PREMIUM STAFFING SOLUTIONS ACROSS ALL INDUSTRIES
RESUME BASICS
We spend hours per day scanning through resumes in search of suitable candidates to place in positions. It is striking that a vast amount of people of all calibers do not know how to compile a reader-friendly resume.
We felt it our duty to let job seekers know what it is like on the other side of the laptop. The best advice we can give you in compiling or updating your resume is to let logic prevail. Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. Let the basics be easy to find.
All your achievements and your list of courses and expensive education will get a space, but tell us the basics first.
Here are a couple of guidelines to make your resume reader-friendly and worthy of a call for an interview:
1. THE AREA IN WHICH YOU RESIDE
This is the very first thing a recruiter will look at. You can be the best salesman in the world but if you live in Cape Town and a position has presented itself in Polokwane it is a given that you will not be considered for that position. You don't need to put your full address, just the area will do. So many jobseekers, we find, will simply put Johannesburg for example. This is extremely vast. Try to narrow down your area to the closest suburb.
2. YOUR AGE
The next thing we look at will be your age. This is not to discriminate. This is simply to see that you will fit the profile. Let's imagine that a position exists for a sales manager to lead a group of salespeople between the ages of 25-40. It would not be very wise to place a nineteen-year-old person to guide this team.
3. DON'T BE DESPERATE
If a position becomes available for a sales manager and you only have 3 month's sales experience it will only be logical to assume that you will not be considered for the position. Give yourself more respect than that. No one enjoys desperation. Be honest with yourself and your recruiter in knowing that the position that you are applying for will suit your personality, your experience gained throughout your career, and your geographical location.
4. BE HONEST
Nothing will break your image the way that a lie would. If you have a criminal record be honest with your recruiter and explain straight up what exactly happened. You will never be trusted again and surely will not get the job if your criminal check delivers a record to your recruiter's surprise. There might be a speeding offense or past debt that is better to talk about from the start than to cross your fingers and hope that it will remain a secret.
5. PHOTOS
It is challenging to get to know a person purely by means of a document. It is always nice to place a photograph of yourself on your resume. If you don't have a nice picture of yourself, please don't put one on your resume that shows you at your cousin's wedding stark drunk and singing karaoke. Also, don't take a photo of yourself in the office toilet during a lunch break just to have a photo to put onto your resume. We recently received a resume that opened with a photograph of a good-looking young girl dressed in a very seductive outfit. Continuing to scroll down there was information about her school career and hobby of modelling. She added a heading that read: Extra Info under which she listed skills like fast learner, great admin skills, etc. We had to email her in order to find out about her work experience. The entire aim of a resume is to let the possible future recruiter know what your skills are. What you look like is somewhat second to that.
6. HOBBIES
The only reason for a heading like "Hobbies" on a resume is to give the recruiter some idea of your personality. If there are no particular interests in your life you don't need to include this particular heading on your resume. It is very detrimental to your image to type in comments like "watching TV". Your recruiter will get an image of a lazy couch potato.
7. DON'T GIVE UP
School leavers carry a great amount of frustration in that they perceive that companies always are on the outlook for people with experience. This is not fact. There are always positions available suitable for someone with no experience. School leavers can see the fact that they have no experience as a positive. Put a paragraph in your resume that shows the pro's like: 'no bad habits have been acquired, looking at things for the first time will boost creativity' etc.
8. PROOFREAD
The best advice we can give anyone (with any document for that matter) is to read it again before you start emailing the entire country. Make sure that there are no typos in your document. Make sure that the grammar is one hundred percent correct. We receive hundreds of resumes applying for administrative positions that are littered with typos. Would you appoint an admin person who doesn't double-check your document after it is typed? Doubt it. Your resume is you on paper. Just like you would wear a suit to the interview, clothe your paper personality in the same style.
9. COMMUNICATION
Tell the recruiter which position you are applying for. You need to remember that recruiters very rarely only have one open position at a time. It is best to put this in the subject line of the email with your resume attached. Please remember to actually attach your resume as well. No jokes. We have received many an email with such professional content and you guessed it, with no attachment.
If you are in the job market, do not despair. With the correct attitude, you will get the perfect job for you. Let us help you. Go to our page for jobseekers and upload your CV onto our database.
Happy job hunting!
KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
When interviewing an average of five to six people per day it became evident that people are unsure about what they want to do with their lives. Admitting, life has a strange way of walking one through the motions.
The dream we had as school leavers of what we will be doing with our lives and what we actually are doing is nine times out of ten not the same. But there-in is the beauty we learn about who we are each and every day.
Sometimes when asked the question in an interview: "What is it that you want to do?" one gets faced with a strange answer: "What do you have available?"
There are people who are under the impression that any job that a recruiter has on the books will be better than what they have currently. This is a huge misconception. Please do not misunderstand that you need to stay where you are if you are unhappy. If you are not fulfilled in your job or career you need to follow the following steps:
1. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
The only way you will know what you want in your job or career is to know what it is about your current job or career that you do and do not enjoy. Is it the industry? The location? The management? Make a list of all that you enjoy and all that you don't. This will send you in a direction of what you envisage your next job to eliminate as well as contain. This will also demand some self-exploration. Do you know yourself? Do you know what will fulfill you? You need to understand that you spend most of your time at work and when you are not happy one can assume that you will be grabbing at all kinds of escape routes in order to find that happiness that is missing in your work life.
2. DON'T BECOME DESPERATE
People on a day-to-day basis lose their jobs or get retrenched. They come for interviews that are completely out of their lines of experience and totally out of character. An example: is is accountants applying for sales positions. Yes, this is the illogical move of a desperate person. The more panic, the less successful a person becomes. Know yourself well enough to know where you will strive and where you should rather not venture into. If you are in a desperate position go waiter for a month or two to find the finances to put food on the table while your CV is out there on the internet looking for the next career move for you. Do not let your ego come in the way of your happiness.
3. GET OUT THERE
Make sure that your CV is updated, typo-free, and professionally done. Put yourself in a recruiter's shoes. They don't care if your hobby is watching TV, in fact, that puts them off as you will appear to be a lazy kind of person. If you do not have a hobby there is no need to mention it. They don't care which church you belong to or that you were the hockey captain in grade 10. Really. Think logically when writing your CV. The very first thing recruiters want to know is in which area you reside. People often forget this. You can be the best candidate on the list but if you find yourself in Cape Town and the position is in Boksburg, the exercise would be of no use now would it? Your work experience is essentially important as this is what will give us as recruiters an idea of what you are capable of. Very seldom does one get clients who demand degrees and diplomas. What you have done is the determining factor of what you are capable of doing.
Happy Job hunting!