Resume Writing Tips

Your resume is your marketing tool and should be visually pleasing. It should make the reader want to read on. It should have a simple and clean structure and is easy to read. As far as possible, try to make your resume symmetrical, balanced and uncluttered.

There should be uniformity and consistency in the use of capital letters, bullets, boldface and underlining. For example, if a period is at the end of one job's dates, a period should be at the end of all jobs' dates; if one degree is in boldface, all degrees should be in boldface.




A resume's first impression is most important. It should therefore be visually pleasing and appealing, to be inviting to the reader.

Ensure that there are absolutely no errors: typographical errors, spelling errors, grammatical errors, syntax or punctuation errors as well as factual errors.

All basic information is included. A resume must have the following key basic information such as your name, address, contact numbers and your email address at the top of the first page, a listing of jobs held, in reverse chronological order, educational degrees including the highest degree received, in reverse chronological order. Additional, targeted information will of course accompany this.

Listed jobs should include a title, the name of the firm and the duration of your stay with the firm.

Preferably, a resume is targeted. A resume should be targeted to your career objective, to the next step in your career. You should be clear what your career goal is, what the ideal position or positions would be. Then you should figure out what key skills, areas of expertise or body of experience the employer will be looking for in the candidate. Format the resume structure and content around your career objective target, proving these key qualifications.




Make sure that your strengths are highlighted. Focus on your strongest and most impressive traits. Make careful and strategic choices as to how to organize, order, and convey your skills and background.

Make sure that your resume has focus. A resume needs a focus to help the reader understand immediately. Think of the resume as an essay with a title and a summative opening sentence. A focus may be as simple as the name of your profession ("Financial Controller," "Marketing Director") centred under the name and address; it may be in the form of an objective or it may be in the form of a summary statement.

Try to use power words. Use the most active impressive verb you can think of for each skill, accomplishment or job described.

Cheers,
The Singapore Headhunter

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Seven Tips for Becoming A Successful Manager

Seven Tips for Becoming A Successful Manager By Susan M. Heathfield,

An effective manager pays attention to many facets of management, leadership and learning within organizations. It is difficult to take the topic of "management success" and say that the following ten items are the most important. However, there following are seven management success skills without which yon may not be a successful manager.

The most important issue in management success is being a person that others want to follow. Every action you take during your career in an organization helps determine whether people will one day want to follow you.

A successful manager:

- Builds effective and responsive interpersonal relationships. Reporting staff members, colleagues and executives respect his or her ability to demonstrate caring, collaboration, respect, trust and attentiveness.

- Communicates effectively in person, print and email. Listening and two-way feedback characterize his or her interaction with others.

- Builds the team and enables other staff to collaborate more effectively with each other. People feel they have become more - more effective, more creative, and more productive - in the presence of a team builder.
- Understands the financial aspects of the business and sets goals and measures and documents staff progress and success.
- Knows how to create an environment in which people experience positive morale and recognition and employees are motivated to work hard for the success of the business.
- Leads by example and provides recognition when others do the same.
- Helps people grow and develop their skills and capabilities through education and on-the-job learning.

Interviewer’s Role In An The Interview (Part I)

The quality of an interview is the interviewer's responsibility

Typically, the interviewer will set the tone of the interview. Though an interviewee may want to influence the tone of the interview, that is quite unlikely as the interviewee would not want to come across as disrespectful or disdainful.

The interviewer’s role is to ensure that there is an air of mutual respect in an interview, or the interview would not be successful or effective. The interviewer should set the tone of the interview and the objective of the interview should be to recruit top talent.

The objective of an interview is to recruit top talent.

The company is trying to attract top talent. Ideally, the first interview should be with the hiring manager. Do not forget that the first impression counts a lot. The interviewee is at the interview to know your company, the department he is going to work in, and the superior that he is going to work for. He is at the interview to discuss his experience and the job scope of this new potential job offer. The first interview should not be for the HR to do the screening, but rather for the hiring manager to have a detail and meaningful discussion about the job scope, career advancement opportunities, the candidate’s experience and aspirations, the fit between the candidate and the department.

The interview should be a meeting of mutual respect: a challenging and useful discussion of professionals.

As the interviewer, your objective should be making the interview a meeting of mutual respect: a challenging and useful discussion of professionals. As you are trying to recruit top talent, the top talent would be assessing the organization and the superior that he is going to work for. He is not going to join if he is uncomfortable with his interview experience.

The interviewee is at the interview with his own objective as well. He is there to assess if your organization is ‘attractive’ to him and what he would be able to ‘gain’ by working for you. It would be wise to treat him like you would treat a prospective customer. Show him why you are different from your competitors, why he should join you instead of your competitors. Show him that you are serious about him. If possible, work out a simple agenda. Tell the interviewee that he is not at the interview for an interrogation session. That will allow you to demonstrate to the interviewee the positive difference between you and your competitors and give the interviewee a certain good feel about your organization.

Do not be presumptuous.


In most interviews, the interviewers hold the upper hand. The usual mistake they make is to start ‘interrogating’ the interviewees too soon. The interviewer should be sincere in wanting to know the interviewee more; like what is he looking for in his next job, why he applies for your position, how he thinks he is going to add value to the position and what makes him choose your organization.
The interviewer should also share with the interviewees his (interviewer’s) goals and objectives, the profile of the person he is looking for, his background, his management style and what he is looking for in a candidate. In this way, the interviewee would be able to decide if he would be likely to fit into the working environment, for a long time to come.

State your business clearly.

The interviewer is the host and should take the lead. Lay your cards on the table. What is your company’s mission? What is its long-term goal? What role does your department play in the organization? What are some of the immediate challenges of the department? Why are you recruiting? Why are you interested in the interviewee?
After that, let the interviewee has his say. An interview has to be a 2-way communication to be effective. You want to ‘market’ your vacancy that is available as well as to learn more about the interviewee. Respect the interviewee. Pay full attention to what he got to say. Learn as much about him during the interview. If you have questions, wait for him to finish and ask him politely. Questions should be pertaining to his experience and how he feels he would be able to fit in successfully. Ask about his concerns, if any, about the vacancy. Everyone likes to work for an understanding, reasonable, caring and polite superior.


In the next part to this topic, we talk about why the interviewer needs to be prepared and be knowledgeable. Do come back soon.

Do you have any comments about this article? We appreciate your comments and feedback, which are crucial for us to improve.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
The Singapore Headhunter

Do Not Make The Same Mistake Or You Will Lose Out!

The other day, I sent a candidate to the client for a Manager position. Everything went on smoothly. The client liked her and the candidate was impressed with the organisation.

A reference check was requested. The reference check turned out great! Things were going great then. The client was keen to make an offer to her. The client was happy and the candidate was exhilarated. She called me to thank you profusely. We had a great conversation. I was delighted for her.

Then, the dreadful thing happened! The client needed some details from the candidate and one of her junior staff telephoned the candidate. Maybe, she was too happy or she was not in her usual frame of mind, she became agitated with that client's junior staff and spoke to her in an unfriendly manner. Instead of co-operating, she started to question that junior staff. Oh dear! Guess what happened?

That junior staff informed her superior (my client) and I received a call from the client to say that the offer was off. They were concerned about the attitude of the candidate. That was the worst thing to happen. Imagine that a potential job offer was lost over a small incident like this! What a dread!

Job seeker should also bear in mind to respect everybody irregardless of the position of the other party. A junior staff's comments could be worse than her bite. Her superior would be more likely to believe what she said. Be polite to all and respect everybody.

Do not make the same mistake or you may lose a job offer.

Cheers,
The Singapore Headhunter