Job Hunting 101

[spokes]

I always find these newspaper articles interesting because I guess most of it seems like comon cents to me - but what do i know.

the only one I would disagree on is with respect to salry - as the newbie with a college edumacation you deserve to be paid at least $50k per year right ut of the blocks.....:rolleyes:

LONGER IS BETTER

Long resumes are impressive. No. In fact, they are ridiculous for someone younger than 30. Excessively long resumes are consistently listed as a pet peeve in surveys of hiring managers, and yet people keep submitting them.
Hiring managers barely have time to skim most of the resumes that come their way, much less read them line by line. Even if you get Margaret Atwood to ghost-write the thing for you, recruiters aren't going to make it to the second page. Find a way to edit those internships, extracurricular activities and classes into a clean, readable one-page document.

WEB IS BEST SOURCE

The Internet is the best place to look for jobs. Sure, if your idea of "looking'' for work is reading ads for jobs you probably won't get. Online listings are just a tiny fraction of the jobs out there. Other, often more fruitful sources for leads include professional associations, specialized job fairs, your professors and career counsellors, and places where you have been an intern.

LOW PAY WILL SUFFICE

Entry-level salaries will be sufficient to pay back student loans. After all, the lenders would not have let you borrow all that money if they weren't certain you could pay it back with your post-graduation paychecks, right? Afraid not.
Student loans are an exception to the general lending principles that limit people to borrowing according to their earnings.
The gap between how much college students expect to make when they graduate versus their likely earnings, as well as the difference between how much they think they will owe when they're done and what they really wind up owing, continues to be frightening.

MBA IS THE TICKET

An MBA always brings big bucks and promotions. Of course, education isn't usually a bad thing. But before you put the time and money into getting a graduate degree in business, have a specific goal in mind for life post-MBA, and make sure that particular credential is really necessary to get you there.
In particular, run the numbers and see if the expected boost in pay is worth it. Look at your particular situation, not just averages.

JOB HUNTING IS SEASONAL

There's no point in applying for jobs in the summer. Or Christmas. Or whatever time you imagine hiring managers get to slack off. Filling professional jobs isn't like selling houses. The market isn't seasonal. People quit and get promoted year round. When they do, they have to be replaced. So find another excuse for your own procrastination.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BOSS

If you don't like your boss, you should quit. I used to believe this myself. After all, life is short, right? Sure it is, but the tenure of really bad bosses is often even shorter.
People move on. Sometimes you even get promoted to their jobs when they leave. Even if they stay, all hope isn't lost. If you really like other aspects of a job, try to learn to work with your obnoxious boss.
Every job will require you to work with people whose personalities or work habits don't suit you. The earlier in your career you learn to work around them, the better off you will be.

IT'S ILLEGAL TO . . .

It's illegal for an employer to . . . Honestly, you can insert just about anything here and you'd be wrong. Employers have a lot of leeway in hiring, firing and promoting people, as long as they aren't discriminating against specifically protected classes of people, such as for race, gender, religion or age (this applies to people 40 and older, not teenagers or recent graduates).
Mere "favouritism,'' while demoralizing, is not illegal.

Likewise, employers don't have to provide health insurance or regular raises

[NewMrs.]

LONGER IS BETTER

Long resumes are impressive. No. In fact, they are ridiculous for someone younger than 30. Excessively long resumes are consistently listed as a pet peeve in surveys of hiring managers, and yet people keep submitting them.
Hiring managers barely have time to skim most of the resumes that come their way, much less read them line by line. Even if you get Margaret Atwood to ghost-write the thing for you, recruiters aren't going to make it to the second page. Find a way to edit those internships, extracurricular activities and classes into a clean, readable one-page document.


One of my really good friends got mad and quit her job once when we were 22 or 23, and I think one of the reasons she had so much trouble finding a new job was because her resume was so long.

She was under the impression that just because she had worked in an office, she was entitled to a 2 page resume. She did not even have a college degree; her resume listed the four colleges she attended but never finished. It also listed every single piece of office equipment she had ever touched. She did not believe me when I told her that I had been taught that a resume should be no longer than one page.

She ended up finding another, much better job, but then for extra spending money she somehow got paying gigs to write resumes for other people. I am not even sure how she got a bunch of people to pay her to do this. I let her edit my resume for me once before I knew better. She had me not only list every piece of office equipment that I ever touched, but also list under the "Skills" section every version of Microsoft Word that has been on the market since I was in high school.

[wordsmith]

I defy any HR person (or non HR person) to take my resume, bring it down from 2 pages to one, and not lose any essential info.

Edit - of course, this is seven years into employment, two post-college jobs and one year in a national volunteer org post-college. As a new grad, I did not have a two-page resume.

[cheshrcarol]

I met with the career center at my school a week ago and the woman told me that if my resume needed to go to 2 pages, it was ok. But that the stuff info on there should be absolutely necessary info. And she did say consolidate items, like instead of Excel, Word, etc, it should be Microsoft Office.

[NewMrs.]

Well, I care a great deal about this person, but at that point in her life she was not entitled to a two-page resume. When she wrote the resume in question, she had worked for an insurance broker for less than two years. Before that, she had worked in telemarketing an in fast food. She was in her early 20s and had not finished college or any kind of formal post-high school educational program.

[NewMrs.]

I met with the career center at my school a week ago and the woman told me that if my resume needed to go to 2 pages, it was ok. But that the stuff info on there should be absolutely necessary info. And she did say consolidate items, like instead of Excel, Word, etc, it should be Microsoft Office.

Thats kinda funny - my husband told me the exact same thing about Microsoft Office two nights ago when I was tweaking my resume.

[wordsmith]

Here is the most frequently recommended info I've found for resumes, compiled from a bunch of diff. career counseling sources. The pupose of the resume is of course to market yourself, pointing out all relevant skills, education, experiences, and interests, to help the employer assess your fit for the position...In order to do this, you need to
bear the following in mind:


• Keep your resume short and concise, and uncluttered, recommended to be no more than two pages long (White space- eye-catching, easy to read...good. Words crammed to margins to fit on one page...bad).

• Bullet points for readability.

• Font should be easy to read (10 -12 point font).


In content:

• Use action verbs such as “supervised”, “directed”, “developed”, “organized” and “planned” - effective.

• Don’t include irrelevant information for position. Use cover letter to show relevance if not obvious.

• Make sure the content of your resume includes your education, employment history, awards, community involvement, and volunteer positions, personal interest section if it applies to the position or ties in somehow.

Now, in order to do all these things (the visually appealing formatting including white space and bullet points, both of which tend to use up space), and to fill in relevant points, especially if you've held a few involved positions, you're almost CERTAINLY going to go beyond a page. If you can fit it all on one page with all of the above included, odds are you just haven't done very much, yet.

[spokes]

It also listed every single piece of office equipment she had ever touched.

for whatever reason this statement made me think that she would list her "mad skillz with a protractor".......

[wordsmith]

LONGER IS BETTER

Long resumes are impressive. No. In fact, they are ridiculous for someone younger than 30.

Know what, though? Nobody knows, when glancing at your resume, if you are younger of older than 30.

At most, they'll know when you finished your schooling, which may or may not tell them much. And if they're doing the glance thing, as the article implies, they're not exactly going to be absorbing that, anyway.

So it's ridiculous to say that a one-page resume is all you're allowed if you're under 30 and a two-page is magically permissable once you hit that point, because it's not as if anybody in hiring knows your age from a resume. Your resume should be as long as it needs to be to organize pertinent info in an easily readable fashion.

[cache]

I absolutely prefer one page. BUT, if your resume justifies it, 2 is fine. Like NewMrs. mentioned, if it is 2 pages of TMI, then it is a bad thing. Usually, people who have 2 or more page resumes have them because they feel the need to list everything they did at previous jobs, and a single job listing takes up half a page. That is inappropriate. For scientific, research, etc. type positions, 2 pages is good, because you want to be able to highlight all of your experience.

[cache]

Know what, though? Nobody knows, when glancing at your resume, if you are younger of older than 30.

At most, they'll know when you finished your schooling, which may or may not tell them much. And if they're doing the glance thing, as the article implies, they're not exactly going to be absorbing that, anyway.

So it's ridiculous to say that a one-page resume is all you're allowed if you're under 30 and a two-page is magically permissable once you hit that point, because it's not as if anybody in hiring knows your age from a resume. Your resume should be as long as it needs to be to organize pertinent info in an easily readable fashion.


Ehh...I've seen enough resumes to be able to tell how old someone is without any clues...not that I would ever consider age as a factor, but your resume says a lot more about you than what is written there.

[wordsmith]

I absolutely prefer one page. BUT, if your resume justifies it, 2 is fine. Like NewMrs. mentioned, if it is 2 pages of TMI, then it is a bad thing. Usually, people who have 2 or more page resumes have them because they feel the need to list everything they did at previous jobs, and a single job listing takes up half a page. That is inappropriate. For scientific, research, etc. type positions, 2 pages is good, because you want to be able to highlight all of your experience.

I think it completely depends on the scope of the positions you've held, regardless of the field. If you're in a more catch-all position (like every job I've held), rather than ones with strictly delineated and limited duties, you'll have more that's appropriate to highlight, particularly when those duties are pertinent to the position you're seeking. Not everyone has jobs as uncomplicated as "I answered phones and filed stuff from 8-5 and made my boss look good," two bullet points and you've summed up the range of your experience.


Ehh...I've seen enough resumes to be able to tell how old someone is without any clues...not that I would ever consider age as a factor, but your resume says a lot more about you than what is written there.

Well...that's kind of the idea, isn't it? That they'll say more? But the article posted implies that people are flipping through a pile of stuff without really paying attention to much that can't be gleaned from a quick superficial skimming...so how much can you really pick up on without paying attention, to be honest? And what would tell you how old somebody is? I can see how years at a particular employer would give a possible ballpark for a vague range, but you can't really know somebody's age at a cursory glance of a resume.

*And, obviously, you can't make age a factor for consideration, I just brought it up within the context of the arbitrary decision that under thirty is too young for a longer resume, but past thirty, you're magically allowed to have that.

[cache]

I think it completely depends on the scope of the positions you've held, regardless of the field. If you're in a more catch-all position (like every job I've held), rather than ones with strictly delineated and limited duties, you'll have more that's appropriate to highlight, particularly when those duties are pertinent to the position you're seeking. Not everyone has jobs as uncomplicated as "I answered phones and filed stuff from 8-5 and made my boss look good," two bullet points and you've summed up the range of your experience.

I can understand that, but again, if you have more than one page, it better be well justified.



Well...that's kind of the idea, isn't it? That they'll say more? But the article posted implies that people are flipping through a pile of stuff without really paying attention to much that can't be gleaned from a quick superficial skimming...so how much can you really pick up on without paying attention, to be honest? And what would tell you how old somebody is? I can see how years at a particular employer would give a possible ballpark for a vague range, but you can't really know somebody's age at a cursory glance of a resume.

*And, obviously, you can't make age a factor for consideration, I just brought it up within the context of the arbitrary decision that under thirty is too young for a longer resume, but past thirty, you're magically allowed to have that.

I can read a few sentences and tell a lot of things by the way things are worded, organized, etc. Even font, formatting, all that stuff gives clues. Even with just skimming it it is not difficult. I consider one of my best strengths to be my use of logic and deduction to figure things out. I pay attention to the little intangibles that may answer big questions. It is not a science, and I am often wrong, but overall most people's age shows in a resume and cover letter.

[wordsmith]

I can read a few sentences and tell a lot of things by the way things are worded, organized, etc. Even font, formatting, all that stuff gives clues. Even with just skimming it it is not difficult. I consider one of my best strengths to be my use of logic and deduction to figure things out. I pay attention to the little intangibles that may answer big questions. It is not a science, and I am often wrong, but overall most people's age shows in a resume and cover letter.

I can see where this would come into play if it were written unprofessionally (there are juvenile turns of phrase that give some younger writers away, and of course if it has ANY stupid 'netspeak-esque constructions, you know you're dealing with a child of the internet and thus someone of a certain age). But really, shouldn't this speak more to telling whether or not a person can present themselves professionally, than necessarily give away an age?

At the newpaper, I get many items that I have to rewrite, because they're written by somebody whose writing just isn't very polished or pro. But that doesn't mean they're young. Plenty of older people don't have the knack for being well-written.

I have had many people who read my features and news stories, who only know me by byline, meet me in person and say, "Oh...I thought you were older," simply because my writing is mature and professional in tone. Rather funny that we make the assumption that if someone doesn't write well, he or she is young, and if he or she does, older.

[wordsmith]

I can understand that, but again, if you have more than one page, it better be well justified.

Really, EVERYthing on a resume should be well-justified.

[LaFille]

I absolutely prefer one page. BUT, if your resume justifies it, 2 is fine. Like NewMrs. mentioned, if it is 2 pages of TMI, then it is a bad thing. Usually, people who have 2 or more page resumes have them because they feel the need to list everything they did at previous jobs, and a single job listing takes up half a page. That is inappropriate. For scientific, research, etc. type positions, 2 pages is good, because you want to be able to highlight all of your experience.
i know this girl who, fresh out of college, typed up her SIX PAGE RESUME, listing every activity, job, extracurricular and sport she had participated in since high school! and upon receiving suggestions to shorten it, she seriously acted like every single thing was necessary to include to show just how awesome she was. it was annoying.

[spokes]

i know this girl who, fresh out of college, typed up her SIX PAGE RESUME, listing every activity, job, extracurricular and sport she had participated in since high school! and upon receiving suggestions to shorten it, she seriously acted like every single thing was necessary to include to show just how awesome she was. it was annoying.

i think that any potentioal employer should be aware that she can use both a manual (hand held and fixed type) and electric pencil sharpener plus the fact that she is familiar with the operation of mechanical pencils of varying lead diameters. - no er wants to waste valuable production timing training people on this crap.

[wordsmith]

Obviously NOT the type of bullet points to which I refer.

[Kitty]

I don't think any resume should be more than one page. The president at my last company had a one page resume and he had been in the industry for 40+ years.

Also, I'm going after marcomm jobs. You better believe that I need to be able to get my resume down to one page.

[wordsmith]

In the last three jobs I've applied for, they've required an online application to be completed that involves cutting and pasting your resume into a box similar to where you type your message to reply to a QLC thread...so page # (as well as any special formatting, etc.) becomes moot. All that matters is the relevance of info.

[Kitty]

In the last three jobs I've applied for, they've required an online application to be completed that involves cutting and pasting your resume into a box similar to where you type your message to reply to a QLC thread...so page # (as well as any special formatting, etc.) becomes moot. All that matters is the relevance of info.

Ugh! I know. I hate those things. I hate reformating all my bullets and crap after I copy and paste my resume in thsoe boxes.

[wordsmith]

I hate them because I enjoy the aesthetics of my non-Helvetica typeface and the crisp appeal of watermarked vellum.

[Kitty]

I hate them because I enjoy the aesthetics of my non-Helvetica typeface and the crisp appeal of watermarked vellum.

Your resume is on vellum? How transparent?

[wordsmith]

Translucent, really, so not very. My resume is parchment-type.