Job Seeker's Story Merle had worked for 22 years as a Social Worker at various local non-profit and government human-services agencies. In her last job with the county family-services agency, she was promoted to senior social worker with a large caseload. She had been hired throughout her career on the recommendation of friends and professional colleagues who were employees and, thus, had n…
Job Seeker's Story With a background in computer science and networking technology, Douglas was confident his résumé would open doors for him. He had hastily prepared a one-page résumé after a recruiter contacted him in need of a Network Engineer with Cisco IOS and Intrusion Detection software experience. Doug e-mailed it to the recruiter in eager anticipation of…
Job Seeker's Story Jim had held positions as a Recruiter in six different staffing companies over a nine-year period. That period of time also contained some gaps (up to eight months) when he was unemployed. To camouflage those gaps, Jim changed the dates of his employment on his résumé. He did not want to appear to be a job hopper and also wanted to appear to be “in de…
Job Seeker's Story Josephine felt she was effective in writing her job descriptions for her résumé. She began each one with a paragraph that started with “Responsibilities included” and described what responsibilities she held in the role. These paragraphs could be anywhere from 10 to 20 lines long. She then followed the overview paragraphs with one or two well-w…
Job Seeker's Story Bradley loved fishing and hunting and had managed to secure a job right out of college for a top-brand fishing rod manufacturer and distributor. With a bachelor's degree in communications, his love of the outdoors, and an outgoing personality, Brad fit the role of Field Sales Representative very well. After five years of trying to move up the ranks in this family-o…
Job Seeker's Story As an Executive Director of a non-profit, Barbara had spent many hours writing her résumé in order to capture exactly what responsibilities she held and what contributions she had made in each position. The first page of her new two-page résumé included her contact information and then her current position, which she had held for the past five …
Job Seeker's Story Jeremy did not want to limit his job options, so he did not include an objective at the beginning of his résumé. Therefore, he started his résumé with his Education section followed by his Employment History section. Stacey wanted to make sure she would be happy with the environment and have opportunities for growth so she wrote: Objective: To …
Job Seeker's Story Marie, a Project Manager, created a résumé that she believed would really tell a reviewer about the projects she had been involved in during her time with her last employer. For example, three of her bullets read: She saw these bullets as full of detail and telling a story of exactly what her responsibilities and contribution to the projects entailed. Howeve…
Job Seeker's Story Anthony, a top-level sales and marketing Account Executive, had been in the job-search mode for the past year as he saw his start-up entrepreneurial venture struggling in a tight economy. Finally, as Anthony's resources began to seriously diminish, he put in a concentrated effort to get back into corporate account management by updating his résumé. Af…
Job Seeker's Story Thomas had been applying for positions for several months with no response. He was very proud of his résumé, which had been created using a document template, and he felt he had saleable job skills, so could not understand what was wrong. At a job fair, Thomas spoke with Lily, a professional résumé writer. After looking at his résum�…
Job Seeker's Story Cecilia was anxious about her first interview after six weeks of an unfruitful job search. Most of the résumés she had e-mailed to employers in response to job postings on the Internet had gotten no reply whatsoever. She had a few phone interviews that did not seem to last very long and resulted in no second interviews. Consequently, this upcoming face-to-fa…
Job Seeker's Story As an Information Technology (IT) Manager rising through the ranks, Patrick had worked diligently on his job search after being let go from his last company due to a merger and restructuring. He prepared his one-page résumé and submitted it numerous times in response to online job postings where he was certain his skills were a perfect match for the job list…
Job Seeker's Story Jade had worked in Maintenance Management during her 33-year career. When Human Resources résumé reviewers first received her résumé they would initially think she had left dates off completely. However, after looking closely, they noticed that at the end of each of her paragraph-style job descriptions she had included entries such as “E…
Job Seeker's Story Elizabeth was a stay-at-home mom for the past six years. Although she had volunteered during that time for a few local organizations, and even performed bookkeeping for her husband's business, she did not think these counted. So she just left a six-year gap in her résumé, and listed her last secretarial position with the ending date of six years befor…
Job Seeker's Story Bruce had negotiated an incredible compensation package in his last Director of Engineering position, where he had earned a six-figure income, and which had resulted in a three-year paid severance when he was downsized. However, it had now been three years and, though he had enjoyed the first year and been consulting for the last two, he was no closer to a job offer despi…
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