Audrey Said:

What should I wear to a residential assistant interview? How do I write a proffesional resume?

We Answered:

Many employer's require a written resume be submitted with your application. To many people do not take the resume process serious. Most employer's look first to your application and then to your resume in order to find out if they want to give you an interview. Please don't neglect your resume. Here are a few tips and guidlines to follow:

Do NOT include things about your personal life. Only include things in your resume that are relevant to the position you are applying for. Hiring managers don't need to know personal information such as your waistline measurement or where you spend your summer vacations. Instead, include information on activities that are business-related such as memberships in professional organizations and community service involvement.

Use clean simple resume paper. Stay away from flashy designs and things that are going to make your future employer wonder about you. Impress them with what's on the paper, not with the paper. Instead of flashy formatting and stationary with borders or graphics, create a clean and polished document on resume paper with consistent formatting for headings and bullet points. To gain a hiring manager's attention, use strong action words such as 'achieved' and 'managed' instead of unconventional fonts or colored text.

It is okay to include work experience that is not related to the job in which you are applying, but do not focus on it. Rather focus on the things that will help the reader see why you would be a great fit! Not only should you play up achievements and experience specific to the job you're applying for, but also provide quantifiable results. For example, it's easy to say that you have experience in sales, but employers will take note if you say that you were responsible for a 10 percent growth in overall sales.

After you have proof-read it, let someone else read it. Most colleges and Universities have a department that do just these types of things. If you contact them, they will gladly allow 2-3 people to read your resume and make suggestions for how to improve it. It's usually free. A second pair of eyes may be able to catch mistakes you missed and could provide a fresh perspective on how to improve your resume.

Employers do appreciate creativity in job applicants because rooting through piles of resumes often times can be a monotonous task. The key however is to balance that creativity with professionalism. You want to stand out as someone unique but also someone with applicable experience who can add value to the company.

While the goal of a creative resume is to make a lasting impression, you want to make sure it's a good impression. Not sure what kind of impact your resume has? Try getting your resume professionally reviewed... for free. Job seekers can go to cbResume.com, upload their resumes, and receive instant feedback on how to improve their chances of being hired.

Travis Said:

Free professional resume writing?

We Answered:

You can't have both free and professional.

One or the other.

Nancy Said:

professional resume writing.?

We Answered:

There are many different styles that exist but the format I would suggest should have this kind of structure:

Personal / Contact Information
Objective Statement
Summary of Qualifications
Work History
Education

The middle three items should be completely geared towards the job you're applying to. Starting with your Objective Statement I would say this: To obtain a position as a Personal Banker with Bank of America. After all, that's what you're trying to do, right? Ignore strange phrases like "Gain an position with growth potential with a major corporation". All the employer reads is Yadda Yadda Blah Blah Blah. All you've told him is you want a job and don't care who it's with. Employers are seeking potential career employees and the first statement tells them that you want a specific job with them, not someone else.

Your Summary of Qualifications should be 3 to 5 items that address the requirements of the job. If the job requires that you have experience with MS Word, 2 years customer service experience and ability to type 40+ words per minute (and you have these things) then put them in your Statement of Qualifications. It might look like this:

Summary of Qualifications
- I have 3 years customer service experience
- I have professional experience using Microsoft Word
- I can type 50 words per minute.

In less than 10 seconds of reading you just told your potential employer that you want this job and you're fully qualified for it. Since an employer may only spend 10 seconds reading each resume during the early stages of the screening process having accomplished this isn't a bad thing.

Your work history should have the name of the company you worked for, the position you held, the dates (at least the years but months help) that you worked there, and three to five skill, experiences or responsibilities. Make sure your three to five items can be transferred to your new job. For example, working at target focus on customer service or cashiering (because it deals with money). Don't mention the time you spent stocking the shelves or the award you won for collecting carts outside in the rain as these things don't pertain to the job.

Don't mention why you left your prior jobs in your resume (it's a waste of space regardless of the reasons why). If you're asked on an application then I would repeat what the manger said and state "Laid Off". If you're asked in an interview then give a one sentence explination of what happened then spend a few minutes explaining what you've done to ensure you don't have future problems. Example "I was laid off because a family issue prevented me from meeting my performance expectations. To ensure this doesn't become a problem in the future I ...."

Other tips: Don't include items from your personal life (one guy mentioned his girlfriend multiple times), only include certifications and additional training if it can be tranfered into the job, unless you've been asked to then don't provide references and don't put in the statement that reference are available upon request (it wastes space and if they want references they'll ask and you'll have to deliver whether they are available or not), keep it under 2 pages, use size 10 to 12 font of a normal font style like Times New Roman, invest a little money on some heavier weight paper (if it feels cheap to you it will feel cheap to your employer, it shouldn't feel like cardboard or cardstock but it should feel like a higher quality of paper), if you use colored paper keep the color simple and limited to pastels.

Hope it helps. Good Luck.