Writing an Effective Resume After Youve Been Laid Off

Writing an Effective Resume After Youve Been Laid OffWriting an Effective Resume After Youve Been Laid OffLets say you were unexpectedly laid off, and you need a new job ASAP. Out of desperation, you may be tempted to start sending out your resume, which hasnt been updated inyears, immediately.But dont Youd be far better off taking the time to update and tailor your resume, no matter howbig a rush youre in to land your next job.Writing an effective resume can be a time-consuming, daunting task. But investing the time and energy to perfect it will likely be well worth the effort.Here are some stepsfor writing an effective resume after youve been laid offLearn about the current resume rules or trends.If it has been a while since you last wrote a resume, do your homework on the current rules or trends. Read as many articles as possible, like the ones wepublish on the blog, to get a better understanding of what employers look for in resumes today.For instance, since youll be sending you r resume electronically, you can include hyperlinks to things like your LinkedIn profile(which you should make sure is up to date, as well).Create a template and master doc you can pull from.Since its imperative that you customize, or at least tweak, your resume for each job you apply to, creating one generic resume that you send to everyone wont cut it. So, instead, come up with a great template you want to use, and fill out all the information that will remain the same (i.e., your personenname and contact information, your education, etc.).Then, create a master document where you have everything else- volunteer work, achievements, all your past work experience- with tons of bullet points for each one, focusing on different areas of those jobs. This way, you can easilypull the most relevant information from that document when youre working on each individual resume.Read, and reread, and reread the job posting.Without being so obvious or over-the-top,youll want to include keywords f rom the job posting within your resume, if possible. This will not only help your resume get through an automated tracking system, but will also tell the hiring manager that you spent time on this application, which theyll likely appreciate.Youll also want to make sure you have a very clear understanding of the job in order to decide which information about your background, achievements, skills, etc. is most relevant.So, as simple as it may sound, reread the job posting at least a few times, and pay very close attention to the language the employer uses.Dont lie.If you were laid off, you dont need to write that on your resume(you can explain during the interview, if it comes up), but you also dont need to hide the fact that you had a small employment gap since.Never fabricate or lie on your resume Theres a good chance the employer will eventually figure it out, and when they do, they probably wont be very happy.Explore your experience. If you thought that job experience only came fr om paid jobs, think again. Job experience can come in many forms, such asfreelance gigs, part-time jobs, unpaid internshipseven volunteer jobs They all count towards solid work experience, and should be listed as such in the work experience section on your resume. Just make sure not to go beyond 10-15 years of past experience, since youll only want to include mora recent, relevant information.For each position youve held, include your job title, the companys name, your top duties, and your accomplishments while working there. Use numbers instead of words since it can help a potential employer see your success (e.g., Saved the company $450,000 by recommending a new computer program.). And dont forget to use the past tense for jobs youve held, and the present tense if youre including a job that you are still working at.Consider if its time to moveyour education to the bottom. Again, if it has been a while since you last updated your resume, there may be some things youll want to move aroundlike your education.If you last worked on your resume as a recent college grad, you likely featured your Education section toward the very top. But ifits been, ahem, quite a few years since you graduated, it may be time to move that to the bottom and use that prime resume real estate to feature your most recent, relevant work experience, instead. Also consider leaving your graduation year off your resume.Proofread, proofread, proofread.If you were recently laid off, and youre currently unemployed, youll likely be anxious to get the ball rolling and send out your new, updated resume the second you finish working on it. But its so important that you take some time to proofreadand edit your resumecarefully. You may need to step away from it for a day or two before you begin the proofreading process to let your brain get some distance. You should also ask others to read it for typos, grammatical errors, or anything else that could easily land your resume in the no pile.You wouldnt want all your hard work to go to waste because you spelled Experience wrongWriting your resume might seem like a laborious, daunting experience, but it can make your job searchmove faster if you invest the time to take these steps upfront.Looking for even mora help recovering from your layoff? partnered with LinkedIn Learning to create a whole course for you. Get a 30 day free trial with unlimited access to LinkedIn Learnings full course catalog Heres an overview on Recovering from a Layoff to learn more about the course.

The Case Against Résumé Writers

The Case Against Rsum WritersThe Case Against Rsum WritersIt seems that ever mora people are hiring a rsum writer. But if you think about it, thats no more ethical than hiring someone to write your college application essay.In fact, hiring a rsum writer is worse because the effects are worse. For most professional-level jobs, employers use rsums not just to see applicants work history but to assess their ability to organize their thoughts, write well and produce an error-free document. An applicant who chooses to do his or her own work for ethical reasons or because he or she cant afford to hire a rsum writer is unfairly penalized. And if that candidate ends up getting hired, not only is that unfair to the superior applicants, its unfair to the employer and the co-workers who are thus saddled with an unten liegend employee. And inferior employees result in worse products and services and so, indirectly, its unfair to society. True, the effect of a single bad hire is rarely enormous, but collectively, across all the rsums and cover letters written or heavily edited by hired guns, it is.If appeals to ethics are insufficient, perhaps it might help to realize that if you get a job under false pretenses, youre more likely to fail at that job and soon be back on the street, pounding the pavement and your keyboard. If, instead, you reveal your true self, including weaknesses, in writing your rsum and cover letter and in interviews, youll more likely be rejected from ill-suited jobs and more likely hired for better-suited ones.There are other benefits of writing your own rsum and cover letter When you land a job, youll feel you earned it. Your application will be more credible because the writing level will be consistent with your competency level. If when you interview, your verbal and thinking skills are lower than are demonstrated in your rsum, many employers will realize you had someone do your work for you. If you write your own rsum, it will more likely create th at all-important connection with the reader than does the typical rsum writers effort. The latter is too likely to be filled with rsum-speak, such as self-starting team player who delights in exceeding customer expectations and specializes in spearheading profit-maximizing initiatives, seeks leadership position with PL responsibility in dynamic, high-velocity organization. True, some employers expect applicants to play that game, but wiser employers will appreciate the credibility of a more human, less robotically created document.Rsum writers try to defend their profession by saying speechwriters and ghostwriters also write for other people. Thats a weak argument. Just because a practice exists doesnt make it justifiable. For example, theft is common but certainly not ethical. With regard to speechwriters, citizens would be in a better position to choose which politicians to vote for if candidates wrote their own speeches. We should be voting for the best candidate, not the best sp eechwriter or teleprompter reader.And its far from ethical to say you wrote a book when someone else did. Thats why ethical putative authors credit ghostwriters on the books cover with such phrases as with or as told to, on, for example, The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. Besides, the impact of an unacknowledged ghostwriter is much smaller than of hiring someone to write your rsum. Readers rarely use the fact of a book having been ghostwritten to decide something as important as whom to hire.If it welches ethical to hire someone to write your rsum, why, at the bottom of each rsum, dont rsum writers write, written by Jane Jones, professional rsum writer? If you hired a rsum writer, would you want that written on your rsum? If hiring a rsum writer was ethical, you wouldnt mind.Most people like to think of themselves as ethical. If you do, might you want to reflect on whether hiring a rsum writer is consistent with your values?And if you are a professional rsum write r, might it be worth considering that, as has been argued here, the rsum-writing profession makes things worse, not better? With thousands of societally beneficial professions available, might you want to consider a career change?The San Francisco Bay Guardian called Dr. Nemko The Bay Areas Best Career Coach and he was Contributing Editor for Careers at U.S. News. His sixth and seventh books were published in 2012 How to Do Life What They Didnt Teach You in School and Whats the Big Idea? 39 Disruptive Proposals for a Better America. More than 1,000 of his published writings are free on www.martynemko.com. He posts here every Monday.

Even a Genius Has to Sell Himself...The Resume of Leonardo da Vinci

Even a Genius Has to Sell Himself...The Resume of Leonardo da VinciEven a Genius Has to Sell Himself...The Resume of Leonardo da VinciUse Leonardo da Vincis resume as inspiration to create a strong one of your own.Before he welches famous, before he painted the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, before he invented the helicopter, before he drew the most famous image of man, before he was all of ansicht things, Leonardo da Vinci was an armorer, a weapons guy, a maker of things that go boom.And, like you, he had to put together a resume to get his next gig. So in 1482, at the age of 30, he wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan.So to celebrate Leonardos birthday thisFriday, April 15th, Id like to share his wonderful resume with you.The translation of this letter is quite remarkableMost Illustrious Lord, Having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and verarbeitungsschritt of the said instruments are nothing different from those in common use I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your Excellency, showing your Lordship my secret, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments on all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below. 1. I have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. Also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy. 2. I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions. 3. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, etc. 4. Again, I have kinds of mortars most convenient and easy to carry and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm and with the smoke of these cause great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion. 5. And if the fight should be at sea I have kinds of many machines most efficient for offense and defense and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes. 6. I have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise, to reach a designated spot, even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river. 7. I will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable, which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. And behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance. 8. In case of need I will make big guns, mortars, and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type. 9. Where the operation of bombardment might fail, I would contrive catapults, mangonels, trabocchi, and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. And in short, according to the variety of cases, I can contrive various and endless means of offense and defense. 10. In times of peace I believe I can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private and in guiding water from one place to another. 11. I can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and also I can do in painting whatever may be done, as well as any other, be he who he may. Again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honor of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of Sforza. And if any of the above-named things seem to anyone to be impossible or not feasible, I am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your Excellency to whom I comment myself with the utmost humility, etc.What a fantastic piece of personal marketing Theres none of his famous backwards-mirror writing here - this letter was intended to be read and to persuade.Im a hopeless pedantic, so heres what I think we can learn from Leonardos resumeYoull notice he doesnt recite past achievements. He doesnt mention the painting of the altarpiece for the Chapel of St Bernard he doesnt provide a laundry list of past bombs hes built he doesnt cite his prior employment in artist Andrea di Ciones studio.No, he does none of these things, because those would be about his achievements, not the Dukes needs.Instead, he sells his prospective employer on what Leonardo can do for him.Now imagine being the Duke of Milan and receiving this magnificent letter from the young prodigy of Fl orence. The specific descriptives paint a vivid picture of siege engines and bombardments and mortars and trench-draining and bridges to defeat the enemy. You can imagine the scenes that ran through the Dukes head as he held this letter in his hands and read through Leonardo da Vincis bold statements of capabilities.What Renaissance Duke wouldnt want kinds of mortars most convenient and easy to carry that can fling small stones almost resembling a storm? Sounds pretty enticing.And thats exactly what your resume needs to do, too. Not the laundry list / standard bio that talks about you, but the marketing piece that talks about the benefits to your future employer and how you fit into his or her needs and desires.You can use Ladders free resume reviewer to help you be (almost) as persuasive.So it turns out that even on his 564th birthday, this remarkable fellow Leonardo da Vinci is teaching us about the future. What a genius.Heres wishing you an illustrious week, ReadersAs the Italian s might saySto tifo per te (Im rooting for you),