How Important Is Having a Really Good Resume

How Important Is Having a Really Good ResumeHow Important Is Having a Really Good ResumeIts almost 2018. You dont need a resume anymore, right? Absolutely wrong. While a lot has changed in the world of job searching, a resume is more important than ever. With so many candidates competing for the same jobs, a strong resume is your ticket to standing out to a hiring manager.But what do hiring managers want to see on a resume? Here are some tips from our professional resume writers to help youProfessionalism. You can have the most experience in the world, but if your resume is poorly formatted with tons of typos, youre not going to get very far with a hiring manager. Thats why its important to follow standard writing and formatting guidelines (e.g. including lots of white space, a professional font type, bulleted lists and correct grammar) to put your best foot forward.The right experience.If your resume looks professional at first glance, then a hiring manager will keep reading. What a re they looking to see? First and foremost, they want to know youre qualifiedfor the job. If they need someone with 10 years of management experience and youre clearly entry-level, youre not going to get an interview, no matter how well-written and perfectly formatted your resume is.A customized resume.Hiring managers also want to know what you can do for them. Thats why a cookie cutter resume you send out to every employer isnt going to be effective. Instead, customize your resume to every unique opportunity. Make sure youre addressing the specific companys needs using keywords from their job posting and describing how your experience is a fit for them.A proven track record.Ok, so you clearly have the right skills and experience to do the job. But what value can you really bring to the table? Thats another aspect a hiring manager will be looking for. And thats also why its so important to promote your accomplishments and results, rather than justlistingabout tasks and responsibil ities.So wherever possible, quantify your achievements. For instance, instead of stating that you ordered office supplies in your role as office manager, focus on the fact that you Renegotiated and reduced ABC Companys office supply contract cost by 10%. These are the kinds of facts and figures hiring managers most want to see.Hiring managers screen resumes for 6-15seconds Thats all the time you have to impress them. But when you follow the tips above, youll have a much better chance of getting noticed and getting a call for an interview.If youd like more help with your resume, contact the resume experts at ResumeSpice. Call us today at 832.930.7378 to learn more or get started with one of our professional resume writers.

The best ways to respond to an insult, according to Steve Jobs

The best ways to respond to an insult, according to Steve JobsThe best ways to respond to an insult, according to Steve JobsWhile we wait for AI gatekeepers to be adept enough at detecting and sending trolls back to the murky waters of 4chan where they belong, digital trolls are a reality all people on the Internet must tolerate in the meantime.Some trolls cant be reasoned with. But for the ones that can, how should you respond to a freshly hurled insult?Steve Jobs, for one, seems to have nailed the art. In a recently recirculating 1997-era video of him speaking atApples Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs is taking questions from the audience when he gets thisrather unsavory tidbitthrown at himIts sad and clear that on several counts youve discussed, you dont know what youre talking about. I would like, for example, for you to express in clear terms how, say, Java and any of its incarnations addresses the ideas embodied in OpenDoc. And when youre finished with that, perhaps you ca n tell us what you personally have been doing for the last seven years.Pretty rough, right? Jobs infamous response to this low blow-dealing troll, however, properly shut him down. And hiscommunication vorlageis one we can all pull from.Anticipate criticisms of your stanceAs someone who studiedPublic Relationsand now works in the industry,it seems pretty clear to me that the answer Jobs weaves into his response to the troll was preplanned. Before this conference, Jobs had been barraged with similar questions, so this was very much in the realm of what he should have expected. Simply put, its easier to respond to opposition when youve prepared for it.Dont react immediatelyAt the time of the comment from the troll, Jobs was already fidgeting with a water bottle. So when the insult was finished, he took a swig from his bottle, looked down, and paused to gather his thoughts to locate the proper answer. He didnt make any pronounced nonverbal or verbal responses, but instead looked thought ful (though, mind you, the insult in this video harkens back to what feels like a bygone era of civil discourse).Give a broad opening line that feels favorable to the troll, but qualifiedThis was the first sentence of his prepared answerOne of the hardest things when youre trying to effect change is that people, like this gentlemen, are right, in some areas.binnensee how it seems like hes agreeing with the troll, but qualifies it so in reality hes not. Its always a good idea to start with a more friendly response, even if you totally disagree with the other persons stance.Answer the question you want askedThe question Jobs got was about a specific programming language and his personal life. However inappropriate the latter was, Jobs did not specifically answer either, but instead ended up answering the more favorable, general question of Are their mistakes that were made when you decided to make a big change in the company, and who is the ultimate decision-maker in a tech company en gineers or customers?This is a pretty classic political maneuver, and still incredibly effective. The answer plays to the familiar old business adage thatthe customer is always right.And as we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, um, it started with what incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer? Not, not starting with lets sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have and then how are we going to market that. And I think thats the right path to take.Acknowledge the fallibility of you and your team - then support bothYou should be your own biggest cheerleader - humble brag, anyone? The wealthier you are, the more you can pay others to generate excitement about you to others (that is, after all, the essence of public relation campaigns), but in the beginning, its just you and your team.Admit mistakesthat were made, talk about the lessons that came from them, but then move on and discuss why y ou and your team are hardworking and deserving of support and the benefit of the doubt.Im sorry that OpenDocs a casualty along the way. And I readily admit there are many things in life that I dont have the faintest idea what Im talking about, so I apologize for that, too. But theres a whole lot of people working super, super hard right now at Apple.Jobs finishes strong in his response by pointing out there are people working long shifts well past midnight to crank out the application programs they think fit with their companys values, and that hard work is deserving of support and praise. Its almost an intrinsic value to reward hard work and give serious teams the benefit of the doubt. Jobs plays on this innate understanding, winning over the audience.Well find the mistakes, and well fix them. And I think what we need to do is support that team going through this very important stage as they work their butts offThis post originally appeared on Fairygodboss, and was syndicated with permission.

Too Pretty for the Job

Too Pretty for the Job Too Pretty for the Job But what really interested me was what Boland said about the makeup of herbei staffYou know, its great. And interestingly, right now we have all females in our office, although that is not by design. Women in general are very strong individuals, but anyone can be successful in owning his or her own business, its just a matter of how hard you work and the good people you surround yourself with. I have a fantastic team. Im not doing this alone, but I have a wonderful team and a business manager that has been with me since day one. I cannot take all the credit for my companys success, because its been a great team effort. Ive been blessed to have great relationships with our clients and candidates, too.A woman-owned, 100 percent women-operated recruitment firm? Very niceand very unique.This unique setup particularly interested me because I remember reading a Forbes.com article about how women HR professionals often discriminate against att ractive female job seekers.The article explained how two Isreali researchers- Bradley Ruffle at Ben-Gurion University and Zeev Shtudiner at Ariel University Centre- sent out fake applications to 2,500 job openings. The researchers sent two applications to each job one application included a photo and the other did not. The two believed that resumes including photos of attractive candidates would receive the greatest response.This was partially true. Although attractive males received mora callbacks for interviews than unattractive males, attractive women were less likely to get a callback for an interview if they attached a photo. Why the discrepancy?The researchers concludedHuman resources departments tend to be staffed mostly by women. Indeed, in the Israeli study, 93% of those tasked with selecting whom to invite for an interview were female. The researchers unavoidable- and unpalatable- conclusion is that old-fashioned jealousy led the women to discriminate against pretty candid ates.Ladies, is this true?Now, when first reading about the experiment, one might assume attractive women were ruled out because of the unfair dumb blonde or dumb model generalizations. Yet, each photo in the study was also rated on how intelligent people thought the person looked and the results showed that there was no correlation between ones beauty and ones intelligence level(s).Are women HR professionals really discriminating against female job seekers? If so, this is really disconcerting. Why you ask? Well, look at the stats about women in the workforce (and, ladies let me tell you, theyre not pretty)Only 4.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are womenWomen make up 4.5 percent of Fortune 1000 CEO positionsIn 2012- just like in 2002- among full-time, year-round workers, women were paid 77 percent of what men were paid.Women only held 16.6 percent of Fortune 500 motherboard seatsIn 2011, at 31.9 percent, women didnt even account for half of all lawyersFrom elementary and middle school teachers to computer programmers, women are paid less than men in female-dominated, gender-balanced, and male-dominated occupations (AAUW)What am I saying? Ladies, its clear that we need one another. Although more and more women (and mothers) are entering the workforce, we still face many inequalities compared to our male counterparts. Instead of being jealous and discriminating against each other, we need to unite and continue to advocate for change and equality.It may sound clich, but the phrase, United we stand, divided we fall, is very true. Being jealous and unfair toward attractive women only harms women in the workforce overall. Instead of preventing women from entering a company, why not be fair in your selection process? View the female job seekers not as threats, but positively as more potential women who can add to those lists of CEOs and board members and ultimately help turn our male-dominated, senior-level workforce into an equal and level playing field.