Career Confidant: Job Insight from Dave

Resume Dilemma: Too Young

Having a hard time getting your foot in the door for interviews because you're young and inexperienced? Employers may view older workers as more stable, mature, reliable and skilled than younger workers. Put yourself in the employer's shoes. Would you hire yourself? Why? What do you offer that other candidates may not? Your job is to convince employers that they would benefit by hiring you. These tips will help your resume stand out from the crowd.

Use Youth to Your Advantage

What you lack in experience, you make up for in passion, desire and motivation to succeed. Let this passion shine through your resume; employers want to hire workers who are enthusiastic about their career choice. If you can take on less desirable tasks or work shifts, say so in your resume.

Overcome Objections

Write a list of objections that employers might have about hiring you. Next to each objection, write down why the objection isn't valid. Then incorporate the reasons why an employer should give you a chance in your summary statement.

Prove You're Responsible

If you've ever been in a position of responsibility, provide details and examples on your resume to show you are reliable and trustworthy. These examples could be from work experience, volunteer activities, school projects, internships, hobbies and sports. Write about leadership responsibilities that you've had and completion of assignments for which you were selected over your peers.

Some Helpful Hints on Resumes

   

Ok, Resume t-shirts are a terribly clever idea but I wouldn't recommend wearing them to the interview.

This post won't be a terribly tedious and comprehensive guide on writing resumes but rather some little things I've noticed from reviewing the countless thousands that I have.

Proofreading! ( or a lack thereof) - This is one of the worst yet most common mistakes there are. Misspellings, grammtical errors, missing words are some disheartening things for interviewers to see - EVERY job requires writing in some capacity and knowing at least how to put a sentence together can demonstrate a level of professionalism and general awareness necessary for any job.

Bad email addresses - Some people tend to forget that their flashy/raunchy email address can make for an odd impression when the employer is skimming the resume. Flashy-raunchy is different from funny or obscure; an email address that shows a little personality (fishingparadise@, kingofbasketball@, squintingsquid@...) is fine and might make you a bit more memorable. But if you can't tell, try typing the address into a search engine (or the image search if you're brave enough); if you don't like what comes up, change the address!

Formatting - A resume should be easy to read, interesting to read and organized. If the amount of words, lines, pictures or what not compromise these ideals, it's time to change the resume. The one page rule only applies if it's practical - try to avoid using incredibly tiny or narrow  fonts, shortening the space between the lines,  or cropping all of the margins to make the one page rule work. Oh, and having the amount of work experience that one gains beyond the college years negates that rule.

Formatting (Consistency) - This mainly refers to proper alignment of like topics, dates for all relevant matters, bullet points, headings, fonts and spacing. Basically, you want to have a resume that's aesthetically pleasing and not sloppy. I find that having two or more people take a look at the resume and give a first impression helps tremendously.

Here are a few links that are great for cleaning up a resume and/or writing skills in general:

20 Most Common Grammatical Errors - this is a great refresher in basic grammar.

Common Words That Sound Alike - the its/it's, there/they're/their etc. site; some of the MOST COMMON problems I see.

Punctuation - The University of Ottawa also has this site on correct punctuation usage.

Hip Email Addresses Bad For Resumes - MSNBC sheds some light on the matter.

As for video resumes and maybe some good laughs, check out this site that hosts both helpful hints and woefully hilarious transgressions.