The Perfect Resume

The Perfect Resume

Your resume is very important, and it is often said that a recruiter will spend an average of eight seconds reviewing a resume, so it should be easy to navigate and very clear about you. The perfect resume is not an art form, but a science. Indeed, in business world looking good on paper is just as crucial in presenting yourself as looking good in person, and you can perfect your resume through application of various methods and rules.

Your resume will reach your potential employer long before they get to meet you in person. The resume must be a reflection of your carrier to date. It must highlight your most successful achievements, your skills, capabilities and progress. This document provides the basis for whether they decide to meet with you at all. So if a potential employer can’t find the points he is looking for, he will put your resume to one side and carry on with the search.

There is no need for your resume to read like an essay and be ten pages long (unless you have had a twenty-year carrier with lots of different jobs). You should be able to fit your resume on one or two pages only, no more than that.

The core components of a resume

Personal and contact details: Name, phone, address, e-mail (do not include age!)

Work experience: You should start with the most recent position and work chronologically backward. You should include the name of the company and a one-line description. List your title and the location of the firm. Provide a clear outline of the dates during which you worked at the company.

A perfect resume, your way to success. Photo by Elena

Keep in mind that with the regard to the content of your work experience, you must avoid simply reciting the job description that you had once applied to. Your future employer is concerned with the results you have achieved and the difference you made to the enterprise. Take out the mundane daily tasks that you were responsible for, saving the space for those big achievements you had throughout your time at the company. These are really the moments that should be in your resume. Talk about your achievement in the past tense so that is obvious that these achievements have already been completed.

In the section of work experience follow the STAR Formula, as trough using STAR Formula, your statement becomes very powerful. It helps recruiter understand how you approach challenges. Your future employer has something tangible to speak to you about at an interview:

Situation: The company name and your title in the heading take care of that.

Task: The activity you were responsible for (a marketing project for a new product, serving coffee at Heidi, etc.)

Action: Describe what did you do (… maintained strong customer focus and positive attitude…conducted in-depth market and customer research through focus groups and interviews that identified insights upon which to build a marketing strategy, etc.)

Result: Describe what was achieved through your actions (resulting in a 20% market penetration with products sales exceeding forecasts by 15 percent… or resulting in a customer feedback score of 80% and recommendation for employee of the month twenty seven times in a row).

List your academic experience, your degrees and postgraduate studies.

Other skills – you should cite any languages that you speak, but only if you would be confident enough to use these language skills in the workplace. Additionally, note any relevant computer skills. In fact, remember that the most important factor here is to only describe relevant skill sets.

Interest section: in this section you can show your potential employer that that you have a personality. You can tell them about something that makes you different, unique, outside of being the model professional.

Reread and edit your resume. There is no point applying for a finance position with a résumé that describes your success in sales, or vice-versa. Each time you send a resumé it should have been amended to fit the specific position you apply for.

Through your resume, an excellent business tool, you can project an image of achievement that becomes self-perpetuating.

Exploitation at Work

People often get exploited at work. Exploitation is a big problem and has always been. Of course, the extreme of exploitation is slavery, which is now banned in most countries around the world. And yes, sadly enough, even today in 2015, some nations allow people to own others as slaves. Slaves do not get paid for their work, and usually tend to work a lot, which is why there is the expression “to work as a slave”. However, while in civilized countries in, for example, North America, slavery has long been abolished, some employers continue to exploit their employees.

A man who is being exploited at work! Photo by Elena

Why does that happen and what can one do if she or she is being exploited by one’s boss? Sadly enough, not much in many cases. The problem rests with the fact that being exploited comes from the fact of being in a weaker position, or in a position from which it is hard to bargain. After all, if you were in a position in which you had the upper hand in negotiation, you would not be exploited in the first place. For example, rumour has it graduate students often get exploited because they are in a state of dependence on their thesis supervisor. Other examples include people who find it hard to to get gainful employment in the competitive job market.

Clearly, finding a job is difficult, especially in today’s demanding job market. However, finding employment is not as simple or hard for some people as it is for others. Indeed, a person with many credentials, such as a proven track record of success, a stellar education, much relevant experience, outstanding language and computer skills, is much likelier to get hired than a person who, in addition to lacking such qualifications, has some additional problems that impair their ability to get a job. Luckily, there exist many governmental organizations helping people in distressed situations, including employment services.