Looking for new careers: resume how to write resume letter

June 4, 2010 - PRLog -- Looking for new careers: tips from a real life recruiter on resume how to write resume letter to get pass the first barrier in your career progression. (This free article will take you about 5 minutes to read through and I highly recommend you to have it printed out for further study.)

If you are looking for new careers, I would say the first and most important thing will be your resume letter. As a recruiter myself, me and my colleagues see about a 1000 CVs daily and yet only a few of them are probably written in a way that really caught our eyes. Therefore I am writing this article here and hopefully, I will be able to help out some of my readers in realizing their dream and finding the job they have always wanted and deserved.

I got to admit, as a recruiter, one of our daily tasks is to simply perform the first screening for our clients and due to the sheer volume of our works there are no way we can understanding or remember every person, every departments in the company, their business functions, nor their technical terms. So what we do is, we will normally ask for a JD (Jobs description) from our client. Then we will identify some keywords in the JD and try to find a few CVs out of our database that contains similar keywords. The computer will do most of the matching and sorting for us (Thanks to the modern day technology), the computer will rank these CVs base on the level of relevancy to our search of keywords, pretty much similar to the search engine. Since there are no ways we can read each CV one by one, we will normally select the top 20-50 CVs with the highest relevancy for closer study. While the other 950 CVs will be left in reserve, in case if we can’t find someone suitable in the first 20-50 batch.

If you are smart enough, you should realize by now how important it is to have the right keywords when you are preparing your resume.  For instance, if a company is looking for a marketing specialist and the JD has wording like Market segmentation, SWOT Analysis etc. Then it will be better for you to include such keywords in your CV that details your work experience in Market Segmentation and SWOT Analysis.  Although, it is almost common sense that most marketing professionals does Market segmentation and SWOT. But the point is, it is necessary to put in these specific keywords in your CV, because by just mentioning only the word “marketing” in your CV will definitely not give your resume a high ranking as it should deserve. Get it?!

I would also recommend you to study a few JDs before you have your CV written. Try to understand what types of keywords are used most frequently and important in your field. If most JDs are using keywords like “six sigma”, then put “six sigma” in your CV, NOT “6 sigma”. Although it is the same thing in human mind, but remember we are using computer as our search tool and computer isn’t always that smart enough to pick it up. And always have your CV in word format when sending it off to your recruiter, since pdf are not really database or search engine friendly.

When you are preparing your CV, always put in details that describe
1.   How your performance measured by your previous or current company on a yearly basis,
2.   How well you have achieved these measurements in the previous year/s by figure or percentage,
3.   The number of subordinates you manage (if necessary, break it down into direct reporting and indirect reporting),
4.   The position or title of the person who you directly report to (eg CEO, Sales Director),
5.   The number of persons in your department and companies,
6.   A link of your company website,
7.   Your current salary level (break it down into base, bonus, allowance and/or commission).

All these details will help your recruiters to assess your suitability to the applied position.
Although, it is ok to update and edit you resume letter from time to time, however, please keep in mind that you should not make any false statements in it, since we normally retain a copy of your old CV in our system and we can always do a check. Just make sure you don’t contradict yourself.

Publicity is also important. Recruiters do searches on internet to find information, try to put your name, your expertise and thought on the internet more often (not on your own personal website, it will look rather unprofessional). If you know any news reporters, try to ask them to help you to come up with an article and have it published on a trusted website. Include a link of your article in your CV, it will definitely help you to stand out from the crowd especially if your idea or thought got republished in a few media.

Before I became a recruiter, I used to be a journalist myself and have written a number of articles for CEOs and CFOs from all over the world. As a matter of fact, many of my interviewees got approached by new employers in a few weeks after their articles are made published. If you need any help on this, feel free to contact me on asaeugene@gmail.com . I do it for a modest charge to cover my cost and time, but I am sure it will be an expense well spent.

If you are interested, here are some links of the past articles I have written

English articles: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22interview+with+Eugen...

Chinese articles: http://news.baidu.com/ns?word=%D2%A6%E8%F7%CF%CD&tn=news&...

Thanks for reading and I encourage you to pass on this article to your friends, if you find these advices useful to you. Good Luck with your jobs hunt.

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Eugene Yao, currently working as a recruiter in the Banking industry. Also a freelance financial journalist, conducts interviews regularly with C level management from around the world. His articles can be found on Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Google News and finance etc...