Top 10 Job Interview Tips

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

36809012_sInterviewIQ’s Favourite Top 10 Interview Tips

You should read these top 10 interview tips  if the following two scenarios apply to you.

1) It’s been a while since you’ve had an interview and you don’t know where to start preparing.

2) If you’ve had an interview and thought you could have handled it a lot better.

I’ve based these 10 interview tips on my many years as an interview coach plus my background interviewing people as an HR and Recruitment Consultant.

I have also trained recruitment teams as a recruitment manager in the public and private sector.

Apply these interview tips whether you’re a senior professional or just starting out in your career.

These are my top 10 interview tips, so please read on.

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How long should a resume be??

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

Type “how long should a resume be?” into Google and you’ll see 179,000,000 answers. You have to really wonder if anyone knows what they are talking about. The only rule is, that there are few rules. If you think about length, a bit of common sense will take you a long way.

The only rules I have on length are these:

Think about the audience and what you’ll need to present on your resume to have any credibility. Think about who’s going to be reading it and the time they’ll have to spend on it. As a general rule, a more senior position means a longer resume.

Here are some random examples to show you what I mean:

A one page resume for a senior academic position will not work. In the world of academia being published and referenced counts. So you need to list all your publications to have credibility.  That list can be a page in itself.

For a marketing role you may only need just a one page list of achievements and a snappy career objective type statement that sells you.

If you’re applying to an airline role as a flight attendant, you can bet your bottom trolley tray that hundreds of people will apply, so you’ll need to have a huge impact on the first page.

Keep in mind that the purpose of a resume is simply to secure you an interview.

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Who knows what this means?

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

One of my clients recently applied for a job in the public sector.

The position description said: “Building effective communication strategies with a variety of stakeholders and colleagues to ensure information exchanges are timely, accurate and useful.”

It’s almost impossible to write a good application responding to language like this. It says a lot but means nothing. The only way to understand such cloudy descriptions is to actually try to speak with someone who knows about the job. In the public sector that may not be the person who is handing out the application packs. So ask for the convener or the person the role reports to.

Ten points and a big jam doughnut to anyone who could guess that this statement actually meant: “providing advice to staff and students on the status of their research applications.”

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Read these selection criteria tips before you apply for a government job…

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

selection-criteria-tips

How to answer selection criteria- tips from a former public sector Recruitment Manager.

Are you struggling to write your selection criteria?

Do you keep missing out on interviews?

If so you’re not alone.

The process is frustrating and time consuming. Even the most experienced public sector professionals sometimes struggle to write their selection criteria.

Read below for essential tips and answers, from me, a former government recruiter and panellist.

In this blog post I am going to give you selection criteria tips and examples and answers to some of the most common questions to help you get started.

Tip 1. How long should the selection criteria be?

How long is a piece of string?

No, I’m not being smart with this answer.

The length of your response to the selection criteria really does depend on the seniority of your position, the extent of your experience, and sometimes the length the panel stipulates.

Having waded through hundreds of claims in my years of recruitment and as a professional writer, I normally start to get a headache after I’ve viewed 5 or 6 in a row.

The panel has to read all the applications closely, and they often have to write a summary report.

So I favour brevity.

If a word limit is not specified in the application, you can try calling the panel convener or person listed on the application pack for advice.

As a very general rule use half to ¾ of a page per selection criteria for more junior positions and a page and a half for more senior roles.

This rule however, depends on the selection criteria you’re answering and the role at hand.

If you are asked to describe your qualifications, for example, you simply need to state what that qualification is, when and where you completed it, and perhaps the results you achieved for specific subjects, if the results are impressive and relevant.

If the skill you’re asked to demonstrate is complex, then you spend more space outlining it.

Tip 2. Call the convener

No matter what your level, call the convener to make sure you fully understand the role.

Position descriptions and selection criteria can confuse you. There is always more than what the panel states in the selection criteria description – always.

When you call the convener about the selection criteria you are doing three things:

1) Ensuring they know you are interested – which is essential for more senior roles

2) Making sure you have a comprehensive understanding of the role, and importantly – being able to picture yourself in the role. The job becomes “real” at that point, and not just words on paper. If you can imagine what you will be doing every day/week/month, you can then bring in more relevant examples in your application.

3) Stopping yourself from wasting time on roles that you have no chance of securing. Believe me I have seen many examples of position descriptions that do not relate at all to the role at hand.

Tip 3. Ask these questions of the panel before you apply for the role

The best way to increase your chances of success is to visualise yourself in the role.

I’ll give you an examples to show why this is important.

This is a typical selection criteria example:

“Demonstrated excellence in communication skills, negotiation skills and sound interpersonal skills applied at a high level.”

There are so many ambiguities in this statement.

Reading this I have the following questions:

Why would you need to have excellent communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills?

Where would you need to apply these?

You obviously don’t need to go through a forensic questioning process for every criterion.

However, good questions such as “can you describe how a typical day/week may play out in this role?” and “what do you see as the specific challenges associated with the role?” will give you an understanding of context.

The convener may then say:

“There is no such thing as a typical day. However in this role you will be responsible for ensuring that internal departments comply with a strict regime around the way they may engage suppliers. So you may spend a great deal of your time researching and identifying appropriate suppliers, writing contracts, then ensuring that the department uses the suppliers where we have negotiated agreements. There are over 30 different agreements, so you will need to be very organised.”

I’m hoping from this example, you can see that instantly you have a deeper understanding of the examples you can talk about in your application.

So if you’re writing your response to this criterion, you would probably spend more time outlining how you have worked effectively with suppliers and internal stakeholders, and less time on external customers.

Another good question to ask is “what are the priority skills associated with this role?”

While you will need to address all of the criteria, you will find that there are many listed that are less important. This question gives you real clues as to the focus of the role.

Tip 4. Answering selection criteria

Often there can be three or four things you need to address in the one selection criteria question.

If phrases in the one statement appear unrelated, they probably are.

(Sometimes the person who writes the advertisement will squeeze two or three criteria into the one line.  When recruiters advertise online in some forums, there is often only space for a set number of criteria – I know this as I have done it myself)

If there are multiple criteria in the one criterion statement, you’ll need to put them in separate headings to make it easy for the panel to read. Why? It makes it easy to read and headache proofs your application!

The way the criteria are written is not meant to confuse you. Sometimes criteria are just written really quickly, or there have been several hands in the process.

Tip 5. What does demonstrate, demonstrated knowledge, demonstrated skills or demonstrated ability mean?

This question should really be at the top of the list.

Even applicants for the most senior positions struggle with understanding this properly.

Demonstrate essentially means show you have the skills, and or, provide some evidence to support a claim that you’ve made.

To do this you can pull examples out of your experience to show you have used those skills or knowledge. Like an answer in a behavioural interview, you can give a specific example of what the situation was, how you handled it and the outcome you achieved.

Or, if you have many examples to present, you could bullet point a list of your achievements. But highlight in this list, how you knew you were successful. The examples below will show you what I mean.

One of the biggest things that people forget when they demonstrate their experience is that they spend too much time focussing on the actions they took, and no time on the results they achieved.

You need a statement to show success in your action.

You also need to be draw the dots for the panel. Instead of just listing an example, you need to explain why it is relevant to the role.

Tip 6. Selection criteria examples to demonstrate what I mean

This is from a criteria I wrote for an applicant for a Clinical Nurse Specialist.

Effective communication skills.

From my research I understand that challenges of this role include working with clients who may be affected by drug and alcohol. This may lead to aggressive behaviour and require highly developed communication and negotiation skills, plus an ability to maintain the safety of staff and other patients in the event of any issues.

I have over 5 years experience working with a similar group of clients, many of whom were in rehabilitation clinics, experiencing “withdrawal symptoms” and exhibiting challenging behaviours. This has required highly effective communication skills, in particular an ability to manage the anger and stress these patients experience.

The following examples demonstrate my skills:

Example 1.

In my roles at ABC and DEF I needed to communicate with clients who were marginalized from society, intoxicated, drug affected, angry, depressed, frustrated, incoherent or in need of clinical interventions.

Communication required patience, empathy, and an ability to manage and de-personalise their frustration. I also needed careful questioning and listening skills and an ability to build trust in a tense situation. I have needed to be open and non-judgmental, read body language and defuse aggression. My strong communication skills in this scenario are reflected in my performance reviews. My supervisors have commended my communication skills. I have consistently received satisfactory grading and have been regularly promoted to act in a supervisory capacity.

Here’s an example for an Executive Support Assistant.

Advanced skills in word-processing and presentation software applications, for the preparation of high quality documents.

I understand that in the role of Executive Support Assistant I will be producing lengthy and complex technical reports for the senior engineering team, and often translating these into power point presentations for a broader non-technical audience. This will require excellent communication skills, an ability to carefully question information to ensure accuracy, and advanced Word and PowerPoint skills.

Over the past 12 years as an Executive Assistant I have supported a number of technical teams which has required advanced communication skills, an ability to work with complex documents and strong attention to detail.

The example I provide below demonstrates my ability to use these packages to prepare high quality documents.

As an Executive Assistant I often prepared and compiled information booklets for academics from Australia and New Zealand visiting China for trophy presentations. These booklets included hotel information, maps, train timetables, sightseeing itineraries, company organizational committee tables, simple Chinese language phrases and racing information. To compile the book I researched this information from websites, translated it into English then re-presented and reformatted the information. The users of the booklets praised them and stated that they contained “indispensable information” allowing the dignitaries to have “a worry free stay.”

Tip 7. How to manage the word limit

Working within a word restriction is often more challenging than where you have all the space in the world. Read this for some ideas on how to manage this.

My tip with this is to write without paying close attention to the limit. Then wait for half a day and be ruthless with your editing and deleting.

Tip 8. Do I actually need to address all the selection criteria?

The answer to this is absolutely. You will miss out if you don’t.

Tip 9. Is it worth the bother?

Possibly.

Here’s another insider’s tip.

Ask the convener if someone is acting in the position. If they are, then they will probably be the front runner for the role. You can still apply, but you will probably need to be truly outstanding to secure the position.

The convener will not tell you this.

They will say that the position is “open” or “competitive” and leave it up to you to decide. If you hear this you may be able to tell how much chance you will have as an outsider, by seeing how forthcoming the convener is when they provide information.

At this point you may well be asking, is it really worth the effort? The answer is an obvious yes if you are interested in the job and yes if you understand the purpose of selection criteria. You can use the selection criteria to assess if you are truly suitable for the role.

If, however, you are struggling to reply to more than one or two selection criteria, have a long and hard think about whether it’s the right job for you.

Tip 10. What can I expect once I’ve submitted my selection criteria?

A wait.

Possibly for weeks.

With three or more panel members to coordinate and for a whole host of other reasons, including rules around panels, public sector interviews are unavoidably slow.

Tip 11. Should I chase up my application?

You can chase it up, but not hurry it up.

This process takes time as all panel members often need to complete a report.

You’d need to get all panel members moving faster. The point to remember about merit selection is the government is mindful of fairness to all applicants. The panellists also may not understand the type of skills market they are dealing in, if recruitment is not something they do every day. So a call from you to say you have another job offer may elicit empathy, but no action.

The bottom line about this point is that no news can be good news. Expect to wait a lot longer than in the private sector.

Tip 12. Final word on feedback

What can you do if despite your best efforts you’re not successful?

Always ask for feedback. The government is required to document their processes so as a general rule anyone who’s been short listed for interview may have a paragraph or two written about them.

You may not get feedback, the government is only required to deliver this to applicants already in the public sector. However if you ask for it couched in terms of improving your performance, you may be surprised at what you find out.

Tip 13. Selection Criteria Writing Services

Some people are comfortable responding to the selection criteria themselves, but as your responses will be often be long and detailed, it’s easy to make mistakes.

If you write it yourself you might want to ask a good friend (that is a very good friend who owes you a favour) to read through it. Make sure they have a lot of patience and a good eye for detail.

An alternative to doing your selection criteria yourself is to get it done professionally.

There are definite advantages here. If your written communication skills let you down, a professional can help make understanding you easy. This is particularly important if English is not your first language. A professional is also skilled at drawing out your unique strengths and will tell you about where you sit in the market in comparison to other applicants.

Update: Read this new post on how to crack the code as an outsider

Need to get ahead of the pack for your next interview?

Get our free e-book The 7 Deadly Sins to Avoid at Job Interview!

Deborah Barit wrote this book. She is one of Australia’s leading interview coaches.

To get your free e-book and some of our best interview tips direct to your inbox, simply click on this link. It is packed full of easily actionable interview tips.

Here’s what happy readers said about the e-book and interview tips:

“Deborah Barit is a very smart lady…She is good at figuring out what an employer is looking for. It’s like she has ESP, with her help in preparing, I found no surprises in a recent interview and I was prepared for every question….” Cathy, Leichhardt, NSW

“Because I read so many of your posts, I feel as if you were my personal employment coach. I start my new position in two weeks. I had so many obstacles to overcome and each day you posted a solution to my dilemma and how to improve my search. Thank you so much for your input and PLEASE continue to do what you do!”

Click here to get access to the e-book.

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Seven things you don’t know I know from reading your resume

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

OK, I’m quite prepared to be shot down in flames from all sides for writing this. Shoot me down anyway for starting this blog with a cliché, but here’s what I (as a former recruiter) and other recruiters can work out while we are reading your resume.

1. English is your second language.

Your English could be text book for the most part, but I can still work out whether it’s your second language, just from a quick read of your resume. You may leave off an “es.” or you use words in the wrong context. Here’s some strange expression I’ve seen lately: “Providing delightful customer service” ,”Maintain and strengthen customers” ,”Organizing equipments” ,”Good skills in”

If you are new to Australia, one of the major concerns local employers have about employing you, is how well you communicate. Behind this concern is another concern about how well you’ll fit in. Any incorrect choice of words will fuel any negative stereotypes a recruiter may have about your communication skills. Have a “local” speaker read over your resume before you send it. (Good practice for anyone, really)I receive enough emails from recent arrivals to know cultural stereotyping is a major problem.

2. You want your experience to sound more impressive than it is.

I have often seen people describe a stint of counter service at McDonalds as: “providing high levels of client service.” While this statement is not incorrect, it is misleading. A client is generally someone whom you deal with more than once. A customer is someone who comes to the counter. Most recruiters know what people do at McDonalds, so this statement just sounds silly. The person who wrote the above has oversold what they actually did and not mentioned what is really challenging or interesting about a job at Maccas. Anyone who works there for any length of time can generally work well under pressure and serve people in a fast paced and highly measured environment. That’s the interesting part.

3. You lack confidence or have not done much self-reflection before sending in your resume.

Nowhere on your resume can I read anything about you personally. If you do not tell me your strengths or achievements, I am either going to assume you don’t have any, or do not think they are important enough to list. Most of the employers whom we interviewed for the book, want their employees to be “self aware.” They want people to understand their strengths, so they can apply them to the job at hand. Read what they say here on self awareness. I am not talking about a laundry list that sounds like any other person. That’s almost as bad as no strengths at all.

4. You don’t want to tell me how old you are.

I know this because you have not put dates on your study. And fair enough too. Many of the emails I receive are from people worried that they are 40, 50 or above. While I have not seen any out and out age discrimination in my time in recruiting, I receive enough questions and heard enough horror stories about this to know it exists.

5. You don’t know how to market yourself.

You haven’t sent me a cover letter or written a career objective on the top of your resume. Reading your resume I have to guess what it is that you want to do.

6. You are not that serious about wanting this job.

Read point five.

7. You do not write very often, or well.

You have too many redundant words on your resume. If you have a list headed “responsibilities”, then I do not need to read that you are “responsible for” on the very next line. Other examples are where you say “in order to” instead of just “to” or “planning and strategizing” which are pretty much the same thing.

For more information on resumes read:

Why a career objective on your resume is important
Watch out for these resume red flags
How long should a resume be?
Don’t make these top 10 resume mistakes
Even if you’re gorgeous you shouldn’t put your photo on your resume

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Don’t make these top ten resume mistakes

by K B , updated on November 11, 2020

I’ve seen hundreds of resumes. However I’ve rarely read one that I haven’t itched to start editing. With resumes, you only get one chance to make a good impression. Here are the top ten most common resume mistakes I see and, because I am nice, I present some tips to overcome them.

It’s difficult to write a decent resume. You need to speak to many audiences. You need instant impact. Yet you also need attention to detail. You need to capture your unique skills and strengths. But if you’ve been retrenched, dismissed or are just plain fed up with your current role, it’s a challenge to find the confidence to claim your achievements, without feeling like a fraud.

1 Your resume is too long or too short

How long should a resume be? You will see so much written on resume length you have to wonder if anyone knows what they are talking about. Last count there were 179,000,000 references on Google to this.

The only tips I have on length are these:

Think about the audience and what you’ll need to present on your resume to have any credibility. Think about why someone will read it. Think about the time they’ll have to spend.

Here are some random examples to show you what I mean:

A one page resume for a senior academic position will not work. In the world of academia being published and referenced counts. So you need to list all your publications to have credibility. That can be a page in itself.

For a marketing role you may only need just a one page list of achievements and a snappy career objective type statement that sells you.

If you’re applying to an airline role as a flight attendant, you can bet your bottom trolley tray that hundreds of people will apply. So you’ll need to have a huge impact on the first page.

Keep in mind that the purpose of a resume is simply to secure you an interview. See my article on  who’s reading your resume for ideas.

2. Your resume is confusing and does not market you

I’ve never found the source of the research that says a recruiter will only scan your resume for 20 seconds or so, but I have seen it happen. What this really means is that you need to spell out what you want, why you want it and what makes you suitable for the job at hand.

Start with a clear career objective, not one that reads like this:

“To maintain job satisfaction by utilising my transferable skills and increasing my knowledge to reach senior management and executive levels.”

Many of us want this. This says a lot but tells me very little about the person.

A career objective can be very simple. You can just state the role that you are after and the type of organization you would like to work within.

It sounds obvious but you do need to tailor it to each role.  (This should be one of my biggest tips) I’ve seen plenty of career objectives on resumes that state a different role to the one advertised. If you do not make your objective current you will miss out, even if everything else on your resume screams hire you.

The career objective above could be better written as:

“To contribute my six years business development experience to a senior account management role within the telecommunications industry; my longer term ambition is to progress to a team management role.”

From a clear career objective, everything on your resume should build an argument for the recruiter to consider you for that role. So in the case above, the writer could then list their achievements and strengths that relate to success in a sales role.

To write a resume that really spells out your suitability, bullet point the top 4 to 5 attributes, skills, experience and knowledge in a career summary or profile under your career objective.

3. Your resume confuses achievements with responsibilities

So many people confuse these two things. Yet it’s critical to understand the difference. A list of achievements above a list of responsibilities will win the battle against blandness, and make your average resume powerful.

Responsibilities are tasks you are required to perform in your role. Achievements are things that you have done above or beyond this. Your achievements can include ideas you have contributed and executed, goals you have exceeded or awards you have won.

To list an achievement you need to state the impact you had. Examples of impact are: where you have increased sales, saved money, improved efficiency, saved customers, improved the customers’ experience, improved the brand or reputation of the company or retained customers.

The example below shows the difference between an achievement and a responsibility on a resume. The role is for a web administrator.

Responsibility

Update the product website with sales and marketing offers

Achievement

Designed new product page layout with new graphics, content and live feeds to improve user experience; received many customer compliments and significantly increased the number of page views

Another thing to think about when you list your achievements is that you need to be specific. The achievement below appeared on the resume of a marketing specialist. This is too general and reads as a responsibility:

“Developed tailored business solutions for global companies to measure the success of marketing and communications initiatives.”

To be more powerful the writer needs to be more specific with which client, which solution and state the impact of the activity. For example:

“Developed new tailored global CRM solution for a major multi million dollar IT client; Solution measured the success of email and e-news campaigns and increased sales results by 12.5%”

One word of warning with achievements. You do not have to list them for every job. If you have a job that doesn’t lend itself to doing anything above the ordinary, then making up an achievement for the sake of listing something, makes you look silly.

4. Your resume oversells your responsibilities

This happens when you are trying to make a job sound more impressive than it actually is.  I saw this statement describe the responsibility of a counter hand role at McDonalds:

“providing high levels of client service.”

While this statement is not incorrect, it is misleading. A client is generally someone whom you deal with more than once. A customer is someone who comes to the counter. Most recruiters know what people do at McDonalds, so this statement just sounds odd.

The person who wrote the above has oversold what they actually did and not mentioned what is really challenging or interesting about their job. Anyone who works at McDonalds for any length of time can generally work well under pressure and serve people in a fast paced and highly measured environment. That’s the interesting part.

When the role is routine (like counter service at McDonalds) the challenges of the environment, or where you perform that role, could be the interesting part to talk about on your resume.  For example:

January 2006 – July 2008 McDonalds – Sydney CBD Counter Attendant

Open 24/7 in the centre of Sydney’s CBD, this store served customers who could often be impatient, intoxicated or aggressive about any delays in service. Starting this role to support my university studies, I needed to consistently meet strict time, sales and service targets.

5. Your resume sets you up to be discriminated against on the basis of your age

Discrimination in many forms does exist. We all have prejudices. You will have no idea about the prejudices of the person who reads your resume. So the best thing to do is to remove the opportunity for anything that you think could be a problem.

You’d be surprised about how many people complain about age discrimination yet still have their date of birth or a high school qualification. My rule of thumb for most resumes for people in the private sector is to go back 15 years, no longer. I also leave the dates off older qualifications, and present these only if they are needed for the role.

This is not avoiding the issue of whether you should proudly proclaim your age and therefore challenge recruiters’ stereotypes and prejudices. I’m suggesting you consider whether your age is relevant to the role at hand. That’s the only thing you need to think about on your resume.

Besides, the best way to challenge prejudices is face to face. You want your resume to give you the opportunity to do that.

6. Your resume sets you up to be discriminated against on the basis of your culture

Many of my clients are from overseas. One of the biggest barriers they face is how to find a job with “no local experience”.  In many cases their resumes let them down. The easy things to fix are spelling and grammar. The harder thing to fix is appropriate expression. Here are some examples of strange things I’ve seen:

“Providing delightful customer service”
“Maintain and strengthen customers”
“Organizing equipments”
“Good skills in…”

Technically there is nothing wrong with the above. However the context is wrong.

If you are new to Australia, one of the major concerns local employers have about employing you, is how well you communicate. Behind this is another concern about how well you’ll fit in. Any incorrect choice of words will fuel any negative stereotypes a recruiter may have about your communication skills.

I receive enough emails from recent arrivals to know cultural stereotyping is a major problem.  If you are new to Australia, the very least you need to do is to have a local professional look over your resume.

7. Your resume has too many words, and the wrong type of words

The biggest enemies of a resume are space and time.

You only have one page to make an impact. So you need to choose the one word that represents what you want to say. Even people who write professionally find this difficult to do when it comes to talking about themselves. Here are some examples of what I mean:

– If you have a list headed: “Responsibilities” then do not write “responsible for” on the very next line
– “in order to” instead of: “to”
– “planning and strategizing” instead of: “planning” or “strategizing”
– “the supply of references will be facilitated upon request” instead of: “references available on request”

Once you’ve written your resume, leave it for a day or so. Then review it and ask yourself if you could say the same thing with a different or fewer words.

Action words are instantly more powerful, not like this example I read recently:

“Daily liaison with senior management, staff and Agencies”

This person liaises, however the purpose of the liaison is unclear.

8. Your resume does not show that you have read the advertisement

The focus of your resume should reflect the focus of the advertised position. You can do this in many ways as I have described in point one. One other small but important thing is to use the key words in the advertisement. This is important for three reasons:

1. It shows you have read the advertisement
2. Your resume will be picked up in any software that scans resumes
3. If the recruiter has given careful thought to the people they would like to attract, then they will be careful about their choice of words in any advertisement. You will stand out if you show the same amount of thought with the words on your resume.

9. You neglect small, but important detail on your resume

Your resume needs to be consistent in grammar, style, expression and format. My pet hate is random capitalization of words. The worst part of this is that it instantly draws attention to the mistake. Here are examples of common incorrect capitalizations:

“Daily liaison with senior management, staff and Agencies”

The agencies should only be capitalized if they are listed by name

“Management of the Corporate Communications marketing and vendor budgets”

Corporate communications is not the title of an organization.

I really loathe ampersands on resumes unless they are necessary for space purposes.

“Coordinate & educate HRMS trainer”

This person had the space to write “and” and expand on how what coordinate and train actually mean.

10. You have used a standard template for your resume

By all means look at the standard templates you’ll find on employment websites, but realize that many other people are doing exactly the same thing. So if you want to look like them, use the template.

There is no cookie cutter approach to presenting a resume. It’s also easy to pick when someone has downloaded and copied words and phrases that are not their own. If you struggle with how to explain a gap, your unique experience or how to present your experience as a strength, then it’s worthwhile investigating what a professional can do.

Should you hire a professional? Yes. For at least the first resume you write. Why? I have met few people who are self aware enough to understand both their unique strengths, and their marketable strengths. A professional resume writer, who sits down with you, and who has industry experience, can help you identify what you should put on your resume, and what you should leave off.

If the last thing you feel like is talking about is what you are good at – a professional writer can help you feel good about yourself again.

For more information on resumes read:

Why a career objective on your resume is important
Watch out for these resume red flags
How long should a resume be?
Seven things you don’t know I know from reading your resume
Even if you’re gorgeous, a photo on your resume may not take you far

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