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careergurulive · 8 years

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10 Common Mistakes to Avoid on Your Resume ... And, How to Avoid Them

Read this great article in Time about 10 common mistakes to avoid on your resume: http://time.com/3966490/resume-common-mistakes

This is a great article covering the points that we have been advising our users. If you don’t have time to read the while article, below are the points covered in this article:

Lack of Clarity

Cramming Too Much Information Onto the Page

Not Using the Right Key Words

Taking a One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Making It All About You

Using an Inappropriate Email Address

Focusing on Tasks Instead of Results

Listing Skills They Don’t Really Have

Forgetting to Be Themselves

How to Avoid These Mistakes

Make Sure To Have A Summary Section At The Beginning: This summary should have bulletted list of your most relevant accomplishments. Most relevant for the target job. Most of the hiring managers and recruiters will look at this section for just 4-5 seconds and decide if they should read more / call you for interview or throw your resume in the trash. So, bring out your very best in this section.

Also be sure to not say too much. Do your homework about the target job and target position to understand the top skills and the results that matter for that job. Emphasize just those results and skills.

Talk About Your Results, Not The Activities: I have seen people always making this mistake - they talk about their activities, rather than impact. This makes their profile look very generic and weak. For example, if you just say that I was the product manager in company so and so, it’s ok but you’ll be just one of many product manager candidates. However if you have done the research about the target job and know that they value PM skills in supply chain domain, you can highlight specific responsibilities and the relevant results. e.g. you can write “As a Product Manager, I led the growth of our supply chain product from 10 customers to 1,000 customers in just 3 months. This helped my employer gain $5 million in Monthly Recurring Revenue.”

Do Research And Tailor Your Resume To The Target Job: Selling yourself for a job is just like selling a product to a customer. More you know about customer and more you personalize your message according to target customer needs, higher the chances of success. You should do as much research as possible about the target job and target position. And then, tailor your resume and cover letter to use the right keywords and highlight relevant accomplishments. Essentially help your potential employer quickly see how useful you’ll be for them.

They will not believe you are an useful asset for them just because you claim that you are great. Instead they will believe so because of your past accomplishments (projects, job responsibilities, and training. Side note- be careful about emphasizing training too much. Employers pay attention to training and education only after they learn about your accomplishment and experience. So, highlight them first).

Don’t Exaggerate Your Skills And Accomplishments: Many people think that tailoring resume means lying on your resume or claiming the skills they don’t have. While this might help in getting some interview calls, this mistake can really come back to bite you. Even if you are called for the interview, you will most likely fail that interview because interviewer will ask you detailed questions on those skills. Just skimming through some articles or reading a book about that skill will not make you qualified. Interviewer will drill into specific practical experience and practical challenges that you went through. Least harmful thing that can happen to you through this lie is you failing the interview. You might even be blacklisted in that company’s HR system. Also, failing multiple interviews like these might have psychological negative effect on you and erode your confidence for future interviews.

There is one exception to this advice- when you don’t have certain skill but you are wondering if it’s worth investing time in building that skill to get you the target job, you can try this hack. Create a resume by putting that skill and experience, apply for your target jobs, and see if you get the interview calls. However don’t take those interviews because you don’t want to lie. Also, be careful in not trying this hack with too many skills at the same time or the skills and experience that you cannot build in realistic timeframe. Use this technique like a market research technique. And, then make plans to build that skill and experience.

Don’t Be Afraid To Apply For Your Target Jobs Or To Go For An Interview: On one hand, I have seen people exaggerating their skills. On the other hand, I also see many people having the skills but they keep falling short of confidence in applying for their target job. They keep thinking that they are not ready and they need to prepare more. If you have the skills and are reasonably ready, start apply to some jobs (ok, not your dream company but some companies where you are ok to fail). Don’t keep waiting for that perfect readiness stage. You’ll learn tons from these interviews. Find out the gaps in your readiness and then fill them. Test again with some more interviews. This will make you more confident when you apply for the job in your dream companies.

Conclusion

Selling yourself for a job is just like selling a product to your target customers. You should do your research and talk about most relevant benefits to your customer. Also, keep doing market research to understand market needs and make plans for making yourself highly useful for your potential employers.

Will love to hear questions and thoughts on this. Leave them as comment here or write to use at [email protected]

Looking for career related help or advice? Use our free forum or personalized help through our premium services.

#career tips #jobsearch #resume #career #careertalk

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careergurulive · 8 years

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5 Reasons to Learn SQL ( and, 1 Reason Not to Learn SQL)

SQL is one of the oldest and arguably the easiest programming languages to learn. A survey says SQL skills can get you $92K salary. In this blog, I'll cover how SQL can help your career. However you should have realistic expectation too. SQL is not the solution to everything. Read on to learn all about them. Please share your questions and thoughts as comments.

#1: A step towards highly paid career paths like SQL Developer, BI Engineer, Data Engineer, Data Scientist etc.

According to indeed.com data, average salary of SQL / BI developer is $92,000 (almost twice the median US household income). SQL is a critical skill for all these roles. Here are some sample job titles and their average salary ( taken from indeed.com link ) :

#2: Easiest language to get hang of programming

SQL is one of the easiest language to learn. It is based on Set theory and Linear Algebra concepts of mathematics. Here is a useful link to show this parallel. So, even if you are not familiar with any other programming language, SQL will be very easy to pick up.

Be aware that some purists don’t consider SQL a programming language. Don’t get caught up in that debate. Important point is that learning SQL will give you a very important technical skill. Programming and technical jobs need certain kind of algorithmic thinking. Learning SQL will give you that algorithmic thinking.

#3: Makes your more valuable business person (Better Marketing Manager / Analyst / Product Manager etc)

Technology jobs like will be one of the most in-demand jobs by 2020 with roles like Data Analyst, Computer Programmers, Software Developers, Information Security Analysts, and more. See this link on future of jobs. Learning SQL will set you on the path to some of these in-demand jobs.

SQL is very useful to learn even if you are in business roles. Marketing Managers can do better analytics on large volume of data with the SQL skills. Excel is a great reporting tool but when you are dealing with really large volume of data, you also need to do some aggregation, complex calculation etc to be able to use that data in excel. Knowing SQL will be very handy there.

You can also easily understand the detailed logic behind the reports you create in excel and quickly make backend tweaks as you learn about new business scenarios.

As a formal Product Manager, I can totally relate to how knowing SQL made me a go to person in my team for many business and even architecture questions.

Overall, as a business person, you tend to be more in control, if you know SQL.

#4: If you are a tester, SQL makes you more valuable

As you know, manual component of testing in Testers’ job profile is going away. Purely manual tester jobs are either not there or the pay rates are very low. SQL can make a Tester very valuable by enabling him or her to do automated data setup, data analysis and also put on a path to do automated testing.

If you are a Tester or planning a Test Career, Learning SQL will definitely make you more valuable by opening more job opportunities and/or increasing your pay rate.

#5: Makes you a better full stack developer (back end + front end engineer)

These days, there is more demand for full stack developers rather than just the front end developer or just the backend developer. All the real applications have to deal with data. So, knowing SQL makes you a very valuable full stack developer too.

Here is a picture taken from the web that presents different technology stack for a full stack developer. The last one (MS SQL/ MySQL Other DB) in the stack needs SQL skills.

But...What Not To Expect?

Learning SQL is extremely valuable, however you should also keep your expectation right. Having SQL skill only will not be sufficient. You have to complement SQL with other skills to be more marketable. For example, combine SQL skills with Testing skills, or combine SQL skills with advanced database / BI skills to become SQL / BI developer, or combine SQL skills with marketing skills to become better marketer, etc.

In conclusion, learning SQL is definitely a good time and money investment. But, make sure you keep a particular career path in mind. That way, you’ll learn SQL with the right mindset and also take the appropriate next steps after learning SQL.

Conclusion

That’s all for now. Will love to answer any questions (leave them as comments).

Looking for Guided Help in Learning SQL?

http://proudfolio.com/careerguru/introductory-sql-training

About this article:

This article is brought to you about CareerGuru.Live - an online platform to get career guidance from the industry experts and community of professionals.

#jobsearch #education #learning #job hunting #career #job advice #sql

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careergurulive · 8 years

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How to write a resume - Ashu shares her personal experience

This week, Ashu Rawat is sharing her personal experience on her frustrations with getting her résumé noticed. And, what changes made a big difference:

Last year when I was in the job market, I had a good enough resume that talked about my career objectives, skills, and responsibilities at different jobs. But it didn’t get me much traction for the first five months. It was very frustrating.

After doing more research, talking to the recruiters, and looking at the LinkedIn statistics on job applications per job, I realized how competitive the market was. My résumé was obviously getting lost in all those applications. It was very clear to me that human attention span is really getting shorter than that of the Goldfish. Recruiters and Hiring Managers spend 5 seconds or less to skim through the résumé and make the decision.

I had to do something to let my resume stand out. Did tons of research, read articles, used online and offline services. Experimented with many changes. Finally, created a version that got a lot better response. Below is the picture of the same (I have changed it to make it generic for anyone to use. Email me at [email protected] to get the powerpoint template for the same. )

Following are the main changes that helped me get a lot better response:

Replaced Cover Letter with an Infographic profile

We all know that a picture is worth a thousand words. This applies in the job market as well. Infographic is very engaging, makes you stand out, and is also a great way to market your creative skills. It’s an awesome tool to tell a story about your professional skills in less than 5 seconds.

The content in my infographic was kind of informal. I also highlighted a bit of my personality in the headline. The other graphically rich contents were - education, skills where I rated myself on a scale of 1-5, my career roadmap and in the end, I wrote a short blurb about my knowledge of the company and how I could add value to their business. This showed them that I have done my research and I am not mass mailing the same resume to all.

How did I create this Infographic? There are tons of infographic resume creating tools available out there – basic ones for free and premium for a price. I created mine using Powerpoint. If you need help for your specific case, you can also contact this careerguru.live site.

Note- some job sites don't allow pictures, so you can't use infographics everywhere, but you should still follow the spirit of an infographic. Make main points about your profile easily stand out.

Shortened the length

I have over 10 yrs of experience, so if I put all the details and experience on my resume, it'll become a long novel. No one would be interested in reading the whole thing. So, I picked the most important and relevant ones. For example, I don’t need the details of my internship and early experience which are mostly irrelevant to my current profile.

I removed the “objective” section and replaced that with a short yet powerful summary of who I am and the impact of my work.

I also got rid of the lengthy company details and the bulleted job responsibilities from each of my earlier jobs. I replaced those bulleted descriptions with a short story of relevant professional accomplishments (more on that in the next section)

Short Story of my accomplishments - Not the long descriptions of each and every job

An attention-grabbing resume tells a clear, succinct story about who you are and why you are the perfect fit for the company. I took some tips from Seth Godin's guidance on how to tell a great story.

No need to spell out all the details about your previous jobs and recite bland standard phrases about your past job duties. Tell an engaging story. Stories clearly showing what did you get done, what problems did you solve in the past and that those accomplishments and problems were similar to the ones your hiring manager is facing now.

Don't just state your past responsibilities and the roles. Use the power of numbers - results of your work, ROI, efficiency gains, changes in processes, cost reductions, improvement in employee morale, reduction in employee turnover, awards etc.

Here is an example accomplishment story:

“<Company name> was using 5 different tools for managing product specifications/requirements, roadmap, design specifications, release notes, code, project timelines and status. Within my first month in the company, I brought everything together in one tool – the info-hub. This resulted in 20% project management efficiency gains, improving and standardizing communication across the board and cost gain of $100,000 in saving the cost of licenses.”

With stories like this, I clearly explained the problems, the solution, and the results. This is much more effective than simply creating a bullet list of items like “successfully implemented an integrated platform for storing project information and documentation which also became the single communication channel”. Dollars amount, percentages, and other numbers grab the attention in that first 5 sec glance. Once you have that attention, recruiter and hiring manager spend more time on your resume and see other shiny points about your profile like go-getter attitude, expansive and flexible skills, deep knowledge of the process from business and technical standpoint, ability to deliver the results etc.

You don’t need to have a long career to show such accomplishment. Here is one such example that can be used when you are early in your career:

“During my training as a waitress, I volunteered to be part of a 3 member team responsible for onboarding my restaurant on Opentable app. This included getting the restaurant listed on Opentable, working with IT to offer reservations on the restaurant site and training other staff on using the app. The implementation resulted in 30% reduction in the turnaround time and 20% improvement in shift performance.”

You can also mention awards and recognition for any initiatives and ideas from school or college time.

Conclusion

Overall, a short resume that clearly tells stories of your top accomplishments with the results, is sure to make your stand out and get much higher interview calls. Make your resume as visual as possible so that recruiters and hiring managers can immediately notice it. There are tons of online tools and templates available to help you. You can also get personal guidance from the CareerGuru.Live site. I am one of the mentors there.

#resume #jobsearch #job advice #career #cv

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careergurulive · 8 years

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How to find a job fast without experience? (Part 1)

A survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education of more than 50,000 employers found that hiring managers rate any experience like internships, employment during college and volunteer experience above things like coursework, college GPA, and college reputation. If you have ever been in the job market, you would have faced this harsh reality yourself.

This problem arises not just for the first time job searchers like college students, but even for people who are trying to get into a job very different from their previous experience. For example, people trying to get into management job for the first time or people moving from the non-tech field into tech field.

All the hiring managers and recruiters look for people with relevant experience. During the interviews also, there is a growing trend of behavioral interview questions like “when was the list time you did blah?”.

You’ll not get a job without experience but you’ll not get experience without a job. So, how do you get out of this catch-22 situation? I like to break down this challenge into 2 parts:

Getting the interview call Passing the interview This article gives you tips for the first part of the challenge: “Getting the Interview Call”. The second part will talk about how to pass the interview once you get the interview call.

So, how do you get the interview call?

Find creative ways to get the relevant experience

There are many ways you can build the relevant experience:

Internship

Volunteer work

Side Project / Personal Project

Freelancing

You will have to work for free or very low wages for these jobs but think of this as an investment you are making in yourself. This is just like investing money in your college education or training. You build not only the right experience but also a great network and a great set of references. Network and references are extremely important for getting a job. So, think of these jobs not just as an experience builder but also as a network and reference builder.

Now, you might be wondering, how do you find these opportunities.

One way is to become part of startup community mailing list, meetup group, Facebook group or any online / offline community. Offer yourself as a free resource to help in your area of interest. Many people might get interested in you. Many startups also post the requirement for interns/ freelancers there. Here in Seattle, I regularly see these kinds of requirements posted to the local mailing list of tech startups ( [email protected] ) . I am sure you can find the right one for your city too. In fact, you don’t even have to be in the same city to be part of a mailing list, meetup group or Facebook group.

You might also get some volunteer work experience by asking around in your friend circle. When I started my software business, one of my ex-colleague’s wife asked if she could volunteer to help me in any area. She is from fashion design background. She didn’t know programming but she volunteered to help me as a sales person. This helped her get great exposure to the tech sector. And, a great reference too.

One note of caution: even for free or low wage work, don’t try to sell yourself as someone who has no clue what you can do but willing to work for free. No one will want to spend time with a clueless person. Tell them about something relevant like you attended training, self-learned some technology, did some side project and now you are looking to contribute to more real life project.

There are many sites for finding freelance work too. The bar will be higher there. No one will hire a freelancer with zero relevant experience. You have to put some sample work to show what you can do. Create your sample work portfolio by following above mentioned tips - side project, internship, volunteer work etc. Keep your price low in the beginning so that someone takes a chance on you. You can download the list of top freelancing and remote work sites below:

Download the list of freelancing and remote work sites.

Make your resume shine

Resume is a big topic in itself, we’ll do a separate blog post on that in the future. In the job search, you should think of yourself as a product. Your resume is your brochure. Below are a few quick points you should keep in mind:

The resume should very clearly talk about your relevant accomplishments. Employers care about what you have done and what was the result of that work. Your past work shows what you can do for them right away.

Don’t waste time and space talking about generic things like “I am hard-working”, “I am overachiever” etc. Anyone can make those claims. Let your results speak for you. For example, saying that “you sold blah product to 1,000 customers within 2 months” is more impactful than saying that “you are a great salesperson with strong work ethic”

Remove the objective section. Employers will care more about what you can do for them, than what your objective is. Instead of an objective section, add a summary section highlighting your top relevant accomplishments in bullets.

Keep your resume short. The ideal length is 2 pages. Max 3 pages. And most important results should come at the top. Recruiters and hiring managers spend just 5-6 seconds on skimming through resume and make the shortlisting decision.

Leave out unnecessary things from your resume. For example, if you are applying for a developer job, no one cares about your swimming hobby. Mention something only if you can make a connection with the job in question. For example, if you say that you developed a personal project to track swimming time of you and your time. That might become very relevant.

Tailor your resume to the specific job in hand. More relevant your resume looks, better the chances of the call. Like I said earlier, employers spend only 5-6 seconds to decide whether or not you should be called for the interview.

Ask some experienced person to take a look at your resume and give you honest feedback and suggestion. Better to get that feedback from the person who hires people in your target job market or at the minimum, people who have experience in that area. There are many online services and agencies that review resumes and give feedback. Many of them are good but be careful of many agencies where people have no real hiring experience in your target job market. You can also ask for resume feedback from our Proudfolio apps.

Network, Network, Network

I can’t emphasize it enough. Networking is the most important part of job search (and career growth in general). About 70% of the jobs are not advertised at all. They are found through networking. Even the 30% that is advertised, a big percentage of them get filled through the known network. This percentage is much higher for senior jobs. One direct benefit of good networking is that you get in direct touch with the hiring manager or people who know hiring manager very well. Apart from this direct benefit, networking also helps in all the other points mentioned in this article. For example, you get to know about the most important requirement for a given type of job or a given company. Through networking, you can get your resume reviewed by the right folks, you can get a better idea of what skill to build, get a mock interview, etc etc. If I have to pick the most important aspect of any job search, it has to be networking.

So, how do you network? Do you have to be extrovert to network? Good news is that networking is not as hard as some of us think it is. Being an introvert myself, I used to think that networking is not for me. But once I learned the real meaning of networking, it became an enjoyable experience for me. Networking (like resume) is a separate big topic in itself, but following are some quick tips:

Try to insert yourself in the right meetup, online group. Don’t feel pressured that you have to look very polished, exchange tons of business cards, have elevator pitch etc. Attend first few just to observe and have fun. Once you observe people chatting about a few things, you can very easily insert yourself into the right conversation

Attend job fairs in your city. Go to the booth of some companies. Even if you think that you are not ready for some jobs, you’ll get a good idea of the requirements. Also, you can request some of those people to be your mentor. Once you make someone your mentor, that person feels like it is their responsibility to help you. It boosts their ego.

There are many online forums like LinkedIn groups, mailing lists, Facebook group etc. CareerGuru.Live is another good online forum where you get connected with good network of the mentors.

Don’t under-estimate the importance of some social settings too. Try to meet new people in parties and tell them about your situations, aspirations etc. If you tell people, you need help and specifically what help you need, most of them like to help. Most of us like to show that they are very powerful, knowledgeable and nice people. As long as they are not competing with you, they will want to help you ;)

Be ambitious but also be realistic

It’s great to aim high. That’s how you achieve big results. At the same time, it’s also important to be realistic and find some stepping stone to the ultimate ambition. I’ll like to share my personal story in this regard. Around 10 years ago, I got bored with my job in consulting and internal IT job at Microsoft, so I decided to get into a commercial product team. Since I was doing very well in my career, I had a reasonably senior level in the IT team. But Product teams had no value for that. In fact, they didn’t like my seniority because they felt it would be harder for me to adjust to the new role. My ambition was well set. I had decided that I absolutely wanted to work on commercial product and I was sure that I would do very well once I get the opportunity. But I was not getting the opportunity due to lack of experience in that space. So, I decided to take a transition role where I was responsible for strategic customer onboarding for our commercial products. Product teams were open to hiring me for that role because I could leverage my consulting and customer management skills. In this role, I learned how commercial product development teams work. I built a great network. Better understood the skills required and built those skills. People saw value in what I was bringing to the table and then I, very easily, got an opportunity in the core product development team. Over time, I established myself so well that multiple teams used to approach me for joining them. Just in a span of 4-5 years, tables turned. My situation changed from being a desperate job seeker to a talent in high demand. I started mentoring other people on how to get a job in the product teams and how to become a successful product manager. I became so good at building products and mentoring people that I finally quit my full-time job to build a business and online product around mentoring people.

Hope this story gives you ideas about what that transition role could be for you.

Research the company well and reflect that in your cover letter and resume

This is important for your resume and cover letter. It becomes even more important when you go for the interview. Related to my earlier point about making the resume more relevant, if you have researched the company well, you’ll know very well about what tailoring to do in your resume and your cover letter (or, cover email). But be careful here for the big companies. These big companies have many groups and your research may not apply to the particular group in the question. So, do your research about the specific group too. Sometimes, these groups within the big companies also act as rivals. So, talking too much about a rival group might upset them (welcome to Corporate Politics :) )

Be persistent - follow up

Last week, I heard a story from a friend of mine that very well emphasizes this point. She applied for a job. After many weeks, she got an automated kind of email saying that she doesn’t meet the job requirement. She had done research and she felt very convinced that she has many relevant skills. She replied back asking feedback on why she didn’t meet the requirements and emphasizing her relevant experience. She was reconsidered and finally got the interview call.

I don’t want to paint a rosy picture here. Most of these follow-ups go unanswered. But at least do 1-2 follow-ups to find out what’s going on or why you were not selected. If nothing else, you might get a response on what was found missing in your profile. This way, you know what you need to do for future jobs.

Keep doing market research on your target job(s) and make plans to fill the gap

I made this point earlier too - think of yourself as a product in the job market. For you to sell the product well, keep doing market research on what do customers (employers) want. I touched upon some techniques in this article earlier like network with people and find out what skills are must-have’s for your target job. Review many job descriptions of your target job and find common patterns.

If you are not getting any calls, try one hack - create another resume by adding 1 skill that you are finding in most of the job descriptions but you don’t have that skill yet. If you start getting the call, you know the exact skill gap. Now, you know what skill to build.

You have to be careful in this hack. Don’t put too many new skills. Try this with only those skills that you feel you can build within a few months.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting you lie on your resume. I am just saying that you should get a good understanding of your skill gap. I have personally helped many people try this technique, this helped them clearly know what training, personal project, internship they should do.

You don’t have to meet the exact job description

Hiring managers are very busy people. Very few of them write a job description from scratch. They usually copy and paste some other job description and make edits for the new job requirement. Many times, they also get very ambitious and ask for the moon in the job description. Don’t feel discouraged and intimidated, if you don’t meet 100% of the requirements. Most jobs usually have 1-2 very important must have requirements and others can be negotiated. For example, a Project Manager job description might ask for experience of managing a project, working with engineers, domain experience, related technical knowledge, PMP, MBA etc. However, you’ll have a good chance of getting the call if you highlight some complex projects you managed. If that project is somewhat related to their project domain, even better. Other requirements like technical knowledge, PMP, MBA etc are nice to have.

As you apply for many jobs, talk to the recruiters, network and do market research, you’ll start learning more about absolute must-have requirements. If none of this is available, you can also make use of our free expert chat service.

Your seemingly unrelated experience might be relevant

This may not always be true but many times, we ignore our prior experience assuming that it has no relevance to the target job. Just take a second look at what you have done. You might be able to make some connection. Seek the help of your mentor network to get the second opinion. One person was telling me I once met someone who wanted to get into software industry after working as an Aeronautical Engineer for 5 years. At the surface level, her prior experience had no relationship with the software jobs she was aiming for but she positioned her “attention to detail”, “quality check”, “problem-solving skills” as the transferable skills in the software testing role. This helped her get many interview calls and even land a job.

Again, you’ll not get a job just on this remote connection basis. You have to build some relevant experience (refer the first point). But this connection can be a cherry on the top.

Be confident and have fun!

Confidence highly enhances your chances of success. Carol Cohen talks about this point very beautifully in her TED talk. This TED talk is about people trying to get back to work but most of these principles also apply to anyone looking for a job without experience.

Hope this long article gave you tons of ideas on how to get your first break. I’ll be happy to answer additional questions and take feedback. Good Luck!

#jobsearch #jobhunt #interview #career #jobless

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