CV Tips and Job Hunting Tips
Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm recently posted a great guest post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog about writing a CV. With so many people currently looking for jobs in Dubai, I’ve included the most illustrative and universal section was his list of likes and dislikes for CV content:
Here’s What I Like:
Here’s What I Don’t Like:
- A direct style: use blunt, short words. Most resumes are scanned, not read.
- Looks: like a middle-aged man’s apartment. Nice and tidy.
- Objective: be direct; your objective is the job you’re applying for.
- Verbs ending in “d”: shipped, launched, built, sold.
- Results: not responsibilities or experience — but what responsibilities and experience helped you accomplish.
- Bullets: 3 or 4 results per job.
- Numbers: increased traffic from Google 230%, decreased ad spending 40%.
- Grades: your GPA, even if it was ten years ago, if it’s over 3.5.
- Reviews: ratings from your last review, especially useful if you worked for a tough grader like Microsoft
- Honors: we’ll interview an employee-of-the-quarter, every time.
- Promotions: if your role changes, highlight that as two jobs.
- LinkedIn endorsements: persuasive, even from your friends; excerpted & linked.
- A link to your blog: a blog gives you online street cred. For some, it is your resume .
- Themes: whether you care about customer service or agile software, tell a consistent story from job to job.
- Hobbies: I always want to meet people with fun hobbies. And that’s all a resume is: a request for a meeting. At Plumtree, we received a resume from a Playboy model. A colleague forwarded it to me with a note reading, “I’ve never asked you for anything beforeÖ” I feel the same way about cyclists.
- Two pages, max: if you’re under 30, one page.
- Anything you did that showed initiative or passion. Eagle Scout. Math Olympics.
- Email to the CEO: it takes chutzpah & resourcefulness to go straight to the top. The email address is easy to guess.
- Customization: tailor your resume & especially the cover letter to the job.
- Completed degrees: I’ve hired plenty of folks a few credits shy of a degree. Some were great; many couldn’t finish what they started. If you have time now, finish your degree.
- Gmail address: or your own domain. Nothing says “totally out of it” like an AOL address.
- Churn: stints at two or more employers of less than two years.
- List of generic skills: just show what you actually accomplished at each job.
- Typos or misspellings: About half the resumes I get are addressed to “RedFin.” For the other words, spell-check!
- Photos: my favorite was of a candidate in tennis whites with a racket.
- “Proven”: as in “proven leadership.” We all still have something to prove.
- Printed resumes: email a Word document, web page or PDF.
- Buzzwords: search bots love it, actual people don’t.
- Wordiness: yes, this is the pot calling the kettle black…
This list is similar to the points our team discussed with unemployed job seekers at our recent CV consultation sessions for the unemployed to help them land jobs in Dubai. Certainly include LinkedIn recommendations, but the beauty with Bayt.com is that you can get recommendations right through our system. Just look for the Recommendations section at the bottom of your completed CV. Also, this region likes photos on CVs, so don’t by shy.
Also, Likehacker recently had another good post on the Top 10 Tools for Landing a Better Job. Here are my favorites from the list:
7. Leave without burning any bridges
If you have a great estimate of exactly how many seconds are left until you can leave, it can be really tempting to email all@youroldcompany.com with exactly how liberated you feel. But if your dream job doesn’t turn out quite so ethereal, or you ever find yourself needing a tip, lead, reference, or maybe even someone to hire at your new digs, you’ll wish you’d kept things civil. To fake it until you make it, crib from eMurse’s sample resignation letters, read from wikiHow’s guide to resigning gracefully, and keep in touch over social networks like Facebook with the co-workers in the same realm you find yourself in. You never know when one of them might hear about a sudden job opening; alternately, you can ditch the civility and think about offering cold, hard cash rewards for job leads.
6. Walk into your interview without fear
From covering an oldie-but-goodie list like the 50 common interview questions and answers to mastering a few conversational Jedi mind tricks—how you prep for your job interview depends on how geeky you want to get. If you bore even yourself with your answers to 1950s HR Manual standards like “What’s your greatest weakness,” consider turning the interview around by talking about your first 100 days on the job, or tell the story of your career, and future. If you managed to escape without squirting mustard on the interviewer’s shirt, dash off a quick, effective thank-you note. For more ideas, visit our tips for talking your way into a job.
4. Use search-friendly words; skip vague generalities
Some large-scale employers deposit every single resume and CV into a giant, OCR-scanned database; others merely search out candidates on job sites using specific word criteria. Either way, having the right words on your resume prevents being cut in the first round like some warbly-voiced would-be Idol contestant. On the other hand, the humans who actually read through your cover letter, resume, and application want to see real numbers and results, not Career Services blather. So take a good long look at your text and kill at least six words from your resume.
2. Build your personal brand with a blog
By and large, no one-person blog is going to replace a salary, but it can help you find a new source of income. Blogger Adam Darowski believes the blog is the new resume, and at least one Lifehacker editor is really glad he built his up to help land a new gig. Write and post material related to the field you work in, and generally work it as if you were already employed in it. Your resume and clips can spell out that you’re a great with Photoshop, but your blog’s slideshows will definitely sell your clients or employers a lot more emphatically.
1. Write a killer resume for a new career path
With the economy lurching about like an over-tired Capoeira enthusiast, we recently decided it was a good time to look at taking the first step toward escaping one’s endangered (or just plain boring) career for another, no matter what your experience level. We rounded up our favorite tips from our own resume posts and experience, and talked to a career specialist about how to score a great gig, even if you lack the supposedly mandatory “minimum requirements.” Check it out, pull out the heavy-stock paper, and get to writing.
The main point in all of the above is that your CV is not a record of the past, but an advertisement for your present and future value for a company.
And you could always get really creative with your CV.
Resource Bayt.com