In this week’s episode of Careers and Coffee, Josh joins Liz and Dan to discuss Resume writing, having a clear objective, and tailoring your resume to the specific job you are applying for.
Oh, and don’t forget about our amazing Resume Builder that can help you if you are stuck – you just need to create an account on Corridor Careers first.
Show Notes:
All our blogs about resumes are here. You can find resources about basic building blocks, keyword optimization and much more. Career Week’s Ask the Expert went in depth on this – check that panel out for tips on resumes as well as a host of other really common questions by job seekers re-entering the workforce.
Like our Facebook page or sign up for job alerts to get the most out of Corridor Careers while you job search.
Full Transcript
Dan Holterhaus 0:00
All right, welcome. careers and coffee, a late afternoon version of careers and coffee. So I’m not drinking coffee anymore today. I don’t know about you loser, Josh.
Josh Hlibichuk 0:10
I’ve had all my coffee for today. Yeah.
Dan Holterhaus 0:14
Yeah, I got that done pretty early. So we are here we have Josh Hlibichuk with us today. He’s our developer at corridor careers. Welcome, Josh to Careers in Coffee.
Josh Hlibichuk 0:26
It’s good. It’s good to be here.
Dan Holterhaus 0:30
Good to have you.
So today, I thought we would just talk about resume writing, and and dig a little deeper on that.
So Liz, since you have been a manager for a while and have undoubtedly looked at quite a few resumes in your life, what would you say are some things that you look for in a strong resume?
Liz Kennedy 0:57
Well, I’m probably a little different than normal managers. But I try to have a really open mind when I look at resumes just because I work in a career space. So I might be a little bit more flexible and open minded than a typical manager, who’s not aware of their own bias and things like that. And I’m not saying I’m perfect either, because I’m not. But when I look at a resume, organization is great if it’s easy to find kind of what the skill set is of the person. And if they have an objective, you know that some what they’re what kind of job or what kind of career path they’re interested in, that is helpful to me to understand if they might be a good fit for the company.
And where I’m trying to take the the team or whatever, to see if those two things align. part and parcel with a resume is the cover letter. And the cover letter, we went into a little bit of this on our Ask the Expert in career week with our panel, they talked about how the cover letter is an intro to your resume, and should be just a summary where you kind of talk about what you’re trying to accomplish and how you might be a good fit for the company. So I look at those two things kind of hand in hand, a great cover letter might make up for maybe less than ideal resume. And vice versa, a great resume might make up for a less than ideal cover letter. Because somebody might be really good at documenting their work history and their kind of focus in a resume, but not so great at a cover letter.
Dan Holterhaus 2:35
Right? Yeah. That’s a really interesting point that you bring up. Josh, I want to ask you-Liz mentioned having an objective, is that something that you have seen on resumes or that you think is part of a nice looking resume,
Josh Hlibichuk 2:56
I think it can help especially when you’re trying to customize a resume to an employer, it really gives them a perspective of who you are, and the kind of position that you currently hold and also are looking for, it’s easy to be, it’s, it’s really easy to be very generic with this. So if I would do it, it would, it would have to be very targeted for the employer that I am applying to. And I’d keep it you know, simple, but get the message across. And there are some great examples to online of objectives and in different templates and, and it kind of resume blogs, I’m sure we have a resume blog post, somewhere on the corridorcareers.com/job-tips section. So definitely check that out.
But I think in objective, you know, is a good a good section to have, especially as it allows you to maybe target some of those keywords to that you hear about the ACS systems, wanting to see if it’s not something that fits in somewhere else neatly into your resume, that might be another section that you can take advantage of.
Liz Kennedy 4:04
Now, that’s interesting. You mentioned the keywords. So we talked about this a little bit. And if there’s a real specific, if you’re applying for a specific job, and you want to tailor your resume to that specific job, it doesn’t hurt to kind of, you know, I personally, I would maybe print off the job description and then take a physical highlighter and highlight keywords that kind of stand out to me, and then add those to my resume. If they’re relevant. Like if I have that experience, I want to make sure that I’m not using a different term for the same experience that they’re looking for. Before I turn my resume and that’s what Josh is talking about. Is the code reading your resume, not a person right, Josh?
Josh Hlibichuk 4:45
Yeah, for sure. Exactly. And that’s a really good points you because whatever they have set up in their system for the code to read is probably going to match very closely to what’s in the job description too. So that’s a really, really good Point.
Liz Kennedy 5:01
Cool. Well, just a few tips for resumes, we will link in the show notes to those resources Josh was mentioning, we have a whole topic page of blog posts about resumes. We also have a resume builder on corridor careers the Josh handbuilt.
Josh Hlibichuk 5:18
Yeah, it’s it’s not gonna have a lot of the bells and whistles you see on some of these custom templates, you can download online. But for somebody who’s just you know, you don’t have anything to start from, it’s a really great resource to go in, enter your information, it guides you through the whole process, start to finish with your skills, your work, experience, education, if that’s applicable, and helps you get some that you can at least start with to take to employers to say, here’s what I here’s what I’ve done, here’s what I can do for you.
Liz Kennedy 5:46
Awesome, hope people do that it’s free to use. All you have to do is create a user account on Corridor Careers, which is also free and then also signed you up for our newsletters, which we would hope that you want if you’re looking for a job. But that’s that’s our careers and coffee tip for today.
Dan Holterhaus 6:03
All right, well, thanks a lot guys. Appreciate it. And thanks for tuning in. As always, you know, leave leave comments and questions. You can reach us, email us at contact@corridorcareers.com And we’ll see you next time. All right, have a good week, everyone. Take care.
