Showcasing Volunteer Experience on Your Resume » Blog | Great Resumes Fast

At a recent training summit for a large nonprofit organization, I heard several directors lamenting the lack of respect their significant volunteer positions received in the working world.  I was flabbergasted to realize that these women did not feel valued for their contributions to others, which included managing hundreds of thousands of dollars and writing lengthy manuals on subjects from communication skills to regional operations.

Every day, millions of people do important work for which they are not compensated.  This work can be as complex as medical missions to undeveloped countries or as simple as tutoring the child down the street.  If you are one of the many people who give of their time without financial reward, it is important that you include your accomplishments on your resume.

Perhaps you publish your weekly church bulletin with everyone’s announcements.  This means you have some writing and layout abilities, as well as numerous work samples.  Maybe you’re the treasurer of your neighborhood home owners’ association.  If you collect $300 in yearly dues from each of your 300 neighbors, then you manage a budget of $90,000—something many people in the corporate world will never do.

As a class mother at your child’s school, it may be your job to coordinate an out-of-state field trip for three classrooms of students and 10 chaperones.  On your resume, this task would translate to event planning and travel coordination.  Many alumni associations offer graduates the opportunity to share their expertise with current students who need assistance with career planning.  These types of mentoring activities involve public speaking and interviewing—so-called “soft skills” that are valued by many employers, particularly in sales.

In addition to volunteer activities, many people’s hobbies demand skills that are sought by employers.  Organizing a group on meetup.com requires knowledge of social networking and event planning.  A personal blog can demonstrate your writing abilities, (provided the content is appropriate for the eyes of a potential employer).  Maintaining the facebook page for your local running club exhibits your ability to connect people through social media.  Given that less than a quarter of facebook users are over 35, an older hiring manager may be looking for someone who understands the “foreign world” of Internet communications.

Most people who volunteer do so by using abilities that come naturally to them.  Almost all volunteer responsibilities require some kind of skill that an employer could use.  Don’t be afraid to incorporate unpaid experience into your work history.  College interns do it all the time!  A close friend familiar with your activities can often help you reflect on your contributions to the community.  If you’re feeling particularly uncertain about how to showcase volunteer experience on your resume, a professional resume writer can assist you with marketing your skills—all of them!

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Staying Organized During Your Job Search » Blog | Great Resumes Fast

One of the most frustrating aspects of searching for a job can be waiting to hear back after you’ve submitted an application.  Some employers’ hiring processes take many months, and by the time they call, you may literally have forgotten about having applied for the job.  To further complicate the situation, many job boards remove ads from their sites after 30 days or after the application deadline has passed, leaving you nothing to reference online.

To address these common challenges, it’s helpful to keep your own records of the jobs for which you’ve applied.  Whether you start an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document, or simply a handwritten list, it’s important to keep track of where you’ve sent your resumes.  For each application you submit, keep a record of the date you submitted it, the company name and position title, and any additional information such as the hours or salary offered.  As you receive responses from potential employers, you can note for yourself whether you received a phone interview, an in-person interview, or if the position has already been filled.

Keeping records of your job applications allows you to avoid duplicate submissions for positions that are advertised again several months later.  Additionally, over time, your records will provide valuable information such as how long it typically takes specific employers to respond.  If you know you’re searching for work in an industry that typically offers employment four months after the original application, you’ll have a greater ability to navigate and plan your finances during a time of reduced or no income.

Lastly, tracking your applications will also show you if certain types of employers are more receptive to your resume than others.  For instance, you may notice a trend that large, publicly traded companies never offer you an interview; that could be an indication that your resume is not standing out to that type of employer.

If your resumes and cover letters are not landing you the interviews you want, now is a great time to hire a professional resume writer!

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Creating Resume Appeal with Proper Resume Margins » Blog | Great Resumes Fast

Recently, we’ve been discussing resume aesthetics.  What looks pleasing, what doesn’t, what makes a great first impression, and well … what doesn’t.  In the last article, I talked about bullets and paragraphs.  In this brief article, I’m going to elaborate on margins.

I am sure there could be debates on many sides as to what margin sizes to use and why.  But as a former hiring manager for fortune 500 companies turned executive resume writer, I’ll tell you what really looked best to me.  One-inch margins make your resume look as polished as a college term paper.  Anything less than .5 and you are cutting it too short for print quality—and it will look like too much text on the page, with no balanced edges.

For me, the happy medium is .5 – .7 inch margins.  Not so much white space that you seem juvenile and unprofessional—but just enough so that the information doesn’t look crammed, and your document looks well balanced all the way around.  I know this probably seems like a miniscule detail, and I am not saying hiring managers will not consider you if you don’t have .5-inch margins all the way around; that would be petty and unrealistic.  I am simply trying to provide some advice on aesthetic appeal and point out what the human eye tends to be drawn to.  The more drawn in the reader is, the more likely they’ll invest the time to read.  Not to mention, you want your resume to look professional and polished.  I suppose I could joke that celebrities have stylists so they look nice, so shouldn’t your resume have one too?  I guess you can consider me your resident “resume stylist”.  Until next time …

Check out our resume samples to see some great ideas related to our discussion in this series about resume design.  And as always, you can submit your resume for a free analysis via e-mail at info@greatresumesfast.com.

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal

reCareered: Why Every Job Seeker Needs To Blog

Blogging ... sounds hugely time consuming and maybe intimidating to those who don't have one.

But blogging is one of the single most powerful things a job seeker can do to advance your job search. Blogging can help candidates across the board, whether you are active or passive, white collar or blue collar, experienced or noob, left brain or right brain. And anyone can do it ... you don't even have to write in order to blog (really!).

Why does every job seeker need to blog? Blogs provide so many ways for job seekers to stand out, especially because so few candidates use these tools.

( Continued ... Why Blog? )

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Using Social Media to Ace Your Interview » Blog | Great Resumes Fast

Most people think of social media sites as great tools for advertising their skills and networking with other professionals.  While your online profiles certainly need to promote your experience to potential employers, corporate profiles also allow you to learn a few things about a company as you apply for jobs and prepare for interviews.

Some job ads provide minimal information about how to address your cover letter.  For example, the ad may say “submit cover letter and resume to J. Sims”.  If the company’s Web site does not allow you to determine whether J. Sims is a man or a woman, searching LinkedIn with the company and last name can sometimes provide the answer.  Using the hiring manager’s first name when it is not provided makes your cover letter look sharper and more personal than other applicants’.  It may also be a test; get an A+ by showing the hiring manager that you did your homework—that you researched the company.

Let’s say that you already have an interview scheduled for a job.  Obviously, you will use the company’s Web site and any other available information to research the business.  However, in today’s competitive job market, many employers have the luxury of comparing equally qualified candidates to see who offers the strongest personality fit for their organization.  This is where social media can give you a competitive edge.

Start by looking up the LinkedIn profiles of the employees who will be interviewing you.  If the interviewer doesn’t have a LinkedIn profile, chances are they’re less technologically savvy and will be impressed with any knowledge of social media you mention in your interview.  If the interviewer does have a profile, looking at his or her educational background, previous employers, and professional groups can offer you some insight into common ground you may have.  Knowing that you share a passion for college football or organic cooking can help you steer your interview conversation in a positive direction.

Many companies and organizations have now created facebook profiles that users can become fans of.  Searching for the profile of a potential employer can offer you insight into the corporate culture.  Are the employees in the photos wearing suits or business casual?  Do the photos show employees performing community service or social activities outside the office?  Researching the company’s events can inform you about professional development or team-building activities in which you may be expected to participate.

Research shows that most employers now use social networking sites to screen potential candidates.  Remember, that as a job seeker, you can also use these sites to research future employers, acquire a sense of their corporate culture, and effectively market yourself as a personality fit with the organization.

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal

Paragraphs vs. Bullets On Your Resume: Why Too Much of a Good Thing is Bad | CareerAlley

“Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

Author Byline: Jessica Holbrook is an expert resume writer, career and personal branding strategist, author, and presenter.
Author Website: http://www.greatresumesfast.com

Many career experts today are focusing on content and harping on key accomplishments and selling yourself to the hiring manager. We’ve covered those topics, but we are still seeing weaknesses with job seekers’ resumes in the format/design area. So we’ve decided to write a series of articles addressing different strategies with resume format and design.

First up on our hit list: Paragraphs and Bullets. Which one is better, and what should you avoid? In this instance, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. If your entire resume is in paragraph form, you will bore the hiring manager, and he or she won’t invest the time necessary to read through the text-dense material. Use paragraphs sparingly, and never use one longer than three to five sentences. Pass that five sentence mark, and you’ve lost them for sure.

Bullets are a great way to create white space and break up information into shorter, easier-to-read points. However, if you get carried away and use too many your great accomplishments and key selling points will get lost in the mix. Try to limit yourself to three to five bullet points per position. And ALWAYS put the most impressive, most relevant, and more important bullets FIRST.

So the moral of the story … use a combination. It’s not an either/or situation here. Use both, but use them sparingly. I recommend starting each position with a three-sentence introduction/description about primary, relevant details—then below, include a list of three to five hard hitting selected accomplishments.

By utilizing a combination of both you are making the most of the space available while simultaneously attracting the reader’s eye by breaking up text-dense material and drawing them in with a few short bullet points. Your content will have a better chance of being read—and your resume will make a better first impression.

Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Good luck in your search.

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal

3 Audacity Tips To Enhance Any Recorded Interview

As a blogger and a researcher, I have to conduct a lot of interviews. Some months I’ve conducted two or three interviews a week, and many of those are recorded interviews, because many people don’t have time to answer questions via email. One of the nice things about recorded interviews is that they work well as an audio podcast either available for download from your own blog, or distributed as a podcast at any podcast directory.

Regardless what you intend to do with the interview, one thing that’s for certain is that you want to develop a reputation as a professional interviewer that produces high-quality, interesting conversations with fascinating people.

Only part of the recipe for this is developing interesting and thoughtful questions for your interviewee to answer, but the other significant part of the equation is how well you’ve edited the audio interview into a high-quality, professional show. Many avid audio enthusiasts may find some of the edits below somewhat simple, but for the blogger or podcaster with little audio editing experience, these tips are critical to know.

3 Tips To Enhance Your Interview Audio With Audacity

I use the Audacity audio recording software to record and edit all of my interviews. My recording setup is about as simple as it gets – an Olympic earpiece that doubles as both a microphone and an earphone, so that I can hear the person on the phone while the microphone feeds the conversation into the laptop and Audacity. This works well, and produces high quality conversations, but like anything, there are flaws in the setup that produce less than optimum conditions.

The beauty of Audacity is that you have the capability to “fix” those flaws. The three most common problems that I’m going to touch on in this post are removing background noise, amplifying voices, and integrating quality introduction with music.

Before we start doctoring the audio file with the Audacity audio recording software, let me first introduce the patient. Above is a snippet of an hour-long audio interview that I conducted last month. The two most common flaws are background noise, shown in the center of this clip, and low voice volume (my voice) as shown on the right. You can see that the amplitude when I was talking is about half of that of the voice on the phone – which is to be expected when recording with such an earpiece.

How To Fix Quiet Voices

The first tweak for the common interview issue of quiet voices is also the easiest. The volume of the voice is equivalent to “amplitude,” so all you have to do is use Audacity’s Amplify tool to increase the quiet voice just a little bit.

To perform this task, just highlight the section of audio track with the quiet voice, and then select “Amplify” from the Effect menu option.

In the amplify tool, you’ll need to select an amplification that is just enough to increase the voice volume to a level that’s equivalent to the other person speaking. It may take some trial and error the first time, so just undo the change and try a new value until you get it right.

In my case, I found that an increase of 5 dB did the trick. Once you know the right value, the only tedious part of this fix is that you’ll need to find every place in the track where the quiet voice shows up, and do the highlight/amplify routine to fix it.

How To Remove Background Noise With Audacity

The second most common flaw in an interview audio file is background noise. Maybe you left a fan on in the other room, or there are cars going by just outside the open window, and you realize once you listen to the audio that the sound is terribly annoying and distracting.

The first step in this technique is to identify an area in your file that features nothing but the background noise alone. When you find such an area, highlight that section of the audio track, and then go into the “Noise Removal” tool in the Effects menu option.

Once you’re there, click on “Get Noise Profile“. Doing this captures a snapshot of the background noise itself. The software uses this to “erase” that sound profile from a section (or all) of the audio file. The next step is just to highlight the area where you want to remove the noise (most of the time you’ll just select the entire track), and then go back into this window and select “Remove Noise“.

As you can see, Audacity does an amazing job at cleaning up the noise. There is one caveat, and it is this – carefully gauge the amount of noise that you want to remove. Removing too little won’t do much good, and removing too much will make the audio sound over-digitized or artificially quiet. One thing I noticed is that the middle to lower middle setting is usually ideal.

Integrating A Musical Or Voice Introduction

Have you ever heard those cool podcasts with a great musical introduction? Well, believe it or not, you can do the same exact thing in Audacity in just a few simple steps. The first step, obviously, is importing the music file that you would like to use (make sure you don’t infringe on any licensing issues).

The next step is just highlight the block of music you’d like to use as your introduction (select the correct number of seconds) and then do a simple Copy. Then place the cursor at the start of your audio file, and select Paste. The copied music clip will get inserted into your track, pushing the entire interview to the right.

While this is cool, it’ll sound weird because at the end of the clip, your music will just end abruptly. Instead, you want to taper off the music as you enter into the interview itself. You can do this by highlighting the very last part of your music clip and selecting Effect -> Fade Out from the Menu.

You’ll see the amplitude of the music clip taper off as it approaches the end of the clip, and in effect producing a very nice fade into the interview itself.

By using these three simple tips, you’ve just equalized voice volume, removed background noise, and embedded a professional music introduction into your audio interview. With just these few simple changes, you’ll transform amateur sounding interviews into well produced, professional sounding conversations.

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Posted via web from AndyWergedal