Resume Writing Part Two --- Can you do the job or not?

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As we mentioned in the previous post, the only thing that an employer cares is Can you do the job or not?

By sending a resume to the employer, you are sending an advertisement to him and trying to persuade him to "buy" you. And in the advertisement, you can talk about a lot of things, but all of them should only serve one purpose --- showing him that you can do the job. This is extremely important, and you should keep it in mind all the time while you are writing your resume.

To provide the employers with the proof is actually not difficult at all. You can do it in two steps.

1. Make a list of skills you have (anything you can think of)
2. Fill out the following template: Used skill A to do Task B and get result C. (Get result C is not always necessary)

For example: Created a web service (A) as a wrapper to expose the functionality of BLL components (B), so that the data generated from the other java application can be sent to the .NET application (C)

By the time when you finish, you will have a lot of "Used skill A to do task B and get result C", and those are actually the backbone of your resume. You can simply put them in your resume under the working experience section or highlight of skills section.

Sounds simple, isn’t it? Anyone can do it, right? But the key is to make it as attractive as possible just like I mentioned in the post What is job hunting? --- looking for a job is like selling, so you should at lease surf the internet and get some idea about sales.

I myself is a software developer, to a software developer, a state of the art skill can be attractive, if you have these kind of skills and they are related to the position, you will definitely have a better chance to be sold. But if you don’t have any fancy skills, you can still make your resume attractive by putting whatever skills you have in a state of the art context (a project); If you have never worked on a fancy project, then you should at least make the project sound complicated.

I hope you already got my idea. :-)

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Resume Writing Part One --- Another common problem

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After talking about What job hunting is. in the last post.

The FAQ here is “I sent out nearly hundreds of resumes already, and I waited for weeks, why the hell I haven’t got a single call from the employers out there?” Assuming the timing is right (You sent out every resume right after they posted out the position) I would say the only problem is in your resume.

There are lots of people talking about common resume problems, but one of the most common problems that is always being ignored is people tend to put emphasis on their achievements and on their importance to the companies. For example, the company that I work for (a software company) has been hiring recently, and I read some of the resumes. I remember one guy mentioned something like this: “ I was a key member of the development team, and I solved a major problem in the system, so that the performance improved by 200%”. This may sound great to this guy’s current employer, but for his future employers, it means nothing. First of all, they don’t know what “key member” means here, a team lead or what? Secondly, how did he make the performance improvement? Where is the proof?

In one word, the only thing that a employer cares is “Can you do the job or not?” I will write about this tomorrow.

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What is Job Hunting?

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Getting a job could be one of the most difficult and frustrating things to some people, whereas, it could be a piece of cake for some other folks, even though it is time consuming in both cases. Me myself don’t belong to the second group but I feel I am closer, so I want to share my experience here.

But first thing first, I have a question for everyone who is reading my blog --- what is Job Hunting?

In Wikipedia, there is a definition: “Job hunting" is the act of looking for employment, possibly due to unemployment. It is also known as job seeking. The immediate goal of job seeking is usually to obtain a job interview with an employer which may lead to getting hired.”

This definition doesn’t help you to get an interview or find a job, but it is the understanding in 90% of the job seekers minds who feel job hunting is difficult. The other 10% of people look at it from different angles, and they think job hunting is easy. So what job hunting is to the 10% of people?

Job-hunting is like selling! It is a sort of persuading art. You try hard to exaggerate the positive sides and hide the negative ones. If you have time, I suggest you to watch the shopping channel, and see how much time they can spend in selling a diamond ring or a watch or anything else, and make some notes about what they are talking about, so that you can do a little analysis and get some idea of selling yourself.

One of the most important things of job hunting is writing a resume, because only when you have a good resume can you get an interview, only when you get an interview can you have the chance to be hired!

Then what is a resume? I say a resume is like a movie trailer. When you watch the DVDs you rented from the Blockbusters, the first thing you see is not the main movie, it is the movie trailers of other up-coming movies. If you watched a movie trailer that made you believe the movie is interesting and made you rent one. Chances are, you get a movie that is not as interesting as it seems in the movie trailer. The movie is not necessarily a good movie, but they can still make a fascinating movie trailer. If you consider your whole experience as a movie, then your resume is like a trailer for your movie. You should try your best to make a wonderful trailer, which can increase the possibility of getting hired by 90% (where did I get the 90%? Nowhere! lol)

I am going to cover the detail in the later posts

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