Recruiters

Don’t think you can hide anything; HR veterans know all the tricks for cloaking employment gaps or skimpy experience. Once upon a time, resume writers had a fallback format to deal with career-changers, resumes light on experience or clients with gaps in their employment histories: the functional resume. This type of resume format plays up … Read More

Employers may be their clients, but recruiters may push back on behalf of the right job seeker. Here’s how that can work to your advantage. Never forget this simple fact about the recruiting industry: Recruiters work for employers, not for job seekers. Nevertheless, some recruiters are willing to take a chance on pushing for a … Read More

What grabbed the recruiter’s eye was the security pro’s certification, on top of his resume and smack dab in front of her face. CISSP: How’s that for a resume title? The acronym stands for Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Listing just the acronym without spelling it out, let alone using a more generic term such … Read More

How does your cover letter rate? Use this test to score your cover letter before you submit it with your resume and job application. Before you submit your cover letter to recruiters and hiring managers, run through this battery of questions to gauge its readiness. Q: How is your cover letter addressed? A. Personally addressed … Read More

Letters crawling with creeping arrogance inflict hiring managers with terminal cases of Don’t-Hire-This-Jerk-Itis. The job seeker couldn’t figure out how to find a C-level HR person’s name to follow up with. “I found out that… the secretary (sorry, assistant) forwarded my letter to the HR recruiter without showing it to his boss,” he wrote. Look … Read More

Why unconventional resumes drive hiring managers and recruiters nuts. Steve Silberberg is into a lot of things: certified Wilderness First Responder; published in scientific journals; and, according to his database-driven, configurable, searchable online resume, maintains a collection of over 2,100 air sickness bags. Everybody hates this resume. Only about five hiring managers over the years … Read More

Improper dates in your job descriptions could keep recruiters from finding your resume. You’ve worked hard to establish a distinguished career. You worked hard to craft a resume to match. But all of the effort could be undone by something as seemingly insignificant as the dates on your resume. Little noticed on the paper document, … Read More

Make your resume more ”findable” on sites like Ladders — optimizing your Web site is very different from doing that to your resume. I often get questions about how to “optimize” resumes for search engines so that they will be “easier to find.” Most of the people who ask the question are already somewhat aware … Read More

Make sure you’ll be welcome if you wind up back on their doorstep.   Once you’ve received a job offer you plan to accept, one of your duties is to let your other prospects know, if you haven’t already. How much should you tell them? Read on for advice on how to handle this delicate … Read More