Tag:

job seeker

5 Tips: How to Write an Entry-Level Resume

For entry-level job seekers, resume writing seems like a catch-22: You need a resume to get a job, but you need experience to put on a resume. How are you supposed to show that despite your lack of professional experience you’re ready to jump in and make an impact? Entry-level resumes do look different from resumes for professionals with extensive experience, but many of the same resume-writing principles apply. Here are a few tips for how to package yourself effectively as you start your job search.

1. Emphasize your education.

On resumes for established professionals, educational details are generally presented as the final section, after the details on career history. The reason for this is that once you’ve been out of school for a while, your professional track record matters more in defining what you’ve done and what you’re capable of doing in the future. If you’ve just graduated, however, it makes more sense to highlight your education up front, including the date of graduation. This positions you as a promising new candidate ready to go out and make a difference.

September 10, 2009 1 comment

How to Write a Resume: See This Before & After Example

written by Ceylan Thomson

You might have thought about how to write a (green) resume and even looked at resume samples. Chances are, you’ve spent many hours on your resume, carefully selecting the wording and details that you feel accurately portray your experience and achievements. So why hire an outsider to do the same thing all over again? Opting to have a professional resume writer create your resume doesn’t mean you’ve been sloppy or lazy; in fact, it shows you care enormously about how you come across on the page. Here’s an example of a position summary that was carefully created by a marketing professional — and the transformed version that was created by a professional resume writer.

September 2, 2009 0 comment

Top 5 Resume Mistakes – Clean Tech Job Seekers Watch Out!

written by Ceylan Thomson

You’ve spent hours on your resume. You’ve written and rewritten. You’ve showed it to friends, family, and colleagues, and you’ve made change after change. But is your painstakingly created resume really serving you well? Here are 5 of the most common resume mistakes, and how you can fix them:

1. Not enough white space

Reading a resume isn’t much like reading a book, but there is one similarity: big blocks of text are a turn-off, and may actually turn readers away. It’s imperative to design your resume with plenty of white space to facilitate skimming and ensure that the main facts stand out. Use headings, line breaks, and bullets to break up the page and draw your readers’ eyes forward. And remember: a professional resume isn’t a comprehensive life history. If one position’s entry is going much longer than about 6-10 lines of text, it’s time to do some cutting.

2. Failing to separate tasks from achievements

One way to ensure that your resume is skimmable and that your main achievements stand out is to clearly separate your day-to-day job tasks from your key accomplishments. Putting your accomplishments into a bulleted list is the best way to do this. Bulleted lists make skimming a breeze for busy readers. A word of warning, though: don’t get carried away. Five bullets per position are almost always sufficient, and fewer than that is fine.

July 17, 2009 0 comment

How to break into Clean-Tech without any experience

written by Ian Thomson

As a recruiter, I’ve had countless conversations with excited, motivated and very eager people that are looking to break into Clean-Tech. Like many, they are looking to do something more meaningful at work and something that transcends and has a deep impact. Another group of job seekers, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, are those eying the Clean-Tech space as a potential island in a very tumultuous economic sea.

Unfortunately, it is hard to assess just how much value you can provide to a sector that you know very little about. I will put forth that for a cash constrained company, it is difficult to project how success in an unrelated industry might translate to success in the industry they operate in.

July 3, 2009 3 comments