weight on your body language, which means if you want to make the best impression you’ll have to adhere to the basics….
Using “King Of The Hill” as an Interview Technique I’ve been in the recruiting business for 30 years, and I’m always searching for a new interview technique. A lot of what I’ve learned in life has come from observing the animals on our sanctuary; it’s amazing what you can pick up from them. Recently I…
Why Resume Mistakes Make a Difference I reviewed twenty-seven resumes this week — not many. But the frustration level was high because nineteen of them had mistakes — and yes — mistakes matter. Some were minor:• Lead instead of led • Compound adjectives used improperly • Semicolons used when they should have used a comma…
In preparation for writing my No Mistakes Careers books, I talked to hundreds, perhaps even thousands of candidates and asked them what their biggest complaints were about the hiring process. I told them we wanted their input and it didn’t matter whether it was about dealing with headhunters or directly with the company. There were…
How To Answer Interview Questions Tell Me About Yourself This is an almost universal question, but the problem is that you never know why they’re asking it or what they expect to hear. Many people think the interviewer just wants to hear your answer. Unfortunately, a lot of times this question is asked because the…
Interview Mistakes I took a poll of several hundred human resource and hiring managers and asked their opinion on what the ten worst interview mistakes were. I was surprised by a few of them, and some of the ones I would have included didn’t make it to this list, but it’s a good start. Many…
We’re going to talk about the dates on your resume. Many of the problems I see with resumes stems from people not knowing what to do and how to list them. Near the end we’ll get to the big question—should you include months on a resume? Dates I like talking about nothing more than dates….