Resumes that get results have one thing in common – they answer the employer’s key question: what’s in it for me?

Think about the manager who opens your email and starts to read your resume. In all likelihood, she is overworked and understaffed. She’s probably working to tight deadlines and she desperately wants to hire that extra person to make her life easier. So when she looks at your resume, she wants to know one thing: how you will make her life easier? Yet 95% of the resumes she receives won’t answer that question.

If your resume quickly and clearly conveys your value, it will generate interviews. It really is that simple.

To check how well you’re doing, rate your resume against the following five criteria.

1. Does your resume have a clear focus? If you have more than one type of experience (say retail management and human resources administration) don’t use one resume for all situations. Instead, create two resumes – one that shows your abilities as a store manager and one that conveys your HR expertise.

2. Do you start with a summary? Don’t begin your resume with an objective statement that describes your desires and career goals. Instead create a powerful summary that shows how you will add value to potential employers. The key is to demonstrate to the reader that there is a clear fit between your skills and their needs. (If you don’t know what skills are important for your target positions, you need to do some research. Look at job descriptions and at job postings for similar positions and make a note of the common requirements.)

3. Do you stress your achievements? You must present evidence that you add value. Too many resumes focus on job responsibilities, but describing achievements shows the impact you actually made. Achievements are a powerful way to show your ability to make a difference. If you outline how you have made improvements, solved problems, generated revenue, saved money or done innovative work in the past, people will want to meet you.

4. Do you quantify your accomplishments? Try to convey your experience to someone who doesn’t know anything about you. Quantifying your achievements helps readers understand your background. For example, an administrative assistant may write that she: “centralized the purchasing of office supplies, saving $50,000 per year.” A sales manager might emphasize having “increased hardware sales by 35% within 6 months.”

5. Do you provide context? In order to really appreciate your achievements, the reader needs context. By being specific, you can help him understand the value of hiring you. An easy way to include this information is to describe each position you have held and include information about the situation in which you found yourself. For example, notice how the following job description provides context and allows the reader to imagine how this assistant might contribute in any office setting:

XYZ ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON DC
Office Manager
Recruited to organize busy office of Washington non-profit organization. Established office procedures, organized 10 volunteers and implemented filing and storage systems to gain control of three-year backlog of disorganized information.

An effective resume presents a vivid picture for potential employers. If your resume has a clear focus, starts with a powerful summary, expresses and quantifies accomplishments, and provides context, your value will be clear to potential employers and they won’t have to ask: what’s in it for me?

The functional format concentrates on skills. The chronological format concentrates on employment listings.

The most effective s use elements of both format resume to create a combination that gets results.

It should be laid out in a graphically appealing style, with adequate use of white space, bullet points to draw attention to important parts, and conservative fonts used.

While you will occasionally bold face or italicize a font to draw attention to a point or break up a large section of type, changing fonts often makes it hard to read, so stick with one basic font.

The support which candidates receive enable them to immediately settle in their new role and to begin making effective organizational contributions in an expedited manner.

Resume writing is possibly the biggest stumbling block for folks who are looking for a job. So, how do you optimize to make it likely to get read.

Optimizing the Success of Your Resume.

The author at http://www.formatresume.net helps to find best sample resume formats to build your resume that makes to win a job

With online job searches, job applicants or jobseekers do not have to undergo the tedious job of printing and dispatching numerous resumes to several companies through the dreaded snail mail.

The problem with most jobseekers is that they tend to overlook job searches online. Most people say that online job searches are full of fraudulent activities and scams. Hence, these people fail to notice their benefits.

Even if the Internet is a known reproduction area for scammers and unscrupulous individuals, it is not right to assume that jobs posted in the Internet are not worth the jobseekers time and effort. In reality, it really pays to seek and search online jobs because this will facilitate the possibility of getting hired as soon as possible.

But then again, with the countless cases of frauds such as phishing, email scams, and identity theft, it is still hard to trust every job searches you make online. Whats more, many people are worried about the growing number of job offers sent through mail. Most of them may seem too justifiable and genuine to have doubts, but then, you will never know what they are up to.

That is why, it is very important to learn the right techniques and apply them when searching for a job online. These things may not offer you first- hand protection but they can definitely guide you in looking for the best work you can get online.

Here is how –

1. Optimize your searches

Todays information technology is all about keywords and key phrases. Every bit of information is easily accessed online using keywords.

These keywords refer to words that people use whenever they use search engines. These keywords are the ones embedded within the article or the advertisement. Keywords help search engine spiders locate them faster and more accurate.

So if you want to search for a specific type of job, it is best to narrow down your search in a more specific terminology.

For instance, searching for managerial jobs may consume time and effort without reaching your specific targets. Of course, if you will try to narrow your search to a more detailed and explicit keyword such as account manager or warehouse manager, your chosen search engine will be able to generate more functional leads.

2. Seek online forums and online newspapers

If you are fond of looking for jobs through the classified sections of your favorite newspaper, it is still important that you try to find work through the news, magazines, and online newspapers. Make the most of job listings and online job fairs. Participate in online forums where the topic is all about job searches.

The point here is that the more you can maximize online job searching activities, the more chances you have in landing a job. Focusing on one online job listing or job banks will only condense your online job searches.

3. Be wary of instant email job invitations

Have you ever realized that even emails that contain job invitations are also prone to frauds and scams? If you have not yet, then it means you have been a victim of spasm and frauds.

These kinds of spam do not offer jobs in the first place. They just use such propaganda to lure people to submit personal information such as name, address, or even social security numbers. When this happens, frauds or identity theft may take place.

So the next time you receive a cold- contact email from a stranger, it would be better to confirm and verify its authenticity by visiting its website. Conduct a thorough investigation of the matter. Verify the contact information of the company.

Best of all, never click on the provided link in the email. Spammers use special codes embedded in the link that will generate adequate information about your IP address or anything that will generate your personal information. These things will only be used in unscrupulous intentions.

4. Go for quality

Just because it is so easy to search online jobs means you can drop off your resumes to almost all websites listed in the job listing. Keep in mind that it is still better to send a few resumes on sites that require specific skills that precisely match your abilities than to hoard every job you see online.

5. Keep track of the sites you have visited and submitted your resumes

You will never know when the employer might contact you. Hence, it is unethical to keep on guessing the exact position that you have applied in a particular company.

The Internet can absolutely help you in finding the job you have long been dreaming of as long as you know how to maximize its potential. Just try to take note of these practical tips when searching for online jobs and you will surely end up with your dream job.

1. Portray Achievements: Don’t mess up your resume only describing job responsibilities. Include your achievements and the unique work in your career you have done.

2. Give References: If you are buying a product online you would go in for a product which has a lot of good testimonials / customer reviews. You can apply the same logic to your resume it sure works. Take out recommendations from sites like LinkedIn, Performance reviews or customer ‘thank you’ letters and add them on your resume.

3. Uniqueness About You: Try to contact your previous employers and ask for your skills which make you unique. Look for some common occurrences and try to get an idea what your targeted employers are looking for. Keeping in mind the unique skills, try to include them in your CV.

4. Personal Branding: If you have blog, Twitter profile, you can always mention them on your resume. This will add more credibility to your profile. Every employer will feel this and this process may rank your resume high among other job applicants.

5. Don’t Use Objective: Instead of an objective giving out possibilities you can start your resume with how your skills can add value to the organization that recruits you.

6. Your Work Approach: Portray to employers how you approach your work. Instead of the traditional work terms use words like you have the ability to understand, build relationships, have knowledge, and organize. This will add more meaning to your resume.

7. Describe Your Personality: Some people use resumes of others and revise them instead make your resume more practical and a documents which describes your personality rather exaggerating.

8. Get Resume Verified: Over 45% resumes contain false statements or misrepresentations. Aware that bad hires cost businesses billions of dollars in losses every year, 86% of recruiters in a recent survey done by Crederity prefer to review resumes listing credentials that have been verified. Verify your resume using Crederity and get hired faster. Sign up for a free trial account now. –  http://www.crederity.com

Resumes may inspire fear in the hearts of job seekers, but they don’t have to. Just follow these 10 tips to a better resume:

1) Be sure your contact information is up to date. In this fast-paced era, we often change phone numbers, email addresses, and so on. Make sure that you change your resume to reflect the latest, most current information and to ensure that the employer is always easily able to contact you.

2) State your intentions clearly. You should always start off by stating your career objectivewhat is your goal in terms of your desired position and industry? Explaining this under the heading “Objective” gives the employer a shorthand indication of exactly what you want.

3) Write in your own voice. It’s tempting to use complicated vocabulary to make your resume and application more impressive, but more often than not this ends badly. You may misuse words or give the employer the impression that you are posturing and overreaching, and that’s never good. Stick to a tone and style that you are comfortable with.

4) Don’t be too modest. The resume is a place for you to shine. Explain your accomplishments proudly. Let the prospective employer know what you have to offer, and don’t be afraid to blow your own horn.

5) Keep it to one page. Unless you have a very long or very extensive professional history, you should never let your resume go beyond one page. Keep your background short and specific to what matter most to the employer.

6) Be specific about your qualifications. Even though it may be tempting, you should never just send out the same Xeroxed resume to every company you’re applying to. This may save you some time in the short-term, but it’s not going to win you very many job offers. The more you can tailor your resume to specific employers the better as this will prove how well suited you are for a given position.

Salary requirements should not be listed. Employers often ask for your desired salary, but the resume is not the place to put it. Salary discussions should be left until later, after the interview, when you have more leverage.
Proofread. No matter how careful you are when you’re typing out your resume, there’s bound to be at least a few errorspunctuation errors, spelling errors, grammar errors, or just careless mistakes that make the entire resume look sloppy. Don’t let a handful of casual mistakes (or even a single flaw!) undermine all your hard work. Proofread carefully so that the resume is perfect when you send it off to prospective employers.

9) Get someone else to proof it, too. Two pairs of eyes are always better than one. You are often too familiar with your own resume to be able to view it objective and catch errors; allow someone to proof your resume thoroughly.

10) Make sure your resume has a professional presentation. Thin paper with streaky ink is not a good way to present yourself to the employer. Use thick resume paper with clear ink, preferably printed with a laser printer. Remember, appearances count for a lot!

Remember the 6 P’s: Proper, Preparation, Prevents, Particularly, Poor, Performance.