Resume & CV Writing

Thanks for visiting my site. This is my ultimate CV and resume writing resource page. I guess you’re here because you need to make a new resume.

Are you about to send your resume in for a job application? If so you’re in the right place to be sure you have the best resume or CV you can get.

When you need a new resume or CV you have two choices:

* Make a Resume yourself;
* Have a professional writer make one for you within 48 hours.

If you are going to write your resume yourself, then I’d recommend you get a copy of “The Ultimate CV & Resume Writing Guide” because it is what you need to win interviews and win the job!

What makes the Ultimate Resume?
Writing a resume is a difficult task regardless of your level of experience with the process. While the content of your resume is critical to its effectiveness, the layout and the format you utilize are equally as important. To get started, you should research various resume styles and find out which best stouts your field.

The biggest mistake people make when composing their resume is using a generic template provided in your text editing software, like Microsoft Word. These templates are usually outdated and very difficult to format, not to mention that they do not transfer well to online job applications. Avoid the quick-fix mentality of these resume templates, and invest some time in finding resources that will provide you with up-to-date helpful ways to compose a winning resume.

Resume Layout For Getting Noticed
The layout and the style of your resume are as important as the information you are including about your experience and qualifications. The two most commonly used resume styles are chronological and functional. Chronological resume calls for listing your professional expertise in order, much like the name implies, and is used those with some to extensive professional experience. Functional resume showcases your experience by the type of qualifications you have, and is typically used by those lacking professional experience or those changing careers. While there are no set rules on determining the best resume style to use, it is important to keep in mind that the resume format can help or hurt your chances to put your best foot forward. You will want to pick the format that will best highlight your qualifications and your experience. Thus, it is important to understand the difference between the two, as well as research which format is more preferred in the field of your choice.

Add A Career Objective Statement For Your Resume
Career objective is very important to your resume. While there is an ongoing debate about the need for listing your objective on your resume, choosing to include this goal statement shows that you have given your professional growth some serious thought. Consider your career objective as the first impression you make on your potential employer. Make sure that your goals are specific and directional in terms of industry, position title, and future professional achievements.

Most people make a mistake of including generic statements under their career objective. To be effective, your statement must tell a potential employer that you know what kind of job you want, what experience you have in order to get the position, and what you are willing do to become a successful professional with the company.

Everyone can find a sample of a well-written resume to fit their career objectives in the Ultimate Resume Writing e-Book which comes complete with a brilliant selection of 27 free Resume samples you can use.

While your career objective tells your potential employer why you are applying for the job at their organization, your professional profile sells your expertise and convinces the employer that you are the best candidate for the job.

Writing Your Personal Profile
Your personal profile gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself, and give your employer an insight into you. Two commonly made mistakes for this section of the resume are poor writing and inclusion of personal information. Note that your age, ethnicity, gender, religious affiliations, etc. do not make a difference on how you handle yourself as a business professional. Such information should never be included in a resume, or any job application materials (even when asked on a job application, such information is optional and is for demographics study only). Make sure this section is well written and error-free. Strong positive statements about your expertise will give a good first impression to your employer. Make sure to proofread the whole resume, with emphasis to this section, as it appears at the start of your resume. An effective personal statement must leave your employer with an impression that you are confident, credible, and professional.

Keep in mind – your resume is your sales pitch, demonstrating your qualifications and experience to your potential employer. Seize the opportunity to put your best foot forward and you will reap the rewards, I recommend you get a copy of a resume to fit your career objectives in the Ultimate Resume Writing e-Book which comes complete with a brilliant selection of 27 free CV and resume samples you can use.

Proofread Your Work
1. Proofread the content for grammar and spelling mistakes. This is the most critical step in the resume review process. It is often hard to spot your own composition errors after you’ve spent hours writing and re-writing parts of your resume.

There are two ways to catch these potential damaging errors: ask someone else to proof your resume, or give yourself some time between writing and reviewing your resume.

If you ask a friend or a family member for help in reviewing your resume, make sure that their spelling and grammar and is to the task; they should be able to review and if necessary edit your resume for content and consistency in style.

Asking others to review your resume, however, should be done with some caution. You know what you are trying to achieve in terms of the content and the value of that content to the employer, others don’t have that same knowledge so may unwittingly change the message you are trying to create.

Even after you have asked someone else to review your resume, try stepping away from it for a day or two if you have time. Coming back to it for a final review later gives you some break from the content, and will allow you to recheck it for grammar and spelling errors with fresh eyes. Watch out for wrong words spelled correctly such as ‘right’ and ‘write’ as your spell-checker won’t pick this up; only human eyes will.

Print & Check That It Looks Right
2. Print out and email your resume so that you know what your potential employer will receive after you submit your resume. Make sure to print your resume from the same file that you are emailing to your employer.

Make sure that the margins are set properly and are not cutting off any content.

Look for spaces, and adjust the text in case of any large gaps on the paper. E-mail your resume to a number of your friends; have them open the file and let you know how it appears on their screen, as well as how it prints out. This gives you the chance to address any formatting issues before your resume reaches the employer thus developing a winning final resume.

Does It Match The Job Demands?
3. Compare your resume carefully against the job requirements, and make sure that all requirements are addressed in either your resume or your cover letter.

Essentially, review what the employer is looking for and make sure that your resume meets all of their needs. Get all the CV writing tips you need to make a good job.

When your potential employer receives your resume, they will look for key terms from their job description in order to match your qualifications to their available position.

If possible, try to use some of the same terminology on your resume as the employer used on the job description or in the advertisement. This will let the employer know that you understand their needs, and make them more interested in you as the ideal candidate for the job. If they are willing, ask one of your friends to review the job description and your resume as well, and give you their impression on how well the two match. My own Ultimate Resume Writing e-Book shows you how to make a superb resume.

Poorly written or badly formatted resumes tell your prospective employer that you don’t pay any attention to detail. Taking the extra time reviewing your resume is the surest way of gaining the employer’s attention and getting the job you always wanted.

Of course you could always get me to write your CV or resume for you – if you need a professional job done for you very quickly (within 48 hours or less). Go to CV Writing Services to find out how to get started – FAST!

My Favorite Tricky Interview Questions – Answered

Two of the many interview questions that crop up regularly have been going around in my head just recently.  These are the ones that could be just like walking into a man-trap if you are not really careful.  They sound almost innocuous and really quite so straightforward that you might just jump straight in with your answer.  However if you do, you might not spot the concealed trap until its too late.

It is true that most interviewers are too busy to play games with you, but every now and then up pops one of these questions and delivers the knock-out blow.

What are these questions and why do I call them my favourite interview questions?

Well most of the regular interview questions – most interviewers ask about twenty questions – demand some thought and a straight answer based on your skill or experience whereas these two seem to come in from left field and are more devious.  Instead of a straight answer what they want is an opinion which is always more difficult to judge and therefore easier to get it wrong.

So lets take a look at how you can deal with these two favourite interview questions:

1. “If I asked your boss to describe you, what would he say?”

2. “If we don’t offer you the job after this interview, why do you think that would be?”

You would think that the answer to Question #1 would be a glowing report based on your key strengths and wonderful personality.  Not necessarily so; the boss’s style may be at odds with the style of this new organization so you need to be more careful.

Your response should be based around your ability to understand and support your boss and previous bosses.  By showing an understanding you indicate your capability to adapt to different styles and will therefore be seen as one who will fit in better.

The employee who adapts to and predicts the needs of his or her boss is a greater asset than one who is immensely knowledgeable but less forthcoming.  As always compatibility is more important than simple competence.

Question #2 is an invitation to take yourself out of the running by telling the interviewer why you are not up to being offered the job!  The trap is that you do just that by telling them why you are not good enough to be hired.  However, you should respond to this question like this:

“I am confident that my skills and experience make me a strong candidate for this job. If you didn’t offer it to me I think that would be because I haven’t explained some area of my experience to you fully enough.”

That in itself is the basis of how to answer this question but you must not leave it there. You must go on by adding:

“Which area of my experience has left you with any concern?”  This way you tease out any lingering doubts or objections to hiring you.

Get free Interview help at  Free ebooks

Writing as a Career Can Be Rewarding

When you choose creative writing as a Career you may be letting yourself in for a very difficult way of making a living.

Dreaming of writing a best selling book or novel is delicious, but the reality is often far removed from that dream.

Apart from the need to produce creative output regularly and even when you have all the subject knowledge, characterisation, plotting, flair and wordcraft skill, you will still find that writing as a career is only successful for a small number of authors.

Most authors will struggle to get their work produced and published and if you have already chosen writing as a career then you will recognize the difficulties associated with this career choice.

The familiar feeling when the rejection slip arrives is almost enough to bring this exercise to an end, but as every author will agree writing can be very rewarding and satisfying to produce either a well constructed novel or an authorative work on a subject close to your heart.

So you really only have two choices:

• You can give up altogether
• Or you can find another way

Which as most authors who have chosen writing as a career will say actually amounts to no choice at all!

You aren’t going to give up so you must find another way. Now let’s look at what you can do about it.

If you haven’t already written your book don’t let the potential difficulties put you off – go ahead and write it; the problem is not with you but with the response from the publisher or editor.

Even if they reject your book, it doesn’t mean its no good, (but you knew that anyway) it just means they didn’t like it or it didn’t fit in with their idea of what sells.

Self-publishing is the answer and it can be easier than you think.

If you have already written your book and you have hit the rejection stonewall, don’t give up, you have produced something from your heart and many people will like it enough to buy it.

Self-publishing is again the answer and it can be easier than you think.

Let me tell you what I do and show you the tools I use.

I didn’t choose writing as a career, it chose me! But writing is what I do, whether it’s in the writing of the content on my web-pages or because I am a Career Coach as well, in the production and publishing of ebooks on mainly career-based subjects.

I can show you how easily you can use colour, different font sizes and styles as well as chapter headings, lists and bullet points. Although I have chosen not to use page numbering it is very easy to insert page numbers.

What You Need to Make a Success of Writing as a Career

1. Your writing ability (which we will take as read);
2. Pride in the value of your work;
3. A willingness to learn and try another approach;
4. The right tools to produce your work;
5. Persistence and determination;
6. Readiness to follow marketing guidance

With all of that you will soon be able to say that writng as a career was a sound decision – you will not only have written and produced your own e-book, but you will have published it and what’s more actually sold some copies!!

If you still want to go down the traditional route of producing a physical book or novel, it’s much easier when you know the market is ready for you.

So Let’s Get Started

It is very simple – all that stands between you and your success as a published writer is the lack of the required tools. If you take a look at either of the examples of my ebooks above you will note they are in Portable Document Format (.pdf). This is the most popular format for ebooks because it can be viewed on any PC or Apple Mac and the ebook will always look the same. other forms of presentation used by ebook compilers are often executable files (.exe) which can only be viewed on Windows based systems i.e. PCs and cannot be viewed on Macs so you limit the audience.

The software to produce .exe based ebooks is also usually fairly expensive for example Ebook Gold which is one of the best professional ebook compilers on the market costs $97.00 which is quite an expense when you are setting out.

Equally the top rated PDF creator Adobe Acrobat will cost at least $129.00 but you can get the reader free if you don’t already have it.

However what you need when starting out is to keep the costs down so I recommend you download the free version of PDF Suite 995 which is the one I use all the time. It won’t cost you anything and if you don’t mind viewing some of their ‘sponsor ads’ for 30 seconds you don’t need to pay for the upgrade.

You simply download and install it to your PC as a ‘printer’ and when you have prepared your document in MS Word you just select ‘Print’ and your PDF is produced. As simple as that!

You’ve Written Your Book – Now What?

To make a success of writing as a career you need to inform your audience about your book and get them to buy it.

First of all how do they find out about it?

I have found that the best way to publicise your new ebook is to write a short summary article (about 500 – 600 words) and submit this to an article directory.

Webmasters and publishers are always on the lookout for interesting new material this is the easiest way to get your book noticed with no cost attached.

You can see what I mean by looking at my articles at EzineArticles.com where my articles have been published on average 450 times each. You can also ‘blog’ about your ebook with a free account at Blogger.com

You have now conquered the two basics of production and promotion, although there are other ways to promote your ebook this will get you off to a great start.

Your audience must now be able to buy your book and the simplest way for you is to give them a digital download from a website.

If you don’t have your own website or don’t want one then I can help you out by featuring your book on my ebookdownloads.biz site.

You may just find then that you want to sell others’ e-books as well as your own then far from just writing as a career you become a successful e-book merchant.

Of course you will also need to be able to accept payments on-line. Don’t worry about expensive merchant accounts just get your free PayPal account and start taking debit and credit card payments immediately.

A lot of people are talking about the potential of the new generation of social networking sites (which they refer to as Web 2.0 sites) such as MySpace and YouTube where musicians have had great success in publicising their music – this could also be a valuable idea to build your writing career successfully.

Find out more about how you could benefit from this new idea and get a free report on how Web 2.0 Sites work and get access to more e-books you could sell. For more information click Writing As A Career

Coaching Does It Work?

Everything that you wanted to know about coaching is now ready for you.

Life coaching, business coaching and performance coaching now has its own new site where you can find the meaning of coaching and whether it would benefit you or your business.

Help to choose a personal or business coach for performance or personal power; or even how to become a life coach or personal trainer and make your fortune.

Read more about coaching at http://www.definition-of-leadership.com/coaching/index.php in conjunction with http://www.definition-of-leadership.com/index.php

How To Answer Tough Interview Questions

Check out my Top Interview Answers e-books Review. Find out how to answer any interview question that any interviewer may possibly throw at you and which guide will serve you best. There are 5 of the top selling Interview Guides reviewed, see how they were rated.

This is your first step to a great interview and winning the job you really want!

Do you recognize yourself?

You are confidently sitting through your interview. Being absolutely sure that you can answer any question any interviewer might throw at you. No nerves, no butterflies and no worry about unforeseen questions coming up. You perform so much better because you have all the answers worked out to all the possible questions!! …

Reviewed: Top Interview Answers Guides

CV Lies and Fake Resumes

CV lies are apparently quite widespread. Some surveys suggest that as many as two thirds of all CVs and resumes contain CV lies because getting a new job can be highly stressful and some people feel the need to enhance their achievements and so present themselves in the most favourable, albeit dishonest, light.

In my experience as a Career Coach and Recruiter, I have seen people pushed into the deception of CV lies and fake Resumes in the mistaken belief that because everyone else seems to be doing it, it is OK.

It is not OK. You may get away with CV lies temporarily, but in a short while it becomes more than just CV lies, you end up living a lie and will probably get found out anyway. You may think it is worthwhile, as one inexperienced draughtsman told me, because you gain some extra experience before you are found out. Repeat often enough and you suddenly become qualified. I don’t think so!!

Every job-seeker must face the challenge of presenting their CV with qualifications and past experience as positively as possible. But where do harmless exaggerations end and CV lies begin? It is a difficult question to answer and the best answer is to be honest at all times. If you consult a professional CV writer or career coach, you will find that their skilled use of relevant vocabulary to describe your real attributes, is far better than telling CV lies. And it’s something you CAN live with.

Before you prepare your CV you should undertake a full skills audit by considering every aspect of your job; what you actually do to complete your tasks and how you manage yourself and maybe others while you do your job.

By analysing your skills fully you equip yourself and avoid any need to tell CV lies; remember if you have done it – “it ain’t bragging”.  All the better still if you can use well chosen words to clearly describe the actions and results of your involvement.

So the best advice is not to lie to future employers with the potential embarrassment of being found out. At worst, it can cost you the job. Under the terms of your contract of employment, prospective employees are required to tell the truth. Many application forms require you to sign as a testament of having told the truth.

When you submit your CV, and a job offer is made on the basis of information contained in it, which the employer believes to be correct, then the employer is legally entitled to withdraw the job offer if they discover subsequently that your CV contains false information. CV lies are just not worth it.

Peter Fisher is an expert Author and Publisher of www.your-career-change.com  Check here to see how you can avoid having your CV rejected

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Career Tests

I’ve just found PeopleMaps. They do a great career test that helps you write your CV by understanding what the employer needs to know about YOU. I’ve put it on my web site where you can get a free report.

http://www.your-career-change.com/personality-tests.html

You’ll also find a load of other free tests you can try so you should go there NOW and make your CV talk the employers’ language.