by Joel Walsh

Read on to find out how to give yourself an unfair advantage in applying on job search websites.

You need to approach a job search website not from the point of view of someone who wants a job, but from the point of view of the person who has to handle hundreds of applications.

Ultimately, it’s that person’s hopes and dreams for getting through the mass of applications that matters, not your hopes and dreams vis-a-vis your career.

Here’s how you can make that person’s dreams come true:

· KISS–keep it simple and short.

· Provide everything asked for in the application. Someone who has to sort through a hundred applications a day doesn’t necessarily have time to visit your website, or ask you again for the required writing sample, or even clarify any part of the job advertisement.

· Make sure the very first sentence of your cover letter specifically references the job in question in a way that makes it clear this is not a form letter (even if it is a form cover letter after the first line). Even something fawningly polite–no, especially something fawningly polite–such as “Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to apply for your…” will greatly increase your chances of ending up in the recycling bin.

Job Search Websites: Advanced Users’ Cheat Sheet

1. After applying online, work your network to try to make a human connection at the company. The person who posted the job has probably already turned the phone off for fear of going deaf from job applicants’ calls. But if you can somehow get within a few degrees of separation of that person’s assistant, or even a co-worker, you may be able to get the face time you need to jump out of the resume slush pile.

2. Try snail-mailing and/or faxing an additional copy of your materials, with a note that you just wanted to make sure the person got your application. The note should also have a relevant P.S., such as, “congratulations on winning second-place at the Widgets Convention new product awards.” Does this method have the potential to annoy? Yes. Does it give you an effective edge? Usually not–just often enough to make it worthwhile. Ultimately, if you?re serious about getting a job, you need to make sure your application actually makes it front of a pair of human eyes.

3. In your cover letter use a little humor–mind you, just a little, and keep it tame. Don’t sound like a comedian, but don’t sound exactly like everyone else, either. You have to stop your reader?s eyes from glazing over somehow.

4. Most important of all: submit your application to a recruiter in addition to employers. It’s a recruiter’s job to sift through applications. They’re much more likely to take an interest in you than some human resources officer. Several websites make it easy to submit your applications to numerous recruiters with one push of a button.

5. Most valuable time-saver: Submit your application to a “meta-search” jobs search website, one that will let you apply to listings on numerous other jobs websites at the same time. There are well over a hundred individual jobs websites online, not to mention classifieds. You’ll never get to them all on your own otherwise.

In conclusion, the bad news is that you have even more competition than you thought when applying on a job search website. The good news is, it’s a lot easier than you thought to make yourself stand out from the competition. Just show the prospective employer with as much respect as you want them to show you.

About the author: Joel Walsh is a regular contributor to job-search-adviser.net. Read his other articles, with even more secrets to beat the job search websites.

by Peter Newfield

Military personnel can offer a great deal of experience and dedication to prospective commercial employers. Yet their capabilities are often discounted if they adhere to a formal military-style resume. With some analysis and innovation, individuals making the transition from military to civilian careers can effectively position themselves as the well-qualified, capable candidates they are. From the written materials to the first telephone contact, and finally through the stages of the interview, military applicants need to almost “re-invent” themselves to be competitive in the market they have selected.

Why do recruiters or hiring managers overlook well-qualified military applicants? First, they may not be able to establish (or understand) a matched skills set from the military resume, perhaps because the language and “buzz words” do not equate. If the recruiter is forced to decipher too much technical information or military jargon, he or she may be unable to see the qualifications they are looking for. Second, recruiters may be distracted by the military resume format. Military resumes tend to be long and do not consolidate background and experience as it relates to the open position.

Assessment of Strengths

The first step for the transitioning applicant is to understand his or her talents, skills, and abilities and how those attributes relate to business and industry. Military personnel develop traits beneficial to commercial enterprises because they are held to high standards of performance and operations. Recruiting professionals polled agreed that military personnel make excellent leaders, once given a specific task: they are decisive, resourceful, and tremendous team players; and they perform well under pressure.

In the military, an individual who has demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities is targeted for intense training and development. The individual may be assigned to managing a troop, then to human resources, and then to a position responsible for policy-making and strategic planning. The intent is to develop a top-notch trained officer who can function in a large structured organization. Because of the size, structure, and nature of doing business in the military, this individual has great potential for success in operations management in almost any industry. And depending on his/her length of service, the applicant could immediately transition into first-line supervision or senior-level management. The challenge is correlating the different assignments to private sector roles, including financial planning and analysis, operations management, purchasing, human resource management, systems administration, and administrative support.

Creating the “Civilian” Resume

As with any other specialized field, military applicants need not only to prepare their resume and cover letter in “lay terms” but also to strategize how they will “fit” and “market” themselves throughout the process. The military resume should stay away from the textbook traditional format and style. The last thing the applicant wants the recruiter focusing on is military rank or title. The focus should be on the professional capabilities the applicant will bring to the company.

Therefore, in most cases, military experience is best handled in a modified functional resume, because it highlights capabilities in professional categories as opposed to chronological achievements by job title or rank. This resume has an objective right up front that explains the applicant’s skills and experience, as well as other outstanding areas of expertise. Then, statements following the objective should categorize the experience in particular commercial areas, such as “Management Expertise,” “Operations Expertise,” “Human Resources Expertise.” This format allows the writer to tie together the pieces of his experience into a complete story that comes across clearly and immediately. In this way, seemingly fragmented assignments are read as parts of one position, with “progressively more duties and responsibilities” along the way.

Readers should be immediately impressed with how different the presentation looks from military resumes they’ve read in the past and should soon forget they are reading a military resume altogether. The applicant should use the language and industry terms specific to the chosen industry and profession. It is not necessary to repeat the military information at the closing of the resume, if it is the primary source of employment and therefore already noted in the dates and headings that come before.

Creative Cover Letter

The cover letter can carry a one-liner about the honorable discharge but should not repeat what has already been stated in the resume. It should be used to answer the question all recruiters ask: “Why should I call this individual, and how can he or she benefit our company?” The cover letter gives the military writer the opportunity to show his “non-military” side, to dispel the reader’s pre-conceived ideas of a military candidate, and to distinguish him- or herself as a industry-savvy candidate who is upbeat, personable, and ready for the new challenge.

About the author:

Peter Newfield is President of Career-Resumes.com, one of the premier resume writing services in the United States. He is The Resume Expert for SpencerStuart.com, BlueSteps.com, ExecutiveRegistry.com, NETSHARE.com, DirectEmployer.com and the former Resume Expert for Monster.com and the Career Center on AOL. View samples at: www.career-resumes.com

For a free critique/price quote, email your resume to resume@career-resumes.com.

by Peter Newfield

Life would certainly be a lot easier if your career history could be perfectly presented on a resume. But for many job seekers, a few missing years can rise up to haunt you when sending these critical documents out to headhunters and prospective employers. How do you tactfully, accurately address the missing years in your resume and/or cover letter?

Some of the most common reasons for having years unaccounted for on a resume many include taking time off to have a baby/raise a family, going back to school for higher education or technical training, enrollment in the military, recovering from a traumatic accident or illness, caring for an elderly parent or sick child for an extended period of time, residence in a rehabilitation facility, or incarceration.

Obviously, some of these reasons will not be looked upon as favorably as others, even in this enlightened, politically correct employment era. But make no mistake — no reasons for gaps in employment history should be included on the resume document. If you can explain the time away from employment and feel that it would be important for a prospective employer to know this information, you may include it briefly in your cover letter.

For those individuals who do have gaps in employment history, for whatever reason, the best resume format to use is the Functional Format. While a standard Reverse Chronological or Modified Functional type of resume may work best for those who have been consistently climbing up the ranks in one particular industry, these resume formats will not help the job seeker with a problem of employment gaps.

The Functional Format resume is the answer for the job applicant who has worked in more than one industry, has changed careers, has gone back to school to pursue training in a new field, or who is returning to the workforce. A Functional Format can prevent a job candidate from being pigeon-holed into one specific field or level of experience or penalized for gaps in employment, per se. The Functional Format resume can provide the platform for you to showcase your varied strengths, talents, and experiences.

Let’s take the example of an individual who has been out of the workforce for a number of years and is now looking for a job. The resume would start out with a brief Summary of Qualifications, which is a 3-8 sentence overview of skills and areas of experience, and then proceed with a section entitled Areas of Strength, which could be a list of key words appropriate to your professional experience or could be broken down into several distinct areas of experience with bulleted items. Maybe your Areas of Strength include Sales and Public Relations or Teaching and Office Administration. You can make each one a separate category and bullet 3 or 4 items under each heading to indicate your experience and skills in these areas.

One of the most common reasons for a significant gap in employment history is taking time off to raise a family. If the returning professional had a career path 10 or 15 years earlier and would like to re-enter that same field of interest, then the next section of Professional Experience can list those related jobs, titles, and responsibilities. Do not omit the dates! By leaving off dates of employment on a resume, you will raise more questions than if you list dates from the 1970’s or 1980’s.

However, in the time that you were not formally employed in your field, you may have gained additional experience while you were out of the workforce which should be included on your resume. Were you the Treasurer of a civic organization for the past five years? Were you an unpaid docent in the local museum? Did you direct or plan activities as a volunteer for an after-school center? Were you a sports coach or Scoutmaster on the weekends or during the evenings? List this experience, dates, and responsibilities under a section on the resume entitled Additional Experience. Then end the resume with a Computer Skills and/or Education section.

The second most common reason for gaps in employment history is faced by job seekers with disabilities, illness, or family-related issues. Again, the advice is to not include any mention of your particular handicap, disability, or medical history in the resume — it is against the law regarding equal opportunity employment rules. In the same way that the returning worker must address the absence of years on a resume, the disabled job seeker should use a functional resume format to address gaps in years of employment or changes in fields of interest. If you were able to take any classes or technical training or work part-time or volunteer at all while in rehabilitation from an automobile accident, caring for an elderly parent or staying by the side of a child undergoing medical treatment, these can and should be included on the resume under Additional Experience.

The common thread in all of these cases is to highlight your skills and accomplishments so that your overall experience and knowledge can be presented to your best advantage. If you feel that your particular circumstances should be expressed to the prospective employer or job screener, then you can briefly mention this in your cover letter.

The value of a cover letter is the ability to present your intentions, qualifications, and availability to a prospective employer in a succinct, appealing format. While your resume can give the specifics on places of employment, responsibilities, and educational background, a cover letter is your first chance to make an impression on the job screener and personalize the attached information contained in the resume.

Never include negative information in your cover letter such as personality conflicts with previous employers, pending litigation, or sarcastic remarks like “I was making dirt!”. If you bad-mouth past employers, interviewers will feel uneasy and may not even call you in for an interview.

The returning teacher may include a sentence or two in the cover letter such as, “As you can see on the enclosed resume, I have a Masters Degree in Special Education and have more than ten years of teaching experience in the XYZ and ABC School Districts. While I have taken a leave from teaching over the past five years to raise my two daughters, I have recently begun working as a Substitute Teacher in several local school districts and am anxious to resume a full-time teaching position.” She is focusing the Personnel Director’s attention on the ten years of relevant teaching experience that she has and is also providing information that she is pursuing current experience in the field through Substitute Teaching.

An operations manager who was downsized and took time off to go back to school in preparation for a career change may include the following information in his cover letter. “I would like to transfer my strategic planning and project management skills into the financial management arena where my interests are targeted. I have already completed six hours towards my MBA in Finance and would like to build a new career in the financial services field.” Again, the job applicant is stating that he has skills and experiences in a different industry but that he is re-directing his efforts, attending graduate school, and seeking an entry into a new field.

Take the time to craft your resume and cover letter to accurately present your skills and experiences and your efforts will be rewarded.

About the author:

Peter Newfield is President of Career-Resumes.com, one of the premier resume writing services in the United States. He is The Resume Expert for SpencerStuart.com, BlueSteps.com, ExecutiveRegistry.com, NETSHARE.com, DirectEmployer.com and the former Resume Expert for Monster.com and the Career Center on AOL. View samples at: www.career-resumes.com

For a free critique/price quote, email your resume to resume@career-resumes.com.

by Scott Brown

If you’re in between jobs or having trouble finding the career you want, you might want to consider temping. It’s a great way to avoid having gaps on your resume and you may also get a chance to learn something new. If you’re looking to change careers but don’t know where to start, it’s also a great way to gain experience without making a life change. You can temp for a little while and then decide if it’s time to change fields. Experience will get you everywhere so go out and get some

Listing it on your resume

A lot of people are afraid to take a temp job because they’re afraid of how it will look on their resume. But keep in mind that temping is not what it used to be. If you present it the right way, an interviewer will focus on your skills and experience, not that fact that you held a temp job. Temping jobs are great for mid-life career changers, as they can help you find yourself in terms of your new career. People often take temping jobs when they are in between jobs and need some income for the time being. However, some temp jobs last longer than “permanent” jobs.

Simply list your temp job(s) by the employer(s) you worked for. If you list the job as “Johnson Temp Agency” if may hurt your chances of getting a permanent job. While there’s nothing wrong with doing temporary work, we are often judged by the content of our resumes before we even meet an employer. List the job title, employer, and then the name of the agency to avoid unnecessary biases. For example:

Administrative Assistant, ABC Corporation, New York, NY
January 2004-present

This way, if someone is quickly skimming your resume, they won’t immediately see that you were/are employed as a temp.

De-emphasize the “temporary” part

These days regular jobs are sometimes just as temporary as temp jobs. It’s a tough economy with a lot of competition. But your temping experience can be an advantage if you have gotten a lot out of it. Remember, if your stint as a temp was brief, you don’t even have to list it all. However, if the experience (long or short) has benefited you as a professional, by all means, mention it Here are some quick reasons why you should mention your temping experience:

*You went above and beyond the call of duty at your temp job
*As a result, you have more skills, learned new programs, etc.
*You worked for a nationally recognized firm for a period of 6 months or more

Remember, it’s your choice whether or not you even use the word “temp.” You might want to avoid using words like “temporary” or “temp” altogether. Just be honest if you are questioned about your work history. When it comes time for an interview, keep your spirits up. Be as upbeat as possible about your temping experience and share all the positive aspects that have molded you into the professional you are today. Keep in mind that your feelings on the subject will show through. So think of your temping experience as a good one and others will too!

About the author: Scott Brown is the author of the Job Search Handbook (http://www.JobSearchHandbook.com). As editor of the HireSites.com weekly newsletter on job searching, Scott has written many articles on the subject. He wrote the Job Search Handbook to provide job seekers with a complete yet easy to use guide to finding a job effectively.

by Heidi Allison

Job seekers need to be prepared for both positive and negative comments. In today’s tight employment market, people’s job prospects are dictated by more than just their experience, resumes and interviewing skills. Former Job references are more important than ever.

It is virtually guaranteed potential employers go through a due diligence process to find out what former companies have to say about the candidate.

Heidi Allison, managing director of JobReferenceExperts.com, a division of Allison & Taylor, Inc., says one of the greatest myths associated with references focuses on what people actually say when contacted to provide a reference. Official policy may state company employees are not allowed to say anything negative about a former employee, but the fact is people tend to let their emotions get the best of them.

Allison, whose firm has checked the references of people for more than 20 years, provides the following real-world examples of people’s less than flattering responses to reference check questions:

What are this person’s strengths and weaknesses?
“I can’t think of any strengths, only weaknesses.”

Please rate this person’s technical skills.
“Is zero in your rating scale?”

Is this person eligible for re-hire?
“I am really not supposed to say much, but he was unreliable and sick a lot.”

Could you describe this person’s overall performance?
“Inadequate would be a positive word for him.”

Could you describe the reason for the separation?
“I fired him. He and his buddy had some illegal things going.”

I am calling because you are listed as a reference for ____ . . .
“Hold on, let me get the legal file to see what I am allowed to say.”

Please describe this person’s managerial skills.
“He couldn’t manage a group of monkeys.”

“I can’t tell you how many clients of ours have gone through an extensive interview process, only to have the job opportunity dissolve due to a poor reference,” Allison said. “We stress a person’s past will have a direct bearing on his or her future. Nurturing and selecting the right persons to be your professional references are more important than polishing your resume.”

About the author: Allison & Taylor, Inc., headquartered in Rochester Hills, Michigan, has been checking references for individuals since 1984. Its services have been listed and recommended by many magazines, newspapers and best-selling books by Martin Yate, www.knockemdead.com. For more information, please visit www.allisontaylor.com, or www.jobreferenceexperts.com.