Resume & Career Resources

Looking to get your online resume up and running, but not sure the best websites to post to?  Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.  Here are the top 4 places to post your online resume for maximum results.

Monster.com

By far the most popular and fastest growing job board on the internet, Monster.com got their start back in 1999 and has grown to over 20 million visitors monthly.

What has made Monster such a huge success and a great place to put on an online resume is all of the additional benefits that they offer.

For example, you can also run queries for job opening. Some of the best employers in the nation post new openings daily, along with specific descriptions of what they are looking for in a candidate.   There is usually over 1 million such job postings at any given time.

Craigslist.com

The best thing about using Craigslist is that it is completely free.  There are separate sections for every major U.S. city and the largest international cities.  This makes it easy to get your online resume in front of employers in the area you would like to work.

The downside is that Craigslist is usually plagued with spammers that will send you emails about bogus jobs (i.e. –work from home courses you have to buy).  But the shear level of employers that visit Craigslist is more than enough reason to give it a go.

If you are to use Craigslist, I would highly suggest setting up a new email account just for the online resume you post there.  This way you can protect your main account from being stuffed with emails, both legit and spam.

Careerbuilder.com

Very close in popularity to Monster.com, CareerBuilder has a monthly visitor count of around 12 million… and that number continues to grow.

There are some cool features in addition to simply posting your online resume.  For instance, you can search for job opening by location and/or keyword.

You can also browse by category, which run from accounting to warehouse and everything in between.  They even have an online resume builder which you can use to make crafting the perfect resume that much easier.

Posting your resume on CareerBuilder is free, which is a definite benefit in my book. Just submit your resume to the site and interested employers can contact you directly.

Hotjobs.yahoo.com

Yahoo, the second biggest search engine on the Internet, also offers a great online resume posting portal.

You can post up to 10 different versions of your resume, in order to appeal to as many different employers as possible.  There is also an extensive education center to give you the advice you need to make your online resume and interview as successful as possible.

There are mountains of other smaller websites where you can post your online resume for free, and I would highly suggest posting to as many as possible.

Also, you can find plenty of websites that are catered to specific verticals (such as technology). Employers usually love these types of sites, since they don’t have to wade through irrelevant resumes to find the best possible candidate (read: you).

Here’s a tip: do a search in Google for “monster.com”.  When the results come back, you will see a small blue link called “similar” below the listing for Monster.  Click on that you you’ll have a list of other similar online resume websites you can post to.  Repeat this process until you have a nice long list to post to.  Good luck!

Before you post that online resume, you need to make sure you are as prepared as possible. Just like most things in life, there are tricks and tips to making your resume as successful as possible.  Keep these things in mind, and your resume will have a marked advantage against competing resumes.

Don’t depend on the pronoun “I”.

It’s implicit that your resume is about you; using the pronoun “I” takes away from the flow of the resume and clutters up the layout with unnecessary words.

Instead of writing something like “I was in charge of coordinating various multi team initiatives”, your resume will read better if you wrote something like “Responsible for multi team initiatives.”

Run from ugly fonts like they were the plague.

When online resume professionals say that you should think outside of the box, they usually aren’t referring to things like layout and font.

In fact, font style and size is where most job candidates usually mess up.  Just because you can read and understand the words on your resume doesn’t mean that the hiring manager will be able to.

The best way to make sure your resume is legible is to stick to commonly used fonts:  10 point New Times Roman is usually a safe bet.

Never use confusing and/or cluttered resume layout.

There are certain resume layouts that just simply work.  Others… well, not so much.  The best way to make sure that your online resume makes the best impression possible, make sure to stick with the tried and true resume layouts.

For the record, the top two resume layout formats are “chronological” and “functional”.

Use specifics.

Use as many specifics as possible when describing your skill sets and professional qualifications.  After all, anybody can plug in a bullet point that says “highly accomplished salesman”.  You add a level of credibility when you specifically state something like “beat my KPI by 40% for three consecutive years.”

Proofread it.  Then proofread it again.

Sounds like common sense, but more than one candidate hasn’t even made it to the interview room due to grammatical errors.  Before you post your online resume, make sure that your spelling and sentence structure is perfect.

Bullet points are your friend.

Let’s face it: everybody has 26 hours worth of things to do.  Of course, we all only have the same 24 hours.  Don’t waste your resume reviewer’s time with bulky paragraphs.

Instead, be generous with bullet points.  They are a great way of getting across information in quick, easy to digest facts. An added benefit is that they make your resume more appealing to the eye.

Get to the point.

You don’t have to (and really shouldn’t) write a novel for a resume.  That is, unless you are looking to be an employed writer.

Instead, keep your resume to as few pages as possible.  This means keeping the focus of your resume relevant to the position you are looking to fill.

Apply like a mad man (or woman).

Your resume could be absolutely perfect, but you can’t get a job if the right people aren’t seeing it.  This means posting your online resume on as many websites as possible.

But don’t stop there. Use every last every distribution method at your disposal.  Send your resume via mail to potential employers.  Get some new business cards made up with the URL of your online resume, and pass them out everywhere you go.

Stay focused, be assertive and before you know it you’ll be sitting behind a new desk with a smile on your face.

Most job hunters are familiar with the big websites for posting an online resume, like Monster or CareerBuilder.  These sites are great because they are so big; but their blessing is also their curse.

Since they are so big, even the most qualified professionals have a hard time getting their resumes read. To add insult to injury, employers usually scan each online resume at blitzkrieg speed. There are simply too many resumes online to invest time into each one.

However, there is a little trick that savvy job hunters are using to increase their chances of getting interviews: using smaller job banks.  These smaller websites often cater to specific verticals, meaning less resumes for employers to wade through and more attention for posted resumes (including yours).

Here are a few such job banks to get you started:

Thinkjobs.com

Over 2,000 engineering jobs can be browsed at this one site.  Thinkjobs.com aims to fill job openings within 48 hours; great for the employer and great for the job hunter.

Intelligencecareers.com

This job bank is one of the only resources for posting an online resume and applying for government jobs.  One can also search for positions based on their security clearance level.

Massmediajobs.com

This is a great resource to post your online resume if your career is related to mass media. This would include TV or Radio professionals, magazine/publishing execs, and PR/Marketing professionals.

Writejobs.com

Part of the Writer’s Write Inc. network, this website is dedicated to journalism, media, publishing and writing professionals. There are also career advice and career resources to improve the chances of landing a good gig.

Careersinfood.com

Food manufacturers can find a slew of opportunities on this websites. Built to cater to both job seekers and job providers, Careersinfood.com is considered “the #1 job board for food and beverage manufacturing professionals”.

Careersinbeer.com

Run by the same webmasters for careersinfood.com, this website one of the best for those in the brewery industry or a related vertical.  This would include brewery jobs, food jobs, and beer distribution. Setting up an account is free and there is also a job search that’s broken out to keyword, job type, country, state and city.

Foodmanagementsearch.com

This site is dedicated to the food management industry. Those experienced in food production, hospitality, or supermarket and distribution will find this website indispensible.

So, what do you do if your vertical isn’t one of the included job banks above? Finding relevant websites is a piece of cake… all you have to do is run a search on Google for “(your industry goes here) online resume bank”.  If there are resources available online for your vertical, Google will lead you to them.

One last note – when you are using online resume websites the competition is usually strong. On smaller job banks it’s a bit less fierce, but don’t expect a walk in the park directly to the interview room.  If you want that new job, you are going to have to earn it.

With that in mind, make sure to invest the time in making your resume as close to perfect as possible.  This is your only hope of generating an interview from your efforts.

A common question that job seekers usually have is if professional writing services are worth the investment.  After all, how hard can it be to craft an online resume?

Writing a resume is simple… but that doesn’t mean that it is easy.  And unless you plan on starving or living off of the government, then you need to make sure your resume makes an impact. This isn’t something to gamble with; you need your online resume to get you to the interview stage.

That still doesn’t mean hiring a pro writer is a no brainer decision.  There are still other things you need to keep in mind before commissioning any service, and there are two sides to the coin.

Let’s start with the cons, and then we’ll move onto the pros:

Cons

• Can be really expensive to commission the best resume writers.  If you’re on a strict budget (for example, if you were laid off) then you may experience price tag shock when you start getting quotes from writers.
• Hard to know for sure what you’re getting.  Unless you know of somebody that can give you a recommendation, it’s hard to know if your online resume writer is any good… that is, until after you buy their services and get your resume in hand.
• Can be time consuming.  The best writers will insist on an interview (which is recommended as opposed to the “fill in the form” approach). After the information gathering process, then you have to wait for the resume to be written.  If your writer has a long list of clients, turnaround times can be brutal.
• Professional writers tend to become mechanical after writing so many resumes, day in and day out.  This means that you have to review your resume when it is completed to make sure that it expresses your unique skill sets.

Pros

• They know the current “lay of the land” when it comes to resumes.  They know the c. And since common practices in business change so quickly, having this kind of intel is worth its weight in gold.
• Online resume writers are professionals, and spend their entire day writing.  This means the chances of grammatical and/or structuring issues popping up in your completed resume are dramatically reduced. Unless your job is to write full time, it usually makes sense to bring in a pro to make sure it’s done right.
• The actual content in your resume is what will make your break your chances of getting an interview.  Professional writers know how to craft provocative copy that makes your resume grab and hold the attention of the reader.
• Layout and formatting is a common online resume writer stumbling block. This becomes a nonissue when using a professional service, as they know the proper ways to format and layout your online resume.  Many are also versed in which formats are preferred depending on vertical.

Now that you have the facts, deciding whether a pro writer is right for you should be easier.  Regardless of which direction you go in, only post your online resume when it is the best that it can be.

With the myriad of tools at the job hunters disposal, sometimes it is necessary to get a focus on using a limited number of tools properly instead of spreading attention thin across too many.

This is where the argument for or against headhunters comes into play.  And the next breath is usually if online resume posting is just as effective and, if so, why not just do that exclusively.

Of course, every situation is different and what is right for you might be different than the guy sitting next to you.  Still, I don’t want to leave you hanging… so here are some unbiased facts about both headhunters and online resume posting.

This is the information you need to know to make an informed decision either for or against them.

About Headhunters

In case you haven’t heard of them, a headhunter is a professional recruiter who makes their money by introducing employers to job seekers and visa verse.

They often work on a recurring payment basis, to be paid by the client.  However, some headhunters are paid by the  employer the client is accepted for the position.

Headhunters often have professional relationships with hiring managers and higher-ups at various corporations.  This can go a long way to getting you a sit down.

Headhunting companies are some of the most aggressive sales organizations in the world.  They are relentless in getting their clients interviews at corporations.  This means that you don’t have to do the cold calling; you can just sit back and enjoy the benefits.

About Online Resume Posting

While headhunting is, as the name implies, like having a hunter on your personal payroll searching for jobs on your behalf online resume posting is like casting a net into the ocean.  It’s less aggressive, but just as effective at finding opportunities.

Effectively, online resume posting increases your reach.  You can post your resume to thousands of job banks and get your name in front of the visiting employers on each. And since the entire process is digital, your resume is working for you when you (and your headhunter) are sound asleep.

Another benefit of leveraging an online resume is that it’s cheap.  Most job banks accept submissions free of charge, as each resume is “content” to attract employers. This kind of job bank makes their money from advertisers looking to reach the employers or the job seekers when they are posting their resume.

The job banks that do charge to post resumes are usually dirt cheap.  Contrast the pricing with the hefty investment that headhunters require, and it’s easy to see why the budget conscious usually opt the do online resume posting primarily. After all, when you are looking for a new job money might be hard to come by.

As you can see, the differences between the two are glaring. The savvy job seeker would want to ask, which is a better tool?  The answer is that there is no answer.

In fact, if financials permit, I would suggest using both of them simultaneously.  After all, getting a job in the current climate is no walk in the park; you should use every resource that is at your disposal.

Anyone entering the workforce must be equipped with a resume that tells the employer why they should consider hiring you. A well written resume is the key to opening the door to a job opportunity.

Since this will be your potential employer’s first impression, you want to make sure that it is a good impression. Using an online resume tool is a good alternative to muddling through on your own.

Advantages – Online Resume Tools

• There are online resume services that will tailor to your needs. This is important when you are targeting a particular area in the job market. This service will polish your resume so that you can quality for any cutting edge position in your field.

• Most employers are overwhelmed with the amount of resumes that cross their desks. In most cases, 100 applicants apply for one job. That’s why it is important to present a resume that gives a colorful picture of the applicant’s qualifications in a direct way. Resume tools are designed to summarize skills in an effective way without the added fluff.

• Updating a resume is one of the most dreaded chores, especially if you have not reviewed it in years. It’s definitely a challenge. If you have major changes to make, an online resume tool is an option. After the information is provided, the normal turnaround time for this service is about three days.

• If you feel more comfortable on your own, there is always the option of using the do-it-yourself toolkit which is normally reasonably priced. The toolkits provided in these services have a wide variety of templates and samples that will help walk you through the process of generating a well crafted product.

• Some services will guarantee you interviews within a certain amount of time or they will revise your resume. This is definitely a benefit worth taking advantage of. Some companies will even refund your money if you do not have positive results within a thirty day period. How can you lose with that backing?

• If you are not organized, some tools embedded in the services offered are tracking capability. These tools can organize contact numbers, when you sent out information, where and the date.

Advice For Selecting A Service

• Remember to do some research about the reputation of the company you are looking to hire and check out the credentials.  The Better Business Bureau or customer reviews is a good start.

• Understand the pricing scale, what is included for that price and their guarantees.  Shop around! This is not the time to waste money on a service that does not produce results.

• Before you make your decision, make sure you are able to review a variety of samples. You do not want to get trapped into an agreement with writers that can’t meet your needs and expectations.

• Live customer support is essential. Nothing is more irritating than trying to get help from an animated system.

Life is complicated enough. There is no reason to add to that complexity if you can use a service that will make things a little smoother.

Identity theft is big business for cyber crooks. Last year alone (2008), there were 313,982 fraud complaints related to identity theft made to the FTC.  This number continues to grow every year.

And here’s a scary fact for the job hunter: online resume job banks is one of the most prevalent ways for identity thieves to harvest personal data.

This isn’t to say that you should avoid using job banks, as they are one of the best ways to land a new job.  Instead, you need to focus on being safe and smart when using them. This way you get the job seeking benefits and minimize the inherent risks simultaneously.

Here are a few tips to keeping safe when using job banks:

1. Don’t include your social security number

With nothing more than a social security number, the criminally minded can open up credit cards, make false IDs and make major purchases. Never include your social security number on your online resume. Ever.

1. Set up email address specifically for your online resume

Spammers are infamous for harvesting email addresses from job banks.  For this reason you don’t want to use your main email address.

Instead, set up a free account at one of the email providers (like Google or Yahoo) and use that email address specifically for your online resume.  You may need to wade through some spam mail to find the genuine queries, but your main account will be protected both from spam and hacking attempts.

1. Read the privacy policy

Every website that solicits personal information has to post a privacy policy to tell you how they will use that information.  You want to read this policy carefully before posting your online resume or setting up a profile.

Be especially wary of websites that reserve the right to sell your personal data to third parties.  This is the fast way to more spam than you want, and a gold mine for identity thieves.

1. Be cautious

Not every job bank is created equal.  Make sure to scrutinize any job bank you are considering.  This means reading the about us and privacy policy pages, and doing some research on the Better Business Bureau and Google.

You only want to post your online resume on websites with a good reputation and no major negative incidents.  Events like losing personal records are fairly common with online outfits, so I state again: be cautious.

1. Alter your employment history

This kind of information can be used in all types of nefarious manners; it’s better to modify your online resume slightly to add a layer of safety.

Start by removing all start and end dates.  Next, change very employment description form specific to more generic.  So, instead of saying you worked for Google, you can write “leading search engine organization”.  Do the same with job titles and any other unique personal information.

In Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to leverage the power of the internet; it makes job hunting much easier.  But don’t be stupid either… not everybody online has your best interests in mind. It’s better to be safe and cautious now than to be sorry later.

When you are entering (or reentering) the job market it’s easy to feel like a very small fish in a very big pond. The major job banks are crammed with resumes from candidates across the globe. And every passing day finds new resumes posted on most sites.

With such stiff competition, how do you go about getting noticed?  How do you separate yourself from the crowd of frenzied job hunters, who are all shooting for the same position you are?

That is no easy task. So, let’s start from the top…

Set a Goal

Before you put one word on paper, take some time to figure out exactly what position you want to get.  Be as specific as possible… meaning the title you want to hold, the size of the ideal employer, the vertical, etc.

All of this information will make it easier for you when you are writing up your online resume, and choosing the proper job banks to post it on.  It will also give you some direction when it comes time to collect additional materials, such as letters of recommendation and references.

Make your online resume “niche”

When you try to appeal to everybody, you end up getting attention from nobody.  After all, everybody wants to feel as if you are talking directly to them.

Hiring managers are no different.

Those candidates that seem to be a perfect match for the opening are more likely to get a call. Make sure that you are that guy (or gal).  The simple way of accomplishing this is by tailor crafting your online resume to suit the dream job you have in mind.  This is why setting a goal is so important; without that step you are forced to write a general resume instead of a focused one.

Also, keep in mind many job banks will let you post multiple resumes.  If you have more than one desired position, you can write up a separate online resume for each one.

Use as many job banks as possible

As the saying goes, “you can’t catch fish without a hook in the water”.  If you want to land that dream job, then you have to have as many “hooks” in the water as possible.

The best workable strategy you can follow is to post your resume to every job bank you come across.  Most job banks are free to post your resume, and those that do charge are usually cheap.  This means that your only big expense will be the time and the effort you invest.

Keep your layout conservative

Most employers searching online for candidates give each online resume a very quick scan. When you use a commonly used layout, the employer can find the important facts fast.

If they have to spend too much time finding the key information on your resume, more than likely it will be skipped for the next one.

This is by no means a complete guide, but these are the basics for breaking away from the crowd. I hope you find them useful, and I wish you well in your job hunting efforts.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to lock down a job in our current economy.  The competition is fierce, and there simply aren’t enough jobs to go around.  As the official U.S. unemployment rate creeps up on 10%, the only way to be noticed is to think outside of the box.

And one of the most creative ways to be noticed is to build a website around your online resume.

This isn’t nearly as difficult as it might seem.  With a little guidance, you’ll have your website up and in front of employers in no time.  Here are a few tips to get you started in the right direction.

Keyword Research

When you’re building a website around your online resume, you have the same challenge that professional webmasters have:  namely, getting people to know that your website exists.  The best and cheapest (read: free) way of accomplishing this is by getting ranked in the search engines.

The first step to getting ranked in the search engines is by doing what’s called keyword research.  Keyword research is basically the process of finding out how many people are searching for specific phrases in the search engines.

The whole idea is to keep from wasting time getting ranked for something that nobody is looking for.  For example, if you were a marketing executive looking for employment, you need to know if more folks are searching for “marketing director” or for “director of marketing”.

With that information in hand, you can tailor your entire website to the most popular phrase.  You’ll also have an idea of how many visitors to expect when the search engines notice your online resume website.

The intricacies of doing keyword research go beyond the scope of this article, but a good place to start is with a tool called Google External Keyword Tool.  This is a free webpage that you can find online with a simple query on Google.  On the webpage, there are heaps of free tutorials that show you how to use the tool.

Once you know what your keywords are, you can move onto the next step.

Make it pretty

Don’t forget that your online resume is the first impression you’re going to make on a potential employer. You don’t want to blow it with an ugly and unprofessional website that looks like a 4^th grader put together.

Instead, spend some time making sure that your presentation is immaculate. Unless you are a graphic designer, you’re going to want to contract a professional designer to take care of the aesthetics.

Tip:  You can find great coders at attractive prices at websites such as guru.com and elance.com. Simply describe what you are trying to accomplish and let the service providers bid against each other.

Use multimedia

Personally, I would shy away from including any personal photos or videos of yourself.  Most employers run for the hills when they encounter that kind of thing, simply because they don’t want to open themselves up for any kind of discrimination lawsuit.

However, you can use multimedia in other interesting ways.  This would include using graphs, schematics, portfolios, relevant videos, photos or anything else that proves your experience and/or professional skill set.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building an online resume website.  But it should point you in the right direction and give you some worthwhile ideas to pursue.  With a bit of hard work and some creative thinking, you’ll be well on your way to getting the perfect job.

Internet is a powerful medium. With its expansive reach, it is becoming one of the most desired and admired communication medium. Speed, cost and ease are the three most generic and simple benefits that millions of people worldwide today prefer internet. In the corporate world internet has redefined the science of recruitment and selection and has given a new dimension to the human resource department. Internet has connected candidates and employers 24/7 and has expanded job searches beyond the clichés of classifieds. As employers receive hundreds of resumes against their single openings advertised on portals, they barely give a second chance to view an online resume. Thus in order to remain in demand one needs to craft an extremely professional online resume.

The online resume is usually posted on the internet through a resume bank or resume repository. These banks usually contain the generic information such as name, birth date, education qualifications, in the form of sections, with a field where users can insert their resume. As these repositories distribute millions of resume, they prepare a very standardized format, to ease database handling. Thus it is advisable to create a text-only format without the use of any specialized bullet. In order to attract recruiter’s attention, emphasize headings and titles in capitalized font rather than bold or italicized text.

The keywords are the most important tool for the resume to be short listed. These keywords should be included in the resume in the form of headers, titles, designation descriptions and other vital information. The repositories categorize resume on the basis of these key words and if you want your resume to be read by a specific class of employers then be sure that you add the correct key words in the correct position, in your resume.

Another important aspect to be considered while depositing your resume to a repository is that you should delete the resume immediately after getting the final placement. If your employer views your resume just after selecting you, he would be of the opinion that your job hunt is still on, and may get suspicious of your long term commitments to the company. Thus if your résumé is posted on a general bank or portal, do delete it during the time you are not considering a job change.

While sending online resume, it is important to ensure that it reaches the employer’s inbox in the most attractive way. As with the resume repositories, there are various e-mail programs that do not recognize special characters, thus, out rightly filtering your resume out of the resume bank. However always double-check for spelling and grammatical errors. It is your resume that does most of the selling, before a personal interview. Thus always ensure that careless mistakes should never hamper your chances of being selected for a deserving job. Always highlight the required skills and expertise and never offer confidential and secretive information in resume banks where chances of your personal information getting leaked are high. Thus by using online resume repositories one can increase his chances of getting good job offers.