The Official Blog of Jobaloo.com

A terrific post on Randsinresponse walks us through the process the author uses when reviewing resumes.

We’re told which parts of the resume are skimmed and which ones are skipped altogether. Two passes are made over the resume, with the second pass in a little more detail than the first.

The post concludes with these words:

A resume will never define who you are. It’s not the job of your resume to give me a complete picture, and if you’re struggling to include every last detail about who you are, you’re wasting your time. Your resume should be designed to give me a glimpse and a hook.

The glimpse is a view into the most recent years of your professional career. It should convey your three most important accomplishments and it should give me a good idea where your technical skills lie.

The hook is more important. The hook will leave me with a question. Maybe it’s something from your other interests section? How about an objective so outlandish that I can’t help but set up a phone screen. I’m not suggesting that you make anything up, I’m asking you to market yourself in a way that I’m going to remember. A resume is not a statement of facts. It’s a declaration of intent.

The entire article is absolutely worth a read.

CareerJournal has a piece from Andrea Coombes looking at easing the transition of changing careers.

Many people see instability in the career they are currently in, and would like to change, but are scared off at the prospect of making such a huge transition in their lives. The column offers these suggestions (fleshed out more in the column):

1. Think career shift, not wholesale change
2. Translate your skills
3. Time for self-reflection
4. No goals, no go
5. Research the possibilities
6. Think like a recruiter
7. Learn the lingo

GetHiredNowTV has a video that has some good tips for doing job searches via Google.

Simply putting in a job title and city will bring you back millions of results. The video provides some tips on narrowing down those options a bit. Using terms like “submit resume” along with the job title and other keywords will likely bring good results.

The video is about two and a half minutes.

One time I received a call from a former co-worker who was in the process of looking for a job. At the time, I was still with the company that we had worked for together. I also knew the circumstances of his departure from the company, and that it wasn’t a pleasant situation.

Because of that situation, he was having a hard time finding a job, because when the company he interviewed with would call the old employer, and get a not-exactly-enthusiastic response over the phone. Hoping to avoid this, he called me and ask if I would write him a letter that outlined his job skills, and nothing else. This way, he would have something to show the potential new employer from the old employer. I told him I’d think about it.

Here are some of the thoughts that I had that led me to my decision:

Am I qualified to write this letter?
I was his co-worker, not his manager or supervisor. I was aware of the things he was working on, and so forth, but I wasn’t fully aware of the quality of the work that he did. Does the company want me to be the one to write such a letter?

What does management think?
I wanted to make sure that this was going to be ok with the higher ups, so I checked in with not only my manager, but his manager as well. (An assistant director of the company)

Do they want me representing the company?
If I were to write a letter, whomever reads the letter is going to see it as an endorsement from the company. Is that what the company wants? Am I going to be an official representative of the company in this regard?

In the end, the decision was out of my hands. When I brought up the subject to management, they said that any letters of that sort are to be written by them. I’m glad I checked. Not that I would’ve gotten into a great deal of trouble, but it may have put me in an awkward position.

Before you write a letter of recommendation for someone, consider the impact on all sides before you agree to do it.

Sean from CareerTV has a one minute video on the importance of writing thank you letters following a job interview.

He offers a few specific tips on making sure your thank you letter is going to be effective.

I personally have always made sure to compose a thank you letter, and have gotten very good feedback from doing this. In fact, on the last job I had in the corporate world, my boss told me I was THE ONLY ONE to send the thank you note to him, and it was a big factor in my getting the job.