Writing a good resume, representing oneself and one’s capabilities is very stressful. Some people find it hard to promote themselves, others can’t find the right words. There are lots of tools, services and books to help write a resume, but which one is the most effective? Is writing the best resume effective at finding a job? Is one resume enough? In the olden days resumes were static and cover letters were unique for the specific job application, today its more common to customize a resume for each job application.
Keywords and resume styles change over time and by region and industry, it is hard for an applicant to know the proper style and keywords to use in a resume today.
Traditional resumes
There are lots of books written about how to write the best resume. Amazon sells over 20,000 resume self help books. Traditionally people use self help books like the best selling “What color is your parachute?” by Richard N. Bolles, or the 19,999 other resume books sold on Amazon. Other forms of help are college career centers for new graduates, Resume builder websites and software, online job sites like Indeed unemployment and vocational counselors, professional job coaches and LinkedIn. In the “What color is your parachute?” book, the author stresses finding the “the person with the authority to hire you” and understanding what one is best at. In LinkedIn one’s profile effectively becomes one’s resume, and one’s LinkedIn Connections become their network. LinkedIn is a very powerful tool, it helps the job seeker use his network to find key contacts in potential employers.
It has become common practice to tailor one’s resume to the job, this makes the applicant a better match to the job specifications. One of the problems with LinkedIn is it does not allow the applicant to adjust their job application to the job position, as the applicant’s LinkedIn profile is somewhat public and can’t be tailored for individual viewers.
For the job search the Internet has helped the search tremendously. In the olden days one would scan newspaper classifieds to find jobs that matched what they were looking for. Now a job applicant can find jobs that match their skills easily on many job websites, like Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn and Glassdoor. A huge bonus to these websites is the ability to add job alert agents, when a new job is being offered on the website that matches the search criteria, the website will send an email to the job searcher.
Intelligent resumes
The modern resume builder website lets a job seeker build a resume by pointing and clicking, each section gets built using the latest keywords are added, as well as professional language. A job seeker can build a resume sample at the Glever website to see a modern resume builder in action.
