A Resume Tip or Two to Make a Spotty Resume Work
As you head into the merciless job market out there, as the companies that make video game accessories say, you have to gear up for battle. Every piece in your plan needs to be high spec. and you'll need to go over your attempt with an eye to picking out any weakness there might be anywhere. That's easier said than done though. If you happen to be working out of a handicap, a year out of work for instance, or an unimpressive college degree or none at all, is there anything you can do to keep it from sinking your chances? As a matter of fact, it all comes down to how you play your cards; and each resume tip we talk about here, goes to show you how to add a little concealer to potential weak areas on your resume.
What you need to let your resume rise to the top is to highlight the thing that makes you one-of-a-kind among the competition. What you need is to let them hear about the areas you have talents and accomplishments in, that they wouldn't really expect on a resume for a job of that kind. And don't hamstring yourself - and if you spent the last year asking "Do you want fries with that?" there still are good things you can find to say. Did you find a useful suggestion to make at any time you worked there? Were you an active member of the team? Perhaps you were able to help with European customers when they showed up, because you speak a smattering of Italian. Perhaps the system broke down at rush hour, and you could use your seat-of-the-pants computer know-how to save the day. Employers love research skills in a candidate. If it's you your friends turn to when they need to find that elusive piece of information about what kind of brush Michelangelo used to paint the Sistine Chapel, or what an obscure and German scientist said about the place of God in the modern world, play up your Internet search skills in some detail. And here's a good resume tip - they love to hear about your people skills. If you ever calmed down an unruly customer, that should do the trick.
This is not to say that your resume needs to be all fluff. If there were subjects in school that you were particularly a natural at, a mention would be quite relevant. The whole point of all this is to show yourself up to be different - to look alive. Just as you could get places highlighting the less well known parts of you this way, there is a resume tip or two you will need, to learn how to draw attention away from things that don't look so impressive. And the way you format your resume can go a long way in helping you out here. Now, there are three ways in which you could establish the flow on your resume. You could go over your career, ordering items according to the time each event happened, you could ignore the timeline and just go with how your skills will help you in the job you're after, and there is going with a combination of the two. If you haven't been employed in a long time, a good way to keep this out of sight would be to avoid the timeline altogether. Instead, you could go with just listing your skills and your qualifications. Staying out of the timeline would be less visible then.
For instance, you could divide up your resume into categories of different skills and qualifications you possess. To illustrate, if your online experience is in customer service, you could put that down under a heading and break it down into your people handling skills, your ability handling call center equipment, your typing speed and your ability to think on your feet. Of course, your employers are going to notice that you are obscuring the timeline. To prevent that from happening, combining the timeline with the skill-based approach, is quite workable. All you need to do is list your qualifications and everything you've learned on the job, by year, starting from today. But what you'll be doing is using the timeline to describe the skills you've been busy accumulating. And of course, your top resume tip is, whatever you put down there, you need to believe in it, to make it work for you.
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