Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Submit Resume as a PDF or Word Document

Submit Resume as a PDF or yep DocumentSubmit Resume as a PDF or Word DocumentYouve spent weekswritingthat perfect resume.Youve proofed ittimeand again. Now its all set to get submitted. But the question isHow do you send it? As a Word document or PDF?In most cases, you should send in your resume as a PDF. This is for the simple fact that the document cant be altered. If you send it in as a Word document, on the other hand, then its open to inadvertent editing by someone in HR before it gets sent to the hiring manager. This means you have less control over what theyre seeing.In addition to that, with a PDF, the formatting will be retained.But witha Word document, thats not always the case. For instance, if you use a font that the hiring manager doesnt have on their computer, then your resume will lose its formatting and possibly even some of its professionalism, depending on how it comes across.Another reason to send a PDF instead of a Worddocument?You wont have to worry about viruses potentially getting transmitted. PDFs are usually free of viruses when they are downloaded. The same cant always be said for Word documents.However, theres one big reason to consider a Word document. In some cases, with an applicant tracking system (ATS), they scan Word documents more accurately than PDF documents. As a result, if you submit a Word document, then you might have a better shot at an interview since the ATS canmore easilyinterpret your resume.The good news is that in the past few years, ATSs have improved a lot and advanced versions are able to read PDFs just as easily as Word documents. However, if you know a company uses an ATS and most larger ones do than consider sending in your resume as a Word documentso you know it wont get filtered out based on the format.At the end of the day,though, dont spend too much time worrying about how to submit your resume.Instead,focus primarilyon crafting a powerful resume that helps you stand out among other candidates.Need more helpwith resume writing?Contact the team atResumeSpice.As experiencedresume writingprofessionals, well work to get to know your background, skills and key strengths, all so we can help your resume stand out.Find out morebyreaching out toour team at832.930.7378or bycontacting usonline.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Tips for Writing a Great LinkedIn Summary With Examples

Tips for Writing a Great LinkedIn Summary With ExamplesTips for Writing a Great LinkedIn Summary With ExamplesA great LinkedIn summary gives information about your professional background and abilities and helps get you noticed by hiring managers. Its worth it to spend the time to make your summary section informative and attention-grabbing so hiring managers will keep reading through to your complete work history. Many summaries on LinkedIn read like asummary on a resume. However, the summary section on your resume is a very different creature. Ideally, yourresume iscustomized for a specific positionfor which you are applying, and that includes the summary section.By contrast, a LinkedIn profile summary must speak toall the positions for which a candidate wishes to be considered. Therefore, a resume and its summary must be specific and targeted, while a LinkedIn profile summary should appeal to a broader audience. While a profile summary should be more general than a resume summary, it will go unnoticed by employers if it is too unfocused. Overly general or off-target profile summaries can lead to job seekers not appearing in search results. A good LinkedIn summary should strike the right balance between being general enough to cover your bases and specific enough to show up in search results. The prominence of online sites like LinkedIn and online application processes has changed the nature of writing resumes. Its important to focus on what is good about LinkedIn and similar sites and find ways to work through the bad. What We LikeEasily editable contentApply to jobs using LinkedIn profileOpportunity for search engine optimizationAbility to compare profile to similar professionalsWhat We Dont LikeLimited space in which to grab attentionNeeding to balance the general with the specificChoosing among variable terms that describe the saatkorn thing Getting Noticed Your LinkedIn profile needs to show up in search engine results in order to reach recruiters an d hiring managers. Identifying the right keywords to help with your search engine optimization can seem daunting at first, but there are resources available to help you find them. Go up the organizational chart. If there is a more senior, well-respected professional in your field, look at that persons LinkedIn profile. Copy and paste his or her summary into a word cloud site such as Wordle.net and see what keywords are most prominent. Do the same with the summary you are currently using and compare the results. Repeat this process with others, and patterns should emerge. You also can examine the profile pages of peers.Check out job postings. Job postings are also keyword-based content, making them a great resource for savvy job seekers. Once you identify what your next job title should be,look at job postings for the job title and its variations. From there, review the terms that appear often. Tie it all together. Focus on keywords that can be applied truthfully and are appealing to human readers. Take the time to pull together the keywords and the narrative so your profile is engaging and easy to read. 151 Watch Now8 LinkedIn Mistakes You Might Be Making How to Optimize theAppearance of Your Summary LinkedIn summaries are viewed on both desktop and mobile sites. In the desktop version, about 300 characters are visible. The mobile version is even more truncated. To view the full copy, readers will need to click show more. This means you want to really maximize the impact of the first sentence of your profile. Make sure to use the first sentence to convey the most important information about your experience and talents. What Hiring Managers Look For When hiring for permanent positions, hiring managers and other decision-makers have a strong preference for prospective employees who are a goodculture fitand can easily fit into the kollektivs dynamic. Some teams are of a more congenial character and prefercollaborative interactions. Other groups are comf ortable with direct confrontation when views differ. Yet others prioritize individual initiative to a greater or lesser extent. Be authentic.Dont be afraid to communicate something personal, while remaining positive.Share metrics and successes. Numbers are always your friends when it comes to job-hunting. If you have a wow-worthy accomplishment- like increasing sales 30% year-over-year or reducing employee churn by 10%- include that in your profile.Describe your talents. What are you good at? The profile is an opportunity to broadcast your skills. Its also a helpful place to talk about transferable skills, explain a career change, or highlight a talent youve used in several positions. Tell a story. You want your profile to be keyword-rich, but you also want it to tell a story about your career. Whether your profile discusses your whole work experience in broad terms or focuses on your current position, it should be engaging and interesting. geschftlicher umgang Analyst Summary Ex ample A business analyst who suspects his position will be eliminated soon is pulling together a resume. He begins looking online for other BA job postings and notices that at about one-third of them mention user acceptance testing, referred to as user sign-off testing where he currently works.He makes a mental note to verify what language is unique to his current employer vs. what is widely accepted. His summary might look like this Driven BA whose business requirement documents technical specifications *always* pass UAT Im a high energy, experienced business analyst, passionate about working hand-in-hand with developers and users to produce requirements and specifications that accurately reflect business needs and are technologically achievable. We will not over-engineer the true test of successfully eliciting requirements, producing business requirement documents, and releasing technical specifications is when the user-acceptance testing (UAT) is completed on schedule. A vetera n of the automotive industry, my exposure to Lean Six Sigma manufacturing keeps me focused on opportunities to improve processes. Specialties include Clear communications with team leads User-acceptance testing Requirement elicitation Business requirement documents Technical specifications Project Manager Summary Example An applicant just received her Project Management Professional certification from the Project Management Institute. An eight-year veteran of the profession, she is interested in taking the next step in her career, but her current employer doesnt have a suitable role. Mary decides to review the LinkedIn profiles of directors of project management offices and studies them carefully, learning how to represent her experience as both an individual contributor and a leader. Her summary might look like this My projects stay on schedule and on budget My PMP is the product of eight years in the trenches, filled with valuable lessons learned. It is tremendously rewarding to leverage my strong influencing skills to ensure that resources remain available as expected to ensure my projects hit schedule and budget benchmarks. Equally comfortable with Agile, Scrum, and Lean Six Sigma methodologies, my projects succeed because I remain focused on the big picture while ensuring project members have the resources necessary to achieve milestones. Its been my privilege to train several talented project managers whose successful careers began as members of my projects. Areas of Focus Enterprise software implementation on-premise and Cloud/SaaS Preventing scope creep Herding cats Career Change Summary Example An applicant was caught by surprise when he was laid off from his belastung position. Accounts payable was all he knew- he thought. As he gradually worked through his shock, he came to realize he was much more passionate about another field human resources. In the past, he identified several new hires and helped a few colleagues who were applying for H1 B visas, drawing upon his personal experience with the process. He used some of his severance pay to fund a course to prepare for the PHR certification exam. After consulting with a reference librarian, he reviewed postings and LinkedIn profile summaries from others, making a list of keywords. His summary might look like this Where human resource programs fall short, my work authorization and recruiting experience shines My previous job was in accounts payable, but Ive been interested in human resources all along. Over my career, I have referred several people who became employees and also aided several colleagues who were applying for H1B visas, drawing upon my own personal experience. This gives me practical, hands-on experience in talent acquisition/talent attraction/recruiting and with einwanderung/work authorization. Ever since childhood, I have had an aptitude for numbers. As I got older, I came to understand that the numbers are only one piece of the puzzle- there is a story hiding behind them. And this is why I wish to continue mycareer in this new direction. I will soon sit for HRCIs PHR exam, with every expectation of passing. I am confident and proud of my past, and look to take the next step into the future. Particularly skilled in Work authorization Talent acquisition/talent attraction/recruiting Seeing beyond the numbers to the human story behind them

How Lawyers Can Learn From Failure

How Lawyers Can Learn From FailureHow Lawyers Can Learn From FailureBefore SpaceXs successful launch of its giant Falcon Heavy rocket last week, quirky billionaire and company CEO Elon Musk told reporters, therbeie is a good chance this monster rocket blows up. It didnt, but many of SpaceXs previous rocket launches had failed. The fact that Musk acknowledge the possibility of a catastrophic failure fits with his ethos, and that of many successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs- that failure is a integral part of success. Failure is an option here. If youre notlage failing, youre not innovating enough. Elon even releases popular YouTube videos of all of SpaceX rocket failures to underline that success is not a straight, unbroken path.Those in the risk adverse legal profession may not be as willing to talk about failure as the startup world, but that doesnt mean lawyers shouldnt be looking at failure through a similar lens. There is a reason employers ask the dreaded interview question t ell me about a time you failed. Everyone will fail, but those who learn from it are more likely to not make the same errors and more likely to succeed later.When Im asked about failure in my career, I have an easy answer. Just over a year after graduating from law school, I was laid off from my job as a junior associate at a BigLaw firm. It was crushing, and left a big eu-agrarpolitik in my resume it took more than a year for me to find another permanent attorney position. In between I did some traveling (and soul searching). I downsized my expenses, swallowed my pride and did more than six months of contract doc review work. And when the opportunity arose to be a staff attorney at another BigLaw firm, I worked so hard and diligently that after a year I was hired to be a litigation associate. Two and a half years after I was laid off, I had clawed my way back to where I was in the first place.Now this all happened during the global financial crisis a decade ago. I could easily have just blamed the economy and bad luck for being out of a job. And I sometimes did just that. But with some time to reflect, I took the failure on myself and thought about what I had done to lose that job. After all, my department only laid off two attorneys, and I was one of them. When I reflected a bit, I realized there were a lot of little failures. I failed to do proper due diligence on the firm, because I really wasnt a great fit for the firm and its client kusine in the first place. I had failed to really connect with any of the partners at the firm who could have had my back when the firm was deciding who to let go. I took my job for granted, and didnt really hustle to find more billable work when I was in a lull. All of these failures on my part made me an obvious candidate when the firms fortunes turned and they were looking to let someone go. Knowing these things, I was not likely to commit the same mistakes at my next firm.More successful lawyers than I have had similar lea rning experiences in their careers. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spent her 2L summer at Paul, Weiss but was no offered by the firm at the end of her summer. In her autobiography My Beloved World, Justice Sotomayor wroteThe sense of failure was confirmed when I concluded my stint as a summer associate without receiving a job offer. There were some around me encouraging me to view the rejection as an expression of bias or personal animus, but I had seen no evidence of that, while my sense of having underperformed seemed to me well enough substantiated. For this pain of failure- the first real failure since having enrolled in law school- I had only myself to blame, and knowing that, I was profoundly shaken. The way forward was daunting if obvious. I needed to figure out what I was doing wrong and fix it. At the very least I had to learn this area of law, and so I signed up for Professor Ralph Winters class on antitrust as well as one called Commercial Transactions. The tricki er part would be mastering the skill that was at the heart of being a lawyer, my deficiency in which had been exposed how to write a brief, not as some classroom exercise aspiring to an objective analysis of the case law, but as a piece of persuasive advocacy, advancing the interests of my client. In both kinds of remedial efforts, I would do what Id always done break the challenge down into smaller challenges, which I could get on with in my methodical fashion. And certainly I would need to prove myself at another kind of work in the legal profession before I could even consider joining a large commercial firm. In the meantime, the unfamiliar taste of utter failure from that summer would stay in my mouth. The memory of this trauma, which I was determined not to repeat, while not suffocating my ambitions, would overhang my every career choice until I became a judge.Like me, Justice Sotomayor failed at her first stint at a commercial law firm, and she looked inward at the things she had done to cause that failure so she would not make those mistakes again. Sotomayor got a job in the Manhattan DAs office out of law school, then moved into private practice at a Manhattan boutique, before joining the bench and eventually the Supreme Court (obviously shes done more to turn her failure into success than I have).All successful people have this in common they have failed in the past and learned from it. While your failures may not be as obvious and as glaring as a having a rocket blow up, getting canned from your first real job, or getting no-offered as a summer associate, you should still reflect on those failures and make aya you have learned from them. Failing at something will not keep you from success as an attorney, but failing to learn from those failures definitely can.