Your Resume Writing Guide - Professional Resume Writing

Your Resume Writing Guide - Professional Resume WritingIf you are a professional writer, a good resume writing guide is very important. There are many things that you must consider in order to build your career successfully. You must think out of the box and be creative. You need to have a good flow in your writing and should use important words that will show that you are capable of writing an effective resume.Resume writing is one of the most important parts of your job search. You will be applying for jobs almost every day and if you want to succeed, you will have to have a good resume that will attract the attention of potential employers. If you want to make an impression with your resume, you have to include important information that is unique to you.If you want to be able to have a successful career, you need to find an easy and quick way to be able to add this information to your resume. This is something that is hard to do. It is one of the things that professionals will lo ok for and will need. That is why you need to have a resume writing guide to help you with it.The resume can be considered as one of the best tools you can use to get an interview or to get the job you want. But you should realize that you are competing with other professionals for the same jobs so you have to have a resume that is different from other professionals. For that reason, you will need to have a resume writing guide that will show you how to do this.There are some resume writing guide available free online but not all of them are good enough to make the difference between a mediocre resume and a good one. There are also free guides that are written by professionals and they usually cost some money. If you want to take advantage of this kind of guide, you will have to find the right one.The professional resume writing guide will teach you everything you need to know about how to write a good resume. There will be a set of rules you must follow and you will be able to choo se your words carefully. If you do not know what to write, you will not be able to make a good impression on the employer who will make the decision of whether to hire you or not. That is why it is important to have a well written resume.As you can see, having a good resume is one of the most important things to include in your resume. In order to get a good job, you need to be able to impress employers who will be choosing the one who will give them a good impression.

Your Career is Your Biggest Asset. 5 Ways to Protect It

Your Career is Your Biggest Asset. 5 Ways to Protect It Your earning potential is a million-dollar asset. The first quarter 2014 Bureau of Labor Statistics report puts median earnings in the US at $796 per week, which adds up to $41,392 per year, which amounts to a hair over seven figures over a 25-year careerâ€"even without any raises. Get a reasonable 3% bump every year and your career will be worth $1.6 million. If you owned a million-dollar home, you wouldn’t let the grass get overgrown or park your cars in the lawn, since this would erode the property’s value. Similarly, you do not want to be complacent with the asset that is your career. Instead, reserve a few minutes a day or a few hours each week to focus on protecting it. Use these five strategies to ensure your most valuable asset just keeps getting more valuable: 1. Nurture your network Job leads are shared mainly by word-of-mouth. But even if you’re not actively job seeking, a strong network enables you to hear about company changes, upcoming projects that you might want to be a part of (or avoid), the inside scoop on a new client, or helpful tips on how promotions, raises, and bonuses are decided. Maintaining your network can be done in a few minutes per day. Your action plan: Read your LinkedIn activity feed and reach out when people post news. E-mail former colleagues you don’t regularly see to catch up on summer vacation plans. Attend the occasional professional association event or conference. Or, block out specific days and times to reconnect with people â€"for example, scheduling at least one lunch a week with a different contact. 2. Make friends in HR A former colleague called me in a panic one day: Layoff rumors were swirling at her company and she wanted to know how severance works without making a formal inquiry into HR. Having worked as a recruiter, I was able to tell her what she needed to know (severance information is actually openly shared with employeesâ€"check your employee handbook). Your action plan: Get to know your HR colleagues well before you have an urgent concern. A friend in human resources can help you navigate the ever-changing benefits landscape, can explain sensitive issues like severance that you’d rather not discuss with your boss, or give you helpful insights, such as deadlines for performance reviews (these often precede when raise and bonus decisions are made so you want to know the timeline). Even HR relationships outside of your own company are helpful, as recruiters elsewhere can inform you about market trendsâ€"including what is a fair compensation for your position. Return recruiter phone calls, even if you’re not looking. 3. Manage your references If you’re not actively looking for a job, you might think that you don’t need references. While you don’t need them in the traditional sense that a job seeker doesâ€"no one will be calling your list to vouch for youâ€"informal references are given all the time. Recruiters may ask around to find an expert in a certain area: Will your network mention you, and therefore give you a chance to grow that recruiter relationship (see point 2)? Senior management may ask around about who would be good for an upcoming, high-profile project: Will your colleagues think of you and regard you highly enough to put your name forward? Managing your references means that you have supporters who know your value and promote you as opportunities arise. Your action plan: Keep people informed of what you’re doingâ€"don’t assume that even your boss knows everything you’re working onâ€"and what is of interest to you. This way, the right opportunities will come your way. 4. Build your online profile Social media is a great way to keep in touch with your network, your recruiters and your references. Your action plan: Update your LinkedIn profile regularly to mention a new project or to add a new skill, since this activity is broadcast to your contacts. It’s a way of keeping people updated and staying in touch more broadly. At the same time, you will hear about others’ activities, and you can reach out individually with a congratulatory note or a helpful idea. Finally, you want your profile to be updated so that, if someone does refer you for a job or a project, the prospective employer can easily research you and see comprehensive details about you. Building your profile takes dedicated time if you’re starting from scratch, but updating it and maintaining correspondence with your contacts takes just a few minutes at a time. 5. Maintain your go-to status Your online profile showcases you, your references think of you, recruiters flock to you, and your network promotes you… all because you are the go-to person for something. You have a set of skills, industry knowledge, specific expertise, or some combination of qualities that make you the perfect solution to a problem at hand. Do you know what you are the go-to person for? Do you take the time to sharpen this advantage? Your action plan: Define your unique qualities that make you marketable. And work on emphasizing your competitive advantage even more.This could mean taking advanced classes relating to your skill set, reading trade publications to stay ahead of trends in your area of expertise, or adding new skills with volunteer work or cross-departmental projects at your company. _____________________________________________________ Caroline Ceniza-Levine is co-founder of SixFigureStart ® career coaching. She has worked with professionals from American Express, Condé Nast, Gilt, Goldman Sachs, Google, McKinsey, and other leading firms. She’s also a stand-up comic. This column will appear weekly.

Why Teaching Is Not A Back-Up Career - Work It Daily

Why Teaching Is Not A Back-Up Career - Work It Daily There will always be children who need to be educated, providing a steady stream of opportunity for educators. With good benefits and job security in the form of tenure, teaching may seem like a good alternative to less-secure careers in the private sector. Despite such thinking, many professional educators argue that teaching should not be considered as a back-up career. In order to succeed as a teacher, an individual must possess certain qualities and talents above and beyond the academic requirements for the job. Teaching Is Not A Back-Up Career Effective teachers must be well prepared and yet flexible enough to modify their lesson plans when the occasion demands. They must be able to make fair, consistent decisions and remain firm once a decision has been made. An effective teacher also must be confident and engaging enough to hold the attention of students. A key component for a successful teaching career is a passion for education. The daily emotional demands on teachers and the challenges of working with children can be uniquely stressful. Public scrutiny in most school districts requires teachers to prove their abilities by motivating students with a wide variety of abilities to perform well on standardized tests. Only teachers who are passionate about their profession and realistic about their expectations are able to succeed despite the obstacles that are part of the job; those who aren't passionate face burning out within their first few years. According to Edutopia, about 30 percent of teachers leave the profession within their first three years and more than 45 percent leave within five years. A New York Times article asked several education experts about the practicality of teaching as a fallback career. Pam Grossman, professor of education at Stanford University, advises those who are thinking of teaching as a second career to prepare themselves for a steep learning curve in their first few years on the job. Although career-changers may bring experience and maturity to the job, they will be faced with culture shock in the classroom. The best way to lessen this shock is to learn as much as possible about the work of teaching before making a career shift. Grossman mentions classroom volunteering and the completion of additional classes as smart ways to prepare to become a teacher. In the same article, Patrick Welsh, an English teacher in Alexandria, Virginia, points out the notion anyone can become a teacher is pure myth. No matter how much knowledge a person has or how much they want to teach, they must also posses the temperament to work with students. Welsh thinks that schools should welcome mid-career teachers whose practical knowledge and life experience allow them to bring more to the classroom than many younger teachers fresh out of for-profit education programs. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) is working to develop new models for teacher recruitment and training. Allowing new teachers to work together in classrooms and to spend more time with experienced mentors could help reduce the rate of attrition in the teaching profession and make teaching a viable mid-career option for more people. This article was written by Social Media Outreach Coordinator, Sarah Fudin, on behalf of CAREEREALISM-Approved Partner, 2tor â€" an education technology company that partners with institutions of higher education such as USC to deliver their MAT degree online. Photo Credit: Shutterstock Have you joined our career growth club?Join Us Today!