Resumes - Getting Started

Establishing a clear and concise definition of what a resume will get you started in the creation of a Really Great Resume. In actuality, a resume is a marketing tool that sells you to a perspective employer. The true purpose of a resume is to get an interview and a Really Great Resume serves to get your foot in the door. It also expresses your talents and potential.

When preparing to write your resume, you must first and foremost decide what your objective is in terms of a job. Ask yourself, “Who is going to be reading this resume” You will make it your goal to write in a way that would appeal to that person or persons. Ask, What do they want to see in a prospective employee. What skills, accomplishments, talents, etc.

Next, you will need to decide what type of resume best suits you. There are several types of resume formats and each is appropriate for its own use.

Really Great Resume Types:

Chronological - Your information is organised chronologically, usually the most recent experience is first and goes back. This resume places highlights positions held and where.
Functional - A functional resume puts emphasis on your skills or functions and the resume will be organised by such. Only the skills and functions of the prospective new job are what will be highlighted.
Accomplishment - This is a resume that features a list of very impressive achievements. After the achievements are listed a chronological work history may follow.

Note, that it is not unusual to combine features from two different resumes, such as Functional/Achievement or Chronological/Achievement.

Next, start by listing all of your work history. Think back through each of your past work experiences and examine them for what you liked about them, your favorite skills in each and what you liked about each position. Be sure to jot these down.

A job objective will now need to be identified. The job objective appears on the resume right after your name, address and phone number. The objective states what position you are considering or what level of responsibility you are willing to assume. You must be specific, otherwise employers will be confused as to what you want to do at their company.

Steps to Creating a Really Great Resume

- Establish your objective.
- Determine the basic functions of the new job.
- List jobs that you held in the past. Omit short term positions.
- Decide which of these past jobs provided the experience that will be useful for the new job.

Avoid writing a job description for each of the positions. Instead, record a few short lines about your accomplishments in that position, what you brought to that job that may have been valuable and unique or that was of benefit to that company. Don’t be afraid to be very specific. This allows the employer to visualise you actually doing those tasks in the new position. If there is a job that is non-relevant, simply write a one-liner that explains the responsibilities performed.

With this information in hand you are ready to put it all together. Keep it simple and clutter free. Use bullets to organize things clearly. Use an easy-to-read font. With some good thinking and note-taking you will be on your way to creating your Really Great Resume.

Linkme New Home Page

The team at LinkMe have been busy little bees. They have given the home page a face lift.

There is no doubt that the message to users is simple. LinkMe is not a job board - upload your resume and let employers/recruiters find you.

Although the job search feature is not easily visible on the new home page it is there and has had some attention by the tech team. It even passed my “Account Manager” keyword test.

All up, this simple approach works well here.

Directing Traffic

Statistics are king in businesses such as online job boards, where success or failure is measured by the amount of traffic to a site.However, there are two methods of collecting data used by the online recruitment industry in Australia.

The industry standard is the panel-based methodology used by Nielson/NetRatings. This tracks data from a panel of about 400 consumers. They report the stats to the market on a monthly basis. As data relies on subscription at a fee, several of the smaller job boards, such as JobX and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs do not participate in this form of data collection.

Alternatively, Hitwise Australia collects data directly from ISP networks. Stats from Hitwise are updated on an hourly basis. The data from this method is therefore more raw and “real-time”. It gives the stats-geeks a chance to analyse the comings and goings of consumers, peak times for views etc, providing an excellent opportunity to better understand consumer practices. Hitwise data is not reliant on individual job board subscription, as is the case with the NetRatings data. However, this data excludes any information from the Telstra ISP networks.

First up, let’s all agree on this: before any one method can be considered the industry standard, it should include data from all possible sources. Therefore, both methods currently in use are deficient in this regard. Hitwise, for its exclusion of Telstra data, and NetRatings for its exclusion of minor job board data.

Arguably, the effect on the data purity of these two deficiencies differs. The NetRatings data gives us no indication whatever of the popularity of the minor sites. It is merely indicative of the popularity of the three main players, Seek, CareerOne and MyCareer. However, the Hitwise data, while excluding a whack of info from the Telstra ISP, allows us a snapshot of where all the industry competitors sit in popularity. It would be difficult to contend that a greater portion of consumers of any one site would be more likely to be Telstra ISP customers. Therefore, as the exclusion affects both the big and smaller players, while it alters quantity of data, it probably does not alter the quality of it.Whatever method of data collection one considers, if we have a look at the figures for January, Seek is the undisputed market leader.CareerOne have seen a better- than- average traffic rise than their close competitors MyCareer and have assumed the number two position. If this was due to spending more dollars on advertising then MyCareer can quickly buy back the number two spot in February.

However, when we consider the popularity of Linkme for the month, there is a conflict between the two data. Linkme have dropped off the NetRatings list with a 97% decline. However HitWise shows a rise in their traffic and rankings. This discrepency may be due to the launch of the new site in January. NetRatings is possibly still tracking the old one and Linkme have moved on.Admittedly, there are several other factors to be considered in the question of success and failure of the job boards. These include: number of c.v.’s on their databases, how many job alert emails go out each day and how good are the quality of applications. Volume isn’t always better.

However when looking at popularity alone, based on the above, we need to challenge the idea that NetRatings is the industry standard of popularity rating for the recruitment industry. But, even if we all concur that a new metric is required for the measure of popularity, will we ever be able to agree on how that measure should be derived?