Career Management Alliance Blog

This week, I volunteered to meet with job seekers and career changers at the CareerBuilder Job Fair held in Valley Forge, just outside of Philadelphia. It was sometimes fun and consistently challenging to meet so many people. Within a six-hour period, I must have spoken with 40-50 curious candidates; each one presented a unique story and a somewhat fragile sense of themselves. I ended the day wondering if these brief encounters would have a lasting impact on the job search campaigns of the candidates. Let me share my driving-home thoughts with you:

• If I could have collected $10 from every candidate whose resume
  included an amorphous “Objective,” I would have more than $500! Then
  add another $10 for repeated use of each of the following:

• small fonts;
• densely packed paragraphs of text;
• descriptions of job duties rather than accomplishments; and,
• repeated use of the dreaded phrase, “responsible for…”

Oh, the places I could go with the funds I could have collected!

A carefully branded and well-written resume serves as a powerful marketing tool that reflects on previous success stories; properly designed, it navigates a path to where
you want to be - in the future. The people I spoke with wanted to be doing something else, but their resumes kept them neatly tied-into their past. Some of Bob Dylan’s lyrics played in my head, “no direction home…like a rolling stone…”

Please click here to review an article that appeared in more than 10 Sunday newspapers that subscribe to CareerBuilder (Download 0405-TRIBUNE_EDITED_E-MAIL.pdf); I posted it here to share some of the tips I offered to “avoid the round file.” My impression is that most of the job fair candidates do not wish to invest in the services of a professional; they want to write their own resumes. To do so, these candidates are advised to consult articles and books written on this topic. Among many others, they may consider Quintessential Careers and the Riley Guide online; Enelow and Kursmark
in-print. It is important to create and update an effective resume, but remember that resumes are not the only tool you’ll need to launch an effective job search campaign and maintain your career health. To accelerate your career, consider the benefits of hiring an expert; click here to find a member of the Career Management Alliance.

Posted by Karen P. Katz