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Latest hints from the Work Offshore Team, August, 2009
Electronic resumes
Design your resume to be easy to read on a PC screen; recruiters do not read every
word first but scan the text rapidly for important information.
Put your job title near the top: don't force
recruiters to read every page of your resume before they can discover what
you do.
You have only seconds to convince hiring managers to read on; not telling
the recruiter what they want to know means they will move on to the next applicant.
Simple Text
Format
Eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies
use online job application forms; this allows hiring managers access
to keyword-searchable candidate databases.
Resumes with elaborate formatting,
graphics, tables, borders, bullets are not suitable for use in forms: all
formatting may be lost when converted to simple text.
How to test your
resume for online form compatibility.
Open your resume in MS Word, then use
(select all) command to copy and paste entire resume into MS Note Pad to
check if your format will work when pasted into online job application
forms.
Key Words
Design your resume for each stage of
the recruitment process: recruiters use resume text search software similar Google
to match skills to jobs and short list the best applicants.
This is why you need to
spend some time researching what are the right key words for your
discipline.
Recruiter’s viewpoint
Each candidate believes
their resume is perfect: everyone is an expert when it comes to
writing resumes however over 60% never survive the first 30 seconds,
rejected due to poor written communication
skills or missing information.
You cannot have an objective resume
opinion from the recruiters viewpoint: every successful writer
knows the value of editors to proofread, revise and
correct their work.
Career summary
Many business documents rely
on summaries to save time; your name, job title, contact details followed
by a brief career summary outlining your skills, experience, what
companies you have worked for, where you have worked will impress
employers.
Every
hiring manager is time
conscious: get
to the point on page one,
sell your skills with a brief summary that demonstrates your written communication skills.
Email
etiquette
Remember the global
nature of email; you may be applying to people of another culture, English
may not be their first language; keep it simple to avoid confusing your
audience.
Building any
business relationship requires good manners; it is rude to waste employers
time, state which job you are applying for in
the email subject, then paste
your summary into the email body.
Poorly
designed resumes not suitable for immediate submission to clients give recruiters an excellent reason to move on to the next
applicant.
Resume File Name.
Over 60% of job
applicants save their resume as resume.doc or
cv.doc;
this is
poor document control,
and lazy, wasted employers time renaming your document.
Be professional use
your family/first name [Smith_John.doc] for example to ensure your
application does not get lost or misfiled.
Private Email
We
recommend using your private email address; with no guaranteed contact at
all times work email can lose
you jobs, even more important this helps protect your privacy.
Finishing touches
Combine your cover letter and resume in one single document, it's quicker
to open or read, plus eliminates the risk of two documents being separated
or lost.
Many employers in Asia request
you
include a passport sized photo in your resume: China, Malaysia,
Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are examples.
Writing Style
Keep your paragraphs
short: avoid using large blocks of text, make it easier for the recruiter
to gain an accurate overview of your skills.
Over use of capital
letters reflects on your writing skills; you never see all capitals used in corporate documents,
newspapers or magazines because it is very difficult to read, we like most
employers will not accept resumes in this format.
Free content readability check
Resume design
and content
Your
overall approach will
determine the success of your job search; will the employers first
impression be that you are aggressive or informative, helpful or vague.
Email job applications are really electronic
interviews: easy
to read structured information
can only help create an excellent first
impression, be polite, be professional.
Like to
know
what companies think of your resume?
Every engineer knows the
real value of testing: every review and test takes time and resources, the only
proven method of finding out how to write better resumes.
Work Offshore write
resumes that work: all our resumes have the same high standard of
presentation used to submit project manpower proposals to our clients.
Update
from the Work Offshore Team
Our company is dedicated to raising email
job application standards: we
trust these latest hints will help you find all the best jobs in our
highly competitive oil and gas marketplace.
We trust this information helps you better
understand recruiting trends in the manpower planning and project
recruitment in Australia, Brazil, Brunei, China, Dubai, Hong Kong,
India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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