All right. I am job hunting. As a contract technical writer, I am prepared to have to do this from time to time. In fact, the last three Christmas holidays I have been without a project. It's nice to have free time for holiday activities and family, but it's better if such a break can be predicted.
The last two years I have been on projects that were scheduled to extend through or past the holidays, but in each case I was laid off - in 2007 the day before Thanksgiving, and in 2008 on election day. Therefore, in spite of the clearly troubled times in which we currently find ourselves, my attitude is "different new year, same situation." This is how I am personally whistling past the graveyard of the ritual doomsday purveyors (yes, I mean the media).
Anyway, at the moment my attention is on updating my résumé, forwarding it to fruitful-looking recruiter databases, completing my LinkedIn profile and related tasks. Because I forward my résumé in electronic format, and because I am a technical writer, not only must I have a visually appealing document, it must also be able to be machine-read for databases. So the first question is whether to not use tables and columns (which might make electronic scanners unable to glean necessary information). I have opted to design it for visual appeal instead of for the ease of machines.
Some of the online job boards will scan your uploaded résumé and then auto-populate skills and work history fields which you can then edit. I have not seen one do a perfect job of it, so I don't know whether a successful auto-population is a good test of the visual appeal versus machine-readability question. If anyone can provide insight on this, please do post a comment.
Next, I have never included an objective on my résumé, and a review of a few résumé-writing advice sites offer differing opinions on whether to include one.
This article points out that an objective can be useful if you are applying for a specific position at a particular company, but that for a "general use" résumé, an objective may have less value:
Resume Tips and Job Hunting Advice from the Emurse Blog
And here are a couple of interesting things I've read today regarding résumés and job hunting:
Researching Keywords in Employment Ads
What to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession (post is from January last year)
Resume Design from the OWL at Purdue
The last two years I have been on projects that were scheduled to extend through or past the holidays, but in each case I was laid off - in 2007 the day before Thanksgiving, and in 2008 on election day. Therefore, in spite of the clearly troubled times in which we currently find ourselves, my attitude is "different new year, same situation." This is how I am personally whistling past the graveyard of the ritual doomsday purveyors (yes, I mean the media).
Anyway, at the moment my attention is on updating my résumé, forwarding it to fruitful-looking recruiter databases, completing my LinkedIn profile and related tasks. Because I forward my résumé in electronic format, and because I am a technical writer, not only must I have a visually appealing document, it must also be able to be machine-read for databases. So the first question is whether to not use tables and columns (which might make electronic scanners unable to glean necessary information). I have opted to design it for visual appeal instead of for the ease of machines.
Some of the online job boards will scan your uploaded résumé and then auto-populate skills and work history fields which you can then edit. I have not seen one do a perfect job of it, so I don't know whether a successful auto-population is a good test of the visual appeal versus machine-readability question. If anyone can provide insight on this, please do post a comment.
Next, I have never included an objective on my résumé, and a review of a few résumé-writing advice sites offer differing opinions on whether to include one.
This article points out that an objective can be useful if you are applying for a specific position at a particular company, but that for a "general use" résumé, an objective may have less value:
Resume Tips and Job Hunting Advice from the Emurse Blog
And here are a couple of interesting things I've read today regarding résumés and job hunting:
Researching Keywords in Employment Ads
What to do if you’re laid off in 2008 recession (post is from January last year)
Resume Design from the OWL at Purdue
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