Power Statements: Using The Right Words-And Figures–For Real Impact

What feelings do you have when you see a prospective employer going through your resume? Perhaps you’ll have thoughts like “I hope he sees my good points” or “She really should see the things I’ve accomplished in my previous work” or even “Why isn’t he checking my last page?” For many jobseekers, what’s in his or her resume plays a very large part in convincing the prospective employer to either hire or not hire him or her.One of the best ways to make your resume more appealing-and more convincing-to prospective employers is by using a Power Statement. Power Statements are taglines that are rich in words or phrases that make a very strong statement to the employer about an applicant’s suitability for the job. Like keyword results that spring up from an online search engine, a well-crafted Power Statement utilizes strong words that make an impact on the employer when read.

For instance, if you’re applying for a managerial position, which of the two statements do you think has more impact? This…

Did general managerial responsibilities such as making reports, helped improve sales and sales networking, and coordinating department matters

Or this?

In 6 months, increased department efficiency by 60% and product sales by 50%, resulting in additional US$2.5 million in profit and heightened consumer interest for nearly one calendar year

It’s pretty obvious that your attention would be riveted to the second statement, simply because not only does the statement show that the applicant accomplished much, but also how he or she accomplished that much. Notice also how simple figures such as “60%” and “$2.5 million” help make such an impact.

Here are more examples of great Power Statements:

Created an employeee retention strategy that decreased employee attrition rate from 70% to 38% and reducing costly training seminars from three times a month to just once a month.

Helped generate an additional $45,000 - 75,000 worth of sales every month for the first two quarters of the year through streamlined product networking and aggressive direct customer selling.

Implemented monthly team meetings that helped target emerging urban markets which made the company recruit 100 more direct sellers and 60 more commercial distributors.

Increased the company’s Web presence by updating the corporate website, which in turn generated as much as 1,200 visits daily in a three-month-period.

Reorganized the entire department to become more cost-efficient, resulting in a 50% decrease in company expenses and increasing the annual advertising budget by 40%.

Are you ready to make your own Power Statement? Here are some helpful tips to get you started:

Always put in figures and numbers - Figures and numbers are powerful ways to convey good impressions. They are more direct and straight-to-the-point, immediately quantifying your quality. Yes, in this case, quantity is a sign of quality!

Use action words - These include words like increased, resulted in, implemented, organized, supervised, developed, devised, directed, achieved, etc. These kinds of words create a particularly positive mood and are the familiar words one would expect from success-oriented people.

Keep it to one statement - Avoid using two or more sentences when describing one particular job or job accomplishment. As a rule: one sentence alone should encapsulate your statement. However, you can use different Power Statements in describing different jobs, though.

Position it in the first page - As much as possible, your Power Statement/s should be already on the first page of the resume. The general rule is, the more important information should be in the less page, with other information of lesser value on the succeeding pages. That’s because the potential interest level of an employer is at its highest when he or she is reading the first page.

Limit the number of statements - If you’ve been working for 20 years already and have had more than 8 jobs, you really don’t need to mention all those jobs you’ve had and make statements about each one. The rule is, the less the clutter, the better.

Avoid exaggerating - You’re point is to impress the employer, but try not to make a mountain out of a molehill when describing your past achievements. For instance, you can say that you helped your previous company by increasing employee efficiency, but don’t say that because of you alone, the company became more efficient.

New Media Resume

Technology is moving forward and progressing. We should do so, too. One way to do that is to upgrade our resume. As in major upgrade. Like when you are installing new hardware in your outdated PC.

There are many kinds of electronic resume. It is usually based on the storage device since this also determines the possible amount of data you could put in. There are floppy disk, flash drive, mini disk, and in cases where you need to, in compact disc or in DVD.

Other than that, there are resumes where you post online. Besides attaching your word processor resume in job bulletin boards and job websites, there are also interactive resumes like video resume, flash animation-based resume, website resume, and others. You could even use your social networking profile as your electronic resume.

An advantage of having a new media resume is that it is virtually portable. Your job hunting has become paperless and if you do everything online, saves you the hassle of travel. Another plus is that through technology, it helps you make your resume more appealing.

Just like your usual resume black ink on white paper, content should be organized and be in chronological order. Emphasize your strong points. Since you have the luxury of unlimited space, you could provide more information. You could also provide a variety of means of contacting you by giving out links to your social networking profiles, instant messenger usernames, and email address.

You could also integrate different forms of electronic resumes into one presentation. For example, you could embed a video of yourself, giving out a brief bio, some of your work experience, and your future needs and expectations.

For the artist in you, you could also put in flash games or include your portfolio as a slide show. This works well for programmers, graphics artists, and web developers.

Finally, the web helps out in distribution. Put the URL of your web resume in your email and forum signature, IM status, job websites, virtually everywhere where you could leave a mark.

Basic Resume Design and Layout

In creating your resume, whether doing one for the first time or simply spicing up a template, you should make sure it would stand out from the crowd. But before you go crazy on your word processor’s word art, here are some reminders on how to pull off an attention-grabbing resume in plain black and white.

Since I mentioned it, limit font styles to two at the most. Recommended fonts to use are the ‘basic’ fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Courier, Verdana, or Georgia. Put variety by using bigger sizes in the headers and using bold and underlines. But do remember to not overdo it.

Font size should range from ten to 20. Adjust according to preference and readability.

In the header, your name should stand out by using a bigger font and not just making it bold. Make sure that your contact information is updated.

Next thing to remember is to emphasize your most recent achievements. If you are fresh out of school, put up your educational background. If you have had a considerable amount of actual work experience, it is better to highlight your employment history.

There is no need to put in all of your information. Create a specific resume for a particular job or field you want to go in to. For example, if you want to try out computer graphics and writing, produce a different resume for the former which stresses your related experience in computers and graphics and compose another one which accents your writing projects.

Make your resume easy to read. Unless it is a unique job title or job description, you only need bullet points or to enumerate your previous work. Again, put in front the most recent.

Awards and certifications should follow. This also includes seminars and symposiums related to the work you are applying to. Then mention extra-curricular work or other hobbies or activities that you do to show that you are a well-rounded person.

If there is still space, write miscellaneous information about yourself that you think would be needed by your employer. Limit your resume to three pages max. Better to limit yourself to two pages, if not, one.

To those who want to include a photo, attach the image by pasting it on the soft copy rather than stapling or gluing it manually. Use a recent photo. Size 1 x 1 inch is all right, although you may also use 2 x 2 inches or passport size.

A suggestion is to put the picture at the bottom right end at the last page of the document rather than at the top right in the first page. Besides not messing up the first page layout, it is a conversation piece on why you have your picture at the final page.

Putting the ‘Um’ in Your Resume

It was meant to be a joke, but there is some truth to it that the resume is the closest anyone would be to becoming perfect. No one would dare put an outright lie – although I know someone who almost got away with it, if only an HR person did not call us up in our school organization and verified if a certain someone was a remember – but how close to the truth are you actually?

By this I mean how much would you put in to emphasize some points in your resume. As a disclaimer, this is neither about stretching the truth nor exaggerating a task you did as part of your work experience. This is merely about accentuating the good parts in order to highlight them.

This is the nifty trick of using clever euphemisms to pad your resume. This somehow involves clever wit and creative wordplay. Again, let me remind you that no lies were used in creating this resume.

The very obvious area of the resume where a little figure of speech could be put into play is at the job description. Being bland and narrative does not work to some. Besides, how well you put it could give you some brownie points come interview time.

An example of this would be to depict one of your tasks as “ensuring quality customer service” when you actually mean that you add “Would you like fries with that?” as an auto response after getting the order or handing out a free apple pie to an irate customer because your companion fouled up his order.

Another place in the resume where you could play around are your job titles. It helps if you officially had that title, then it would not be hard for you to justify why you were a content analyst in your last job when what you did was check the layout, design, and actual content of webpages before they get uploaded. Since being an editor usually invokes thoughts of correcting spelling and grammatical errors, it would be better for your standing if you also have a more all-encompassing job title that connotes the diversity of the work that you did.

Fancifying your resume might also mean breaking the monotony of what is written. Sure, the last five jobs you had were all copywriting, headwriting, and freelance writing. Then why not put in something similar yet something different? What are synonyms for anyway? Put your writing skills into good use, especially if you are an one professionally.

From there, you could coin something new and hip like content provider. If you are doing it on the web, adding something like conceptualizer and composer of online digital content would have that futuristic techie feel although technically, you are still a writer deep inside.

Another idea and also another concept of resume composition is to itemize your tasks instead of position. This works well for the renaissance man. Instead of writing down plain old production assistant, you can enumerate the different things you did as PA like researcher, analyst, copy editor, and what have you.

For those who are trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel for any skill where they were not academically trained to specialize in, one could state instead the number of units related to the field you want to get in to. It is a plus if you have had additional training or employment somewhat close to the job you are currently applying for.

Turning one small skill set into something that you want to be perceived as have been doing for so long is quite a challenge. Just be sure to deliver if you are asked to. For example, dealing with people from different countries because of circumstance might make you an incidental diplomat. If you feel you could hack it fulltime, then give it a try.

In essence, it is about making things sound better than they usually do and bringing out every drop of goodness from an experience. Or maybe I am just stretching it. But, at least, you get the drift.

Your Resume and Fonts

One thing I learned from a class I took in college is that the fonts that you use determines who you are. For our homework for that lesson, we were asked to print out our name using a font that typifies us. Bonus points if we could also do the same with the names of our family.

That being said, I am a Verdana person. Still, I did not put much notice into it. I just like using Verdana. It must have been its slender lines when it is in its normal font face and how it fattens up when in bold that appealed to me. It is not as formal looking as a serif font like Times New Roman and it is not as irregular as Comic Sans. Where am I getting these descriptions from?

On to the topic, the font that you use could give the HR person perusing your resume an idea of your personality and if you are a right fit for the job.

Standard practice in the corporate setting is to go for the formal fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, and Verdana. There is no actual research yet with regards to people’s perception of fonts used in resumes, but the closest would be is the Washington State University study of people’s reaction to fonts used as marketing tools. According to the research, it is a safe bet to go for Grade Six fonts, like the ones mentioned above since they evoke a feeling of comfort.

The study also shows that there are certain fonts that can be appropriate in certain fields. Grade One fonts are feminine, and thus can be utilized in women-dominated jobs. Grade Two fonts, on the other hand, are what are called the ‘edgy’ fonts, thus they can be put in by job-seekers whose professions are more right-brain inclined. Grade Four fonts are more masculine and more apt for stereotypically manly jobs.

Another point to consider is whether the resume would be submitted online or needs to be a hardcopy. Sans serif fonts are perceived to be easier on the eyes when viewed from a PC monitor and are also more contemporary.

It also helps if the font you use is appropriate to the field you are trying to get into. It would seem odd if you would be submitting a resume in good old TNR if you are applying for a design position. Now that is called out of place.

Font size and layout also matter in the resume, but these are better reserved for another topic. As with the content, how your resume is presented is as important a factor whether you will get that job you are aspiring for or if you have to try your luck somewhere. Or if you have to construct a new resume altogether.

Writing A Curriculum Vitae

So you’ve just started to consider working part-time but the company that you want to apply to is asking for a curriculum vitae. This is one of the things that you’d wish you hadn’t been assigned to because you have absolutely no knowledge of how to go about doing one. As a student, your job is to notify the hiring manager that your education, experiences as well as attitudes toward the work that you are applying for is the right fit. The curriculum vitae says all of that in a few sentences. However, it is imperative that you do that immediately through your CV or else, the attention could be lost along with the working opportunity. This should orient you about the different parts of your CV and what you should do with them.

CV Summary
This is the part where you summarize the different key skills as well as attributes that you have. This part should be able to paint a very positive image of you and indicate the different strengths that you would like to highlight. All of these should be highly relevant to the position that you are applying for. What recruiters are looking for in this particular section is truthfulness and the right skill set.

Major Achievements
This section should include around six to seven major achievements that would be directly linked to the job that you are applying for. It is very significant that you choose achievement which the recruiter will be able to use when he or she considers you for the position

Work Experience
One of the things that recruiters are looking for is an attitude of industriousness. If they see that you’ve been able to work before applying for this job, they will easily consider you because they know that you know what it’s like to be at the other end of the workforce. You may start identifying your most recent position and maybe cite backwards from there.

Education / Qualifications
This is a must and a given in all of the things that you will be submitting to your potential employer. You might want to also work backwards from the most recent level of education that you have attained.

These are just some of the given details that hiring managers and recruiters look for whenever they look at a curriculum vitae. If you take time to do your properly, then it will benefit you in the long run.

Keeping It Private

If you’ve grown accustomed to writing resumes that are haphazardly done, you might want to think it through before doing that to your curriculum vitae. It is very important that you ensure the credibility and the neatness of your CV as this is one of the most formal documents that your prospective employer will read about you. This particular document is one of the things that you will need to polish until it is constructed perfectly. That being said, you need a lot of things to include in it as it should be thorough in its entirety.At the risk of sounding very careful, aside from being thorough, one should also be able to know exactly what not to include in a curriculum vitae. This is for the purpose of being brief and concise in the details that you want your prospective employer to read. If your curriculum vitae isn’t properly made, you will most probably forfeit your opportunity to be considered because there will be some things that the academic institution or employer did not approve of. So in order to become concise in your curriculum vitae, here is a list of things that you may want to take out before sending it to whomever you will be sending it out to. Your private information is one of the few things you need to leave out.

One should remember that he or she should always be careful of what they put in their CV. Applicants should always leave out their age however their date of birth is allowable. Some of the other things that you should strive to filter out of the resume templates are your marital status, age, weight, height, health, sex and race. Some of the facts that are presented in these areas are irrelevant and they contribute nothing to overall qualifications that might be needed for the job. It is vital that you take all of these information out of your curriculum vitae simply because some of the information here might lead to discriminatory or prejudiced decisions.

The manifestations of biases and prejudices could be in the form of not considering the employee because of them or by simply hiring them because they indicate in the CV that they are of this race or of this sex. So it is very important that applicants to academic institutions and organizations have equal chances in entering by basis of their qualifications.–nothing more, nothing less.

What’s In A CV Part I

A lot of you have heard about how important it is to pass a properly-constructed CV but you may not know what it is you need to put in it. In order to craft a well-designed and impressive CV, one thing that you have to remember is that it should be done in a very ordered and methodical way. This is for your prospective employer’s sake so he won’t have to be swimming through the different pages of your curriculum vitae just so that he can find something in your work experience to reference.
The term “curriculum vitae” means “course of life”. Therefore, if one person would submit a CV, that would literally entail the different activities that he or she took until the present. The pages that you’re going to be submitting should essentially list down the different things that will convince your prospective employer how well-suited you are with the company or institution that you want to be part of. It will give them a blueprint and a concrete basis for hiring you—should they choose to.
A curriculum vitae would most probably be an original thing which you have to create simply because you have different experiences and learnings from the past years. During the time that you have been studying as well as working, you have been able to amass a great deal of experience through various projects, jobs and perhaps further education. These will be one of the times that you need to properly format all of these information in order to present the best case possible for your potential employer. In any case, all well-written CVs have at least some basic information in them
The section of the CV where you put your personal details is one that should be always the shortest—no more than 1/4 of the page. This is to ensure that you’re easily reached either by phone or email or maybe by traditional means such as postal mail. You should also include a long-term home address as well as dates of availability. You never know when they’ll hire you on the spot. Always keep your email address short and simple and most of all, professional! Try to make one if all you’ve got are the weird-sounding ones.
Just remember that this is one of the most professional documents that your future employer will be reading about you so you best not mess this up. It’s better to err on the side of caution and ask for the opinion of a person who’s already submitted a well-crafted CV or maybe if no one is available, research for yourself on the web. It will pay off when your employer says that sweet-sounding “Yes”.

Bridging The Gaps

There will be times when in the process of writing your CV, you might notice that there might have been out-of-work gaps in your timeline. For an applicant, it might be a very glaring factor in your curriculum vitae. However, it is not as big a deal by itself if there is a legitimate reason for it—and in most cases, there always will be.
If you actually didn’t waste away 6 months of your life by bumming around instead of looking for a job, you wouldn’t have to worry about this part of your CV. However, some people might not be as comfortable with it because it seems as if those were the times that you were unproductive. In a sense, unproductive behavior is tantamount to failure in most minds. This is, however, untrue. Most of the people who have out-of-work gaps usually hide or close these gaps in order for them to a more “presentable” curriculum vitae. This is for those gaps that could be just a couple of months long or around half a year at most. But what about those glaring gaps that you seriously cannot hide?
One of the things that you could highlight is an opportunity that you pursued during that long out-of-work gap. The trick here is to make it seem that your out-of-work gap was an opportunity for you to pursue different opportunities that could have adequately substituted work for you. You could probably explain that you were self-employed at that time when you did not have any work. If there was any opportunities, you could probably tell them that you were trying to set up a business for a friend or a relative. Be sure that you did go through that particular setting up of a business and don’t just invent something on the spot. Most, if not all, interviewers would be eager to have you explain what that type of business was about and how you were able to manage your responsibilities there. Be sure that you know the specific details of the project so you don’t get have any difficulty in answering the questions. If they ask you why you are seeking employment this time around, you could effectively say that the business is doing well now and being managed by someone else so you figured that you could already start on your chosen career path.
Out-of-work gaps are not as hard to explain provided that you have something substantial to explain. If you really did not manage to find the right type of job for you, then it’s best that you come up with the truth rather than planting mistrust in your prospective employer by sugar-coating what you say with lies.

Creating A View-Worthy Video Resume (CyberCV)

If you’ve been in the job-hunting phase for the earlier part of your life, then you probably are familiar with how to make a resume and what to put in it. Even though there are a lot of ways to craft your own resume, there is still one way to do it—tastefully and creatively.
With the advent of Internet video, one can just about broadcast anything online. This is just one of the ways that people are trying to get them hired by different companies. Because people nowadays are more in tune with technology, job applicants have used this to their advantage. People are now composing “video resumes”.
These types of resumes are fairly easy to do yet they are straight to the point. There is an increased interest in videos with the presence of broadband Internet usage as well as a marked enthusiasm for those people who are video sharing. To other jobseekers, after listing down all of their accomplishments and contributions to their previous companies, a video resume might just be the final nail in the coffin that will get them hired.
Take a skeptic for example, whose job-hunting efforts did not pay off. However when the person got a digital camera and got creative, it was a start of something unique. And it definitely caught the eye of her prospective employers, who by the way, is now her current employer. All that was done was a two-minute video that highlighted her good points in her paper resume as well as the answers to some common interview questions. It was straightforward, it was no-nonsense and it dealt with some of the questions that most employers would ask in an interview.
Even though it would be weird at first, you should definitely try doing this for yourself because it will ultimately catch the attention of the hiring manager of the company you’re applying for and it will enable them to see your personality which will ultimately shine through the course of the video. It’s quick, painless and you even won’t have to go through the jitters as your answering the supposedly difficult questions that they might throw at you during the actual interview. It gives you more time to prepare in answering their questions and it is done in a creative, eye-catching way.
There is a word of caution that job-hunters should remember: always have someone get an objective point of view of your resume. You might be so proud of what you’ve captured on video and forget that professionals are going to take a look at what you have to offer. There was a case of a person who submitted a video resume of him dancing with scantily-clad women. The video eventually got out and he has now become a very popular example of how not to do a video resume. If you’re trying out different stunts and look more like a wild man than a businessman, then your video might just be better left in your hard drive rather than have it launched on the Internet for the whole world to see.