IamA - We are professional résumé writers & 2nd time tech entrepreneurs who have hired 800+ people and have written résumés for 1,500+ professionals around the world. We are here for the next 10 hours to answer all your queries regarding resum...

Any advice for a stay at home mom with a BS but has had no work experience for the last 7 years on how to become more marketable?

Hi!

Thanks for reaching out! 1st things 1st - 7 years might seem like a lot of time to some - but then we are happy to share some tips and tricks to help you overcome this gap. Just make the following changes to your resume apart from some other things, go out there and be welcomed back into the professional world!:

1. Try to highlight the skills you have gained in the past 7 years which will be relevant to your targeted profile. This will be a time taking task since you'll need to first create a list everything that you have done in the past 7 years and then filter it to extract information.

2. Have a solid covering letter and introductory email justifying your reasons for such a long hiatus. Basically, you need to convince the employer here that your motivation is still there and you're willing to work hard to reenter the industry. Also, this would be a good place to exhibit your skills that you have gained over the past 7 years

3. You should start taking courses relevant to your targeted profile. This will be a great way to show a potential recruiter/employer that you are willing to learn and adapt to the constantly changing environment. This will also be a great way to polish your skills. Moreover, these will add a lot of value to your Resume as well as Online professional profiles (LinkedIn/Personal Website/etc.) since most online /offline course these days offer Certificates.

Hope that is helpful. All the best!

How should I cover a one year no work ex gap my resume?

Hi!

Thanks for your question as a lot of redditors would be in a similar situation! Happy to resolve this early on itself.

A lot of people would suggest you to mask this information by using a functional resume (basically a skill based resume in a non-chronological order) or modifying the structure of the resume. This can be one of the options, but in our experience, it might lead to trouble with potential recruiters/employers if they discover this later on.

As per us, the best is to be upfront about this to your employer (maybe in your cover letter or over email exchange). This way, you demonstrate integrity & honesty as your core values which might offset the effect of the Gap year. Also, you would have the opportunity to describe genuine reasons for the gap year in your cover letter (that's why a cover letter becomes so important!).

In the end, it depends on how comfortable your employer is with the gap in your work-ex and your ability to justify it.

Don't let a 1 year gap be a deterrent. Just build a great resume and an even better cover letter/email, apply your heart out and kill it! All the very best!

1) Can you tell me what process you follow for writing these resumes? How does the information transfer take place? How much time does the entire process take?

2) What kind of people would be writing these resumes? Would they be able to handle middle management and senior leadership role?

Hi! That's a direct question regarding our services! Woo hoo! Here you go:

1. We follow a very detailed process for re-writing your resumes. All the info transfer happens via the phone and emails. We believe in creating resumes that are targeted for specific jobs. Hence, we start with asking you about your preferred/targeted jobs. We then go to your resume and ask you specific information that you have missed but is important to your resume. We also do an extensive background research on the jobs to figure out the required skills. Finally we use your answers, our research and your current resume to create a new resume for you. The whole process takes 5-7 working days depending on the complexity.

2. We have an experienced team which has hired 800+ people. And we have already worked with 1,500+ people.. a lot of which include CEOs & other CXO positions. Our team includes professional writers and industry experts. So we will definitely be able to handle mid and senior level positions! In fact, they are our best clients. We love them and they love us!

Cheers

Great job guys, this looks pretty interesting.

Honestly, I hate building my own resume, let alone resume of someone unknown. I am not sure if I'll even do it for money. This is your own company so I am assuming you really like doing what you are doing, but if you had to point out one thing that you hate the most about building someone's resume, what would it be ?

haha! great one indeed!

well yea.. we are in this industry because we really like to help people with their careers and helping them out with their resumes. We saw that a lot of people couldn't live up to their potential because they couldn't market themselves well - we wanted to change that. So voila.

Honestly, we love every part of what we are doing. But our process involves us asking a lot of questions from our clients' resumes. At times, they take a lot of time to get back with the info. We are all pepped up and ready to rewrite the resumes - but we don't get the info on time. And that's what we don't like - writing sub par resumes or deliverables that go out late!

Do you have customised services for different industries? Essentially works you be able to help me re-craft my resume basis the firm/industry that I'm applying to?

We do! we will be happy to help. We've already worked with more than 1,500 professionals across a gamut of industries and professions. Apart from that, the process that we follow includes getting a detailed understanding of the jobs that you want to apply to. After that, we do our own research on the kind of skills that are required for someone to be successful in this job - by an extensive research process - both online & offline. This essentially helps us understand the recruiter's view point. Once you club that with our existing expertise and experience, you are ready to get a new resume written for virtually any profession in the world. So, yes - will be happy to help!

I have a diverse work experience across several fields. Should I include non relevant part, to the job I am applying to, in the resume?

Hi!

Having a diverse experience is a blessing.. and not even a blessing in disguise - a direct blessing! A diverse work ex can be projected as a great strength-- it shows your flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances quickly. The catch here would be to package it in the correct manner in your Resume for which you can follow the process below:

1. We recommend creating a master Resume with all your achievements listed in a single document. That way you would have an extensive list of all your points.

2. The next step would then be to classify your points into 'buckets' of skills collectively. This way you can collectively see what you have done under each skill section.

3. The next step is to choose skills that you believe will be relevant in your targeted role and start adding them to your Resume. This can lead to two types of Resumes:

a. A Functional Resume: You can highlight your collective experience chronologically as a separate section (without the details) and club your achievements under the skills in a separate section. While you can do this, it really is a bit old according to us and it losing importance.

b. A combination of a Functional & Chronological Resume (For examples, check our Resume Builder) We have done this for a lot of Clients and it has worked beautifully for them. So here, you group points under skills (which are relevant to your targeted profile) for every work experience. This shows them that you possess what it takes to do the job as well as shows them that you have a consistent work history.

Cheers!

Can you share an example of 'buckets'?

Ofcourse! Here's a resume samplee with buckets:

Imgur

I am a graphic and web designer. I custom made a .pdf resume in photoshop that is more to show off design skills in practice than a traditional resume can. What are your thoughts on "out of the box" resumes?

A resume is essentially a combination of 2 things: design and content. Usually, the design part just helps resumes to be more visually appealing and easier to read. This is critical to increasing your probability of getting a shortlist from a sea of 100s of applicants that apply.

However, the question: what makes a great resume is different when it comes to designers. Design plays a much more important role here as you get to 'show-off' your skills. Similar to any web/mobile product, if you can actually pull off putting in the maximum amount of information in a limited space while still making it visually appealing - then you have succeeded as a graphic designer and hence, you should succeed in getting yourself a shortlist.

Net net, go ahead and do pull off a great out of the box resume. It's a great way to display your skill - but do remember to mention your key skills and achievements in the same. All the best!

Yeah, I basically put the required resume info into it and design it in a way that is eye catching an fits into whatever I am applying to.

Yea. You can also try to be creative if you are giving a printed version of this resume to someone in person - maybe during a job fair or something. Think of origami! I have seen resumes that look like tents, cubes and what not!

That's actually a pretty cool idea. I doubt I would do that because if it was given to me I'd think it's kind of a pain in the ass to unfold and read, possibly a neat business card would be better suited for me.

A designer once did this in front of us. And I was personally blown away - it had multiple folds. And with each fold, something new came out - a new project, a new job and so and on and so forth. See if you want to do that!

Do you specialize in résumé trends for any particular industries or just general résumé knowledge?

Is keeping everything on a single page still a good rule of thumb?

Why are manhole covers round?

What are some good key words to put on a résumé to get noticed these days?

What would you say are your three best qualities as an employee? What would you say are your three biggest weaknesses?

At what point should someone stop listing the summer cashier job at the grocery store they had back in high school as "Work Experience" on their résumé?

Interesting questions!

• Well, we write resumes for almost every industry. We follow a process wherein we do a good amount of research on each new job/profession/industry that we come across by going through a lot of content. Club that with our already existing expertise and voila - we are good to go!

• 1 page resumes are still pretty much in because the number of people applying to any open job position has gone up in the last decade or so - with more and more job boards, hiring apps coming around. So, every HR professional/recruiter has to go through more and more resumes every day. Hence, the best idea is to try to limit all of your info in 1 page so that she does not have to put in a lot of effort in reading multiple pages - assume that yours is the last of the 100 resumes that she is going to see in 1 day. And you definitely don't want her to neglect yours because it is too long to read! Applicant tracking systems do play a role - but at the end of it, the final decision is still taken by a human (at least for a few more years to come. hail AI!)

• Manholes.. haha.. well, scientifically they are round because a circular man hole won't fall through the smaller hole at any angle, whereas a square or a rectangular one might! but I think they are round because I like round things and hence, they made it round- donuts, the moon, coins (yes..haha!) etc

• Keywords - well they are very much dependent on the roles that you are applying for. Ideally, you should change the keywords as per the job description that you are applying for - after reading about the qualities required in the job (but make sure you have them!). This helps the applicant tracking systems automatically shortlist you - as they do keyword matching to create a 1st level of shortlists!

• 3 best qualities - well, ideally - this is also job dependent - but still as per us, they have to be: high level of ownership, attention to detail and honesty. 3 worst qualities - the exact opposites!

• Summer cashier job - well, when you run out of space! haha.. no seriously.. you should take a call on whether you have more important things on your resume - that will be relevant for the current job application. if not, then go ahead and list that summer job! always try to put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter.

Hi I have a few questions ,

1) What should be ideal length of a CV ? 2) should I make a CV with two columns or single column? 3) where can I find good templates to make my CV ?

Some people say that the length of your Resume should be restricted to only one page. While that is required for a graduate with no or little experience, most of the time it becomes impossible in case you have significant work experience. To effectively represent your experience, you have to stretch it to two pages. And it is perfectly normal to have a 2-page Resume. In fact, they are the most common.

We recommend making a two column Resume mostly in cases where the candidate's work experience can fit in one page. Makes it look neat and concise with multiple importance given to all sections.

You can find good modern as well as traditional templates with on our website: www.hiration.com/resume-examples. Do let us know your feedback.

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

Ive been selling on Amazon / eBay for the past four years along with delivering pizzas (pizza paid the bills, allowing me to reinvest into Amazon sales). Last year revenue totalled about $70k. I quit delivering pizzas and moved down south to work on my amazon business full time. Lo and behold amazon suspends my account a week after I move. I am no longer selling on Amazon and eBay and I'm trying to put those skills to use for someone else. How do I put those skills on a resume? There aren't a lot of other amazon sellers looking for help so I'm trying to word my skills in a way that translates into other industries like marketing, sales, and management.

I cannot find a job down here for the life of me. I'm 26 years old with no degree. I built a successful amazon business but employers don't seem too impressed by that.

Work Speaks. Louder than any resume will ever.

Before I begin to answer you, I want you to know that what you did is really difficult. Getting any business up and running is hard. To make any revenues from it harder! Deciding to make it your life is hardest. I bow down to your energy, efforts and courage. Society wants to look at result, but success comes to those who have already become process. Philosophy aside, coming back to Career challenge.

There aren't many 26 year old out there who made $1,000 on their own business. With that, I want you to know that we need to highlight your strengths and uniquenesses, you need to start looking at your achievements, even in struggle. A resume has to compete with other resumes. When others come with degrees, we will fight back with revenues. Where others will focus on a MBA in marketing, we will focus on real digital marketing(reviews/replies/customer satisfaction/photography/etc.)

Industry Secret: The real stakeholders know what it takes to build business and every entrepreneur always has huge respects for those who did all those 1% boring things repeatedly. Fixing the photos, managing reviews, shipments, making ends meet and growing business selling Pizzas. That's a story every entrepreneur is dying to hear from their prospective candidates!

Problem: Getting in the room to tell the story.

Make a list of companies that are around that you would like to work for. Figure out the openings, or possibly roles that you can seamlessly fit in. If you are not sure what the exact work is going to be, try talking to people who work in those profiles. Try reaching out to founders directly via LinkedIn, email. We need to get a shot with people who have built things, driven things, rather than those who have been there because of their pedigree, etc.

I would highly recommend to not settle for less, but go for bigger challenges. It's important to keep pushing yourself into the unknown and see if you can swim. Obviously, after you have figured out how to feed yourself.

What do we tell them?

A story around your experience. A cover letter around your desire for challenges and continued growth. A business manager, learner, fixer, diversified multiple hat handler resume. We can go on in the specifics, since your resume will have to revolve around this story. Bring out your strengths with experience from the past as well.

But, above all I need you to smile tonight, write for me all the things you have achieved since you can remember anything. Then we can focus on bringing it down to 1 page. For now, expand in all directions, example:

Tell me you finished 1st when you were 5 years old in the track race, and I will show how you were always a driven kid, and the drive has only evolved as the kid matured :)

What would be few tricks to speak about oneself in resume beyond technical skills so that it works in your favor?

That's a good question! So there are multiple ways to go beyond just the technical skills in your resume. The best thing that you can do is to bring out your achievements / the impact of your work along with the roles and responsibilities that you had. This distinguishes your resume from most others as a majority of resumes focus just on the activities. Also, try to bring out as many numbers as possible - numbers help to quantify the impact of your work.

Another thing that will help you is to highlight the important keywords as well as your achievements using bold/italics. On average, a recruiter goes through your resume for a total of 10s the 1st time. Hence, you have to ensure that your resume has the maximum impact the very 1st time. Highlighting will ensure that the recruiter only reads what you want her to read. This helps in closing that critical 1st shortlist after which the recruiter will read your resume in much more detail.

Hope that helps.

Cheers!

How many tennis balls could you fit in this room?

haha! that's a guesstimate question - management consulting fan here? off topic but well, let's give it a shot - the diameter of a tennis ball is around 3 inches (for the sake of simplicity; 2.7 to be precise). Volume of each ball: 4/3 pie r3 i.e. 14.14 inch cube or 15 for the sake of simplicity Now the best spherical packing efficiency is hexagonal closed packed i.e. 74% space is filled. Now volume of the room in which we are sitting: roughly 20 ft * 20 ft * 15 ft = 10.3 million inch cube. Hence, no of tennis balls that can be fit in this room = 0.74 * 10.3 million / 15 = ~508k enjoy!

the biggest misconception about building a resume?

Well, the biggest misconception that we have encountered is that many people think that Design is more important that content. Sure, they build their Resume pretty quickly- but their Resume is almost always ineffective. Like everywhere else, here also, content is KING in the end.

People pay far far more attention to their Resume Design when they should be focusing on introspecting their professional journey to develop content for their Resume. It is a hard and time consuming process but the returns are worth the effort. We have seen shortlists go up by a factor of 10 in somme cases!

Sure, there are certain unsaid rules about Resume designs that one should adhere to. And yes, your Resume should look great--it is a part of Resume Writing. But never ignore the content. It deserves the highest share of your time.

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

You probably get this one a lot as well.

I am burned out from 20 years in technical support, had it up to here dealing with other people's problems so I am going into a new career. It isn't easy because I am older and nobody believes that I would stick around if a better job in IT came along...

I want to get into some kind of office work, data entry, internet company perhaps. I have tons of customer service and internet experience.

My question is this, how do I creatively hide my tech experience while describing a previous job? Should I ommit all my tech certifications from the resume as well?

Thanks for doing this and for your time.

We do. But will be more than happy to help you out.

You need to do 2 things here:

1. The best resumes are those that are specially made for the exact job that you are applying to. That means that the skills and experiences that you bring out in your resume should match the requirements of the job. Hence, you can build different resumes for the new jobs (data entry, office work etc.) by bringing out the required skills from your work experience till date. For example, a data entry job requires you to have attention to detail. As a tech support person, you would have fixed a lot of problems by focussing on the problem in detail and narrowing it down to the exact issue. You can paraphrase this sentence and make it short enough to ensure that the biggest take away for any recruiter will be the fact that you have great attention to detail. Do this for each and every skill - while making separate targeted resumes for separate jobs - and you will be good to go. That way, your current experience won't exactly be hidden - it will just be morphed into what your targeted jobs need! Think on similar lines for your certifications

2. You need to create a relevant cover letter or covering email that explains the exact reasons for your transition along with your suitability for the new job. The best way is to match as many skills as possible to the job requirements - within the cover letter/email itself.

Do this and see the magic!

When you write someone's CV essentially you are taking their story. What do you do to get across the story they actually own, or in cases help them discover?

It's a complicated process, introspecting! Most of our clients have procrastinated the process indefinitely, that is until they've met us, haha!

We follow a very detailed process for re-writing resumes and make it easy for our clients to discover their stories. We believe in creating resumes that are targeted for specific jobs. Hence, we start with asking clients about their preferred/targeted jobs. We then analyze their existing resume and ask them specific information that they might have missed out. It is a very detailed process where we ask our clients questions on every point in their Resume. It allows them to think clearly about what they have done and what their achievements are.Moreover, most of our clients get prepped for their interviews automatically by undergoing this process!

We also do an extensive background research on the jobs to figure out the required skills. Finally we use your answers, our research and your current resume to create a new resume for you. The whole process takes 5-7 working days depending on the complexity.

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

What are the best ways to translate a military background to civilian-ese?

Hi Jason. We've worked with a lot of clients who have done the same. The key point for you will be to focus on all the skills that you gained during your military years and then try to write them down in such a way that is relevant to a civilian-ese job.

In more detail, if for example, you were leading a regiment in the military, then you learned team management - and this is an essential skill for a lot of managerial jobs. The resume point should look something like: Led & managed a regiment of 40 soldiers as a part of the XYZ regiment (with possible sub bullets giving more description about the activities).

Hence, you can 1st list down all the tasks that you did during your military life, then take out all of the relevant skills from each of the points and finally convert them into resume points. And while you are doing this, do make sure that these skills are very relevant to the jobs that you are applying for. That is key - putting yourself in the shoes of the recruiter and asking yourself - would you have shortlisted this resume for this role?

Hi! I need to do my resume all over again. Working in the aeronautical industry I'd like to present it like a plane ticket detail with information board typo and stuff like that. Do you think it's a good or a lame idea? If it's too eccentric is it good or bad?

That's a great idea! But to develop something like that usually takes a good amount of time, a lot of creativity and some serious design skills. You should ensure that it stands out and highlights your achievements clearly. If you develop a bad/complicated infographic, it can hurt you more than it can help. A well designed infographic basically makes you stand out. If you think that you can master the design aspect, then creating this kind of a Resume is a good idea.

We have had clients who have made infographic versions of their resumes and successfully landed great jobs even in traditional industries. I must stress again that the conceptualization is really really important and you should dedicate a good amount of time to it.

Having said that, for traditional companies, we usually recommend modern Resumes (though not infographic, but using modern fonts and icons). It usually takes a lot less time, is very neat and highlights the information appropriately. You can supplement the resume with a personal website though, which can have the infographic that you want along with other cool stuff.

Hope this helps!

Team Hiration

I have spent my entire professional career (18 years) as owner and lead engineer of a software business. After some personal trauma a few years ago I went looking for a job that didn't come with all the stresses and was planning to sell the business to my right hand man.

However, time after time I was told I was overqualified or companies refused to accept I really wanted to move to JUST an engineer/programming role.

How would you put this type of experience on a resume so potential employers were more considerate?

I know it is hard to believe, but yes that is a genuine problem! Most employers are looking for people who will stick around and anything which suggests otherwise, can make it difficult for the applicant.

The good thing is that you actually know your stuff! You only need to convince employers that you'll stick around. There are a few things you can do:

1. Demonstrate the engineering/programming projects that you led/are leading in your own firm in detail. Most importantly, recent projects that you have undertaken as an engineer/programmer. They should clearly highlight the latest technologies that you are proficient with to show employers that you are in sync with the technology and trends. This will demonstrate your present interest in a programming and justify the switch to a certain extent

2. Create a well crafted cover letter which highlights your reasons for the job shift. It will give you a great opportunity to justify yourself.

3. We had a client in a similar situation (though not this much experience) who wanted to shift to a previous role. He couldn't land the job immediately, but he started taking & executing solo consulting projects in the domain to validate his interest to employers. After a couple of months, and 4-5 projects, he landed the job.

The key is to keep at it and not give up!

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

[deleted]

Hi,

We will be more than happy to help!

Based on the points that you have mentioned, a corporate strategy or consulting role does seem possible given that you have Google and ISB on your resume. However, we will need to dive into the finer print in order to figure it out better.

For a consulting / corporate strategy role, it is very essential to have and also SHOW spikes (exceptionally good points on your resume). Typically, they prefer professionals who have been good in almost all areas of their lives - both professional, as well as academic and, have some exceptional achievements in at least 1 or 2 of such areas. Hence, the best way to proceed is to dig deeper into each section of your professional and academic life and figure out all the details.

A lot of times, professionals have exceptional achievements in their lives but are not able to bring them out in their resumes. This is exactly what has to be done for a consulting / corporate strategy shortlist.

You can start by clearly laying out all of the points and then diving deep into each of them with an objective of bringing out information that can highlight your achievements - such as numbers (for example: Conducted sales in New York vs. Conducted sales worth $1mn. per quarter in New York; led a team of 10 - you see the difference between the 2 points). You need to do this, then add a lot of power verbs (do google) to bring a 'bias to action' into your resume. Also focus on highlighting these achievements (bold/italics) so that they come out right on top when a recruiter goes through your resume for the 1st time, which is usually ~6-10 s. And consulting/corp strategy HRs are usually inundated with resumes - so this highlighting becomes even more important. Apart from that, you need to have a great design/format so that your resume is visually attractive and a pleasure to read.

Last but not the least, do get your resume reviewed by professional from the same industry/experts before sending it to the consulting/corp strategy roles. That will lead to a lot of great improvements!

And yes, consulting resumes is one of our specialities along with cover letters as well. You can write to us for more details Cheers!

most memorable resume you have encountered?

very interesting! well, all that I can say is that we once got the resume of a sex guru.. he kind of wanted us to deck up his resume so that he could 'raise' the number of his clients ;) we're a bit shy to tell what happened next!

What is the worst CV you've ever received to rewrite?

I'm one of the co founders - and believe me - the worst resume that I had to rewrite was my own resume when I joined B school.

The story goes like this - When I was about to get my under grad degree, I applied to a lot of management consulting firms - but hadn't spent a lot of effort on my resume. I just got 1 shortlist from at least 7-8 applications. Move forward a few years and I am in B school - this time around, I do a thorough research on how to make a stellar resume - spoke to like 100 people, showed them my resume, got reviews, read tonnes of content - both online and offline, took resume making courses etc. And after a grueling 1 month of getting new info, when I sat down to write my resume, believe me - I cringed at the document that was in my hand.. haha! So yes, that was the worst resume for me. Also, I got like 7/8 shortlists with my new resume ;)

I've had too many jobs to fit on one page. I'm 28 in grad school, so I don't feel a CV is appropriate for where I'm at in my career. I've started using "Relevant Work Experience" as my title, but I'm concerned that by not including all of my jobs it looks like I have employment gaps. What's the best way to handle this?

In a way, this is a good problem to have!

You should look at multiple jobs as multiple opportunities to bring out your skills for your next targeted job. The philosophy / principle that we suggest is simple - create your resume by working backwards:

• 1st do a good amount of research on your targeted jobs i.e. figure out all the skills that are desired.

• Now, list down all of your jobs till date and all the activities & achievements that you had in them. Against each of these, mark the skills that you think are the most prevalent.

• Do a simple matching between the skills that you have and the skills that are required in the jobs - put all the matching points in your resume. Leave all the other points out. For jobs that have 0 matching points, just put the job name, title and the dates.

• If you still think that there are too many jobs, then don't leave them out - because as you said - it does look like you have employment gaps. So, in this case, you can club multiple jobs together (which are not the relevant for your targeted jobs) by putting them in 1 point. Something similar to: Financial Associate, Multiple Firms, '07 - '08

Cheers!

I'm considering using your resume review service, but I want some clarification on the "minimal $30". What would make the fee increase and how much could it increase?

It is flat $30! So you can go ahead. That is all that we will charge :)

Here is the link for your reference: https://www.hiration.com/reddit-ama/

Not the OP, but do you just review it and say, "hey change this...", or do you do complete overhauls/rewrites? If I sent you my resumé, which does not have my current role at my company listed, with a job description for said role, plus a job description for the role I'm looking to apply for (at the same company), would you just write the resumé?

Thanks!

Hi. So we do a complete and thorough review for $30 wherein we give you a thorough list of improvements based on both the content as well as the design aspect. We normally offer the reviews for around $50. There's a cool $20 discount for our fellow Redditors!

We will be more than happy to completely rewrite your resume (including your current role, even if it is not mentioned at all!) based on your current resume and the job description of your preferred job. We then do a thorough background research on the job, ask you some very targeted questions to get a lot of more information from you and then rewrite your resume to make it targeted for your desired jobs. The price depends on your total work experience!

Do let us know if you want us to help you out in either way!

Cheers!

Im 30 years old and have worked in call centres most of my adult life. I really want to switch to the hospitality/tourism industry but I have a resume full of office work. Any tips for someone looking to switch industries?

The only person stopping you from changing industries is you my friend. I personally have led a huge team in a startup in the hospitality industry and can tell you that people with your kind of skill are always required in the hospitality/tourism industry. The hospitality industry has a lot of sub-domains. It depends on which part do you want to enter into.

Before we move on to the Resume part, you need to decide what all domains you want to target. Then, you need to conduct extensive research on those domains. Talk to people in your network working in those areas or reach out to people through LinkedIn. Find as much information on various aspects of the industry as you can before crafting your Resume.

Once you have that information, start penning down your professional experience exhaustively - whatever you have done. Combine points under various skill heads to see where you actually lie in terms of skills and where they can be used.

Once you have assessed yourself and have the necessary details on the role you want to apply for, you can start adding specific information in your Resume based on your targeted role. Remember, you want to highlight skills and points relevant to the role that you have chosen. Also, your cover letter should highlight your love for & your suitability in the hospitality industry.

It wont be an easy transition since most employers are apprehensive about candidates changing industries. But there are a lot of people out there who are willing to give such people a chance if they see drive and passion in them.

Needless to say, your Resume and cover letter will play vital part in you getting shortlists. So, work hard at them!

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

What is a cover letter? Do I need it? How do I make one?

A cover letter is a document sent with your resume to provide additional information on your skills and experience.

It is always good to have a cover letter with accompanying your resume as a good written cover letter sharpens your candidature for recruiters.

In general, cover letter includes the following: - Who you are and what job you want? - What relevant skills you have and how you'll apply them? - That you really understand what's required of you from job advert. - If you have any additional skills over and above the job advert. - That you really, really want this job!

I have two years of experience in digital marketing and I want to change to growth role; what is the roadmap?

Happy to help!

Digital marketing is more on the traditional side of growth i.e marketing. The good news is that you already possess some core key skills that will be relevant for you to transition smoothly into a growth role.

A growth role usually involves 4 key areas:

1. Design- This becomes important because you need to do rapid experimentation with the UI/UX, be it an online or an offline product to see what works.

2. Marketing (Digital in your case) - This is key for acquiring new users and retaining old ones. If you're not good at marketing, you will have a hard time bringing in users

3. Analytics- This forms the engine of the growth process and will tell you how to improve your product/service by analyzing user actions

4. Technology- This is required for implementing the changes!

Combine knowledge of all these and you become a growth expert. But you need to progress through the stages one by one. You need to acquire knowledge in all these areas (at least some knowledge) & apply it practically to become a growth expert. Doing some online research will provide you with great resources on the same.

Hope this helps.

Team Hiration

I'm 25 without much of an idea of what I want to do. I have little work experience and have a pretty generic business background. What is something I can get involved in (courses, certs, etc) that can add to my resume while I decide what I want to do?

Hi!

The best part about not being sure about what you want to do, in the current times, is the online availability of a host of great courses. You can possibly learn anything without having to get out of the comfort of your home.

It becomes slightly difficult to recommend you relevant courses because you have not given many details about yourself apart from your business background. Things that would have helped include your education, the exact nature of your work till date, a broad idea of the direction that you want to take etc.

However, broadly, as you are from a business background, you can explore the world of technology and business as it is one of the hottest fields around the world right now. You can look at building product, sales, online marketing etc. expertise in leading (ML products etc.) or emerging ( blockchain etc.) technology. These fields are on a steady path upwards. Anyways, these skills will also be applicable to other b2c and b2b industries as well. Just remember one thing - that in whichever course/certificate program that you do, try to do as much real world practical work (projects, internships etc.) as possible during each of these courses / certificates. And try to have as much impact by doing these things. That will greatly help you from a learning as well as a resume standpoint.

Cheers!

Thank you for doing this!

I've always wondered: is it ever appropriate / worth it to add "fun" skills to a resume?

For example, I'm a trained software engineer and currently run a manufacturing company. I'm looking to move back to software and take on a project management role, and I have plenty of skills and content to fill a full sheet. But, I'm also really into bread making, pickling, and other "creative" skills that I thought could be fun include on a resume and might set me apart.

Awesome. this is one of the fun questions that we would love to answer.

So the thing with resumes is that a lot of people take it to be one of the most serious documents in their lives. In it's very basic form, a resume is any person's professional marketing document! The overall objective is to market yourself so good that the reader wants to bring you to her office and interview you right now itself! Now keeping that in mind, yes, it is worth adding 'fun' skills to a resume - but almost always towards the end.

Overall, a job always requires you to do a lot of activities and fulfill a lot of responsibilities - that responsibility is served by writing the serious content on your resume - work experience, skills, education etc. - which tell the reader whether you are a fit or not.

However, another part is the more human part - basically the fact that you will someone who will be joining the team and who they have to work and chill with for a decent amount of time during the day. This part can be served by adding the 'fun' skills on your resume. But I would recommend adding only specific skills which are not too generic (read 'traveling etc.') - something like 'pickling' - this will definitely irk the interest of the reader! Most people would be happy to shortlist people with interesting resumes to come and talk to them directly. Also it can serve as a good ice breaker during the interview.

In a nutshell, focus on writing the 'functional part' of your resume very well. And then, at the end, go ahead and throw in a couple of fun skills. Mix it well and see the magic.

All the best!

What advice would you give to oil and gas workers regarding resumes? Any particular tips, formats, etc? Especially for people who aim to travel worldwide and work as consultants in oil and gas.

With such a huge industry downturn, getting a good CV/Resume is more important that ever as the competition is fierce.

Thanks

EDIT: aaaaaand I just noticed this was during only 10 hours, 1 day ago...

Hi!

No worries sir. Team Hiration to the rescue even after the AMA is done. :)

So yes, you are right in the sense that writing a good resume is becoming more and more important because of the downturn in the oil and gas field and also because it is becoming easier to apply for any job online - hence, the overall number of applications per job has increased a lot!

Specifically for you, as you would want to apply to a broader set of audience (beyond the US based recruiters), you can create 2 sets of resumes - a 1 pager for US people and a 2 pager (for everyone else; broadly works in most countries with a good oil and gas industry). As far as the design is concerned, try to avoid a generic black, grey and white design - go for something modern and more colorful. A lot of oil and gas resumes are pretty dull. Hence, if your resume is a bit visually appealing, it will really help yours to stand out from all others! Now, in your work experience section, try to bring out the impact or result of your work in the oil and gas field - a lot of people miss that! This will help the recruiter to understand the level of your contribution along with the roles and responsibilities that you held. Also, highlighting - another common area of improvement for oil and gas resumes. Please highlight the important oil and gas keywords, skills and achievements in your resume using a combination of bold and italics - it helps to a big extent. You can also create a separate 'technologies' section wherein you can mention the various oil and gas related technologies that you have worked with and are comfortable using.

Do these changes and see the magic work!

You can reach out to us for more help. Cheers!

I am an IIT Alumnus, I wasted 3 years in upsc prep.. Now joined a tier-2 MBA program. how should I compensate for the lost time and compete with my other batch mates who are already 4 years ahead. Where can I possibly drive my career for such accelerated growth?

Hi!

First of all thanks a lot for reaching out! Next, you have to remember that you are not competing with someone else - you are just competing with yourself. And as long as your current you is better than the past you, you are winning the race already!

Another thing to remember is that you did not waste those 3 years - there a lot of things which you gain while preparing for UPSC. So be happy my friend!

Now as far as your career is concerned, you can actually drive your career towards any destination that you wish to. You have successfully passed one of the toughest examinations in the world to get into IIT. If you can do it once, you can definitely do it again! You just need to equip yourselves with the right set of tools and then go out there and get what you want. On the ground, you need to work hard and absolutely kill it in your current MBA program - work hard on your projects, be as diligent as ever during your internship, win all the competitions that you possibly can and learn, learn, learn. Apart from that, you can choose the infinite options in terms of online courses which will equip you with a host of skills - be it data science, marketing, - there are so many quality courses available on the internet that you can master anything if you apply yourself to it. You will need to start small and consistently work yourself to the top. Now once you are well on your way to equipping yourself with the right skill set, spend time and learn from the best of people in these fields.

And then, work on presenting yourself in the best possible manner - improve your resume, polish your interviewing skills, improve your presentation skills and so on and so forth!

Go make a plan and execute it. If you need any of our help, we are right here - you can reach out anytime.

Take care and all the best!

Awesome AMA, good information here. I've worked in an employment office for a long time, and the main part of my job is resume writing, so I'm curious to know how you go about formatting it.

• Looking at the templates you listed below, I noticed use of colors. Generally we shy away from color as it tends to get lost when the resume is photocopied/faxed. Do you feel color is alright, or should resumes stick to black and white?

• Font wise, what fonts do you prefer? Times New Roman used to be "standard" but now I find people drift more to Arial or Calibri. Do you find companies generally fussy about font sizes and types? Our rule of thumb is no more than 2 font types in 2 sizes, to keep the resume uniform.

• The "References" section, how do you handle it? We always get clients who put "References Available Upon Request" line instead of actual references, which to me, is horribly redundant and a space waster. Unless you actually have references, I tend to just omit the entire section. Your samples don't show references at all, so do you include them (on a separate page perhaps), or just omit them entirely? (unless the job posting requests it, of course)

• Your "Summary" sections in your templates, it seems like a wall of text, why don't you use bullet format for it instead? Is that just to conserve space?

Finally, random question here, what's the strangest resume you've ever gotten? I once had a client bring in a resume written on a piece of bark. I thought it was oddly brilliant though, as he was applying for a Chainsaw Operator position and wanted to prove how precise he could use the chainsaw. He got the job with it LOL!

Great to connect with a fellow Resume writer! Thanks for the kind words.

• We offer two services -- an offline Resume Writing Service & the online Resume builder. The templates in the online tool are there to cater to a wider audience. People who would most probably share their Resume over emails and submit them to Applicant Tracking Systems. In our experience, going for color and a little use of icons in these cases helps since it makes their Resume stand out. Even while using color, we ensure that not more than 2 (max 3) colors are used in the templates. In the offline service, where we write Resumes ourselves, we customize the Resumes keeping in mind the Client's targeted role and experience. We accommodate specific requests there.

• In our offline service we usually go with Calibri while in our online service, we have used Open Sans till date which is a Sans-serif font. We usually use only one font (sometimes the Name might be in a different font though) in say, 3 different sizes in the Resume. Tis has worked well for us -- keeps the clients happy and gets them a lot of shortlists.

• I'm with you on this one-- references are a complete waste of prime resume real estate. Usually the employer anyway asks the candidate for references separately. That is the time to provide references- when they're actually doing the check. Although we have sometimes used references as fillers (in case the client has a hard time completing a full Resume page), but that is not the norm.

• Good point. The summary section in the resume is for users to get a feel of content they can use in their own Resumes. Hence, it is a bit expanded. We will surely convert some of the summary sections into bulleted sections. Thanks for the advice. Also, please feel free to use the resume builder and we'll be grateful if you can provide us feedback on it.

Haha..the bark Resume thing was an amazing idea! We've had similar experiences with clients who have taken the unconventional route. The strangest Resume in our case would be that of a sex guru! Yes. That's real. We can't say what was on it though :p

Thanks for the response! I'll definitely check out your resume builder, we're always looking into whats "current" for resumes. A lot has changed over the years in terms of style and formatting.

LOL at the sex guru! Definitely an interesting one! I once had a client put "I git er done" under their job description, and when I suggested they change it they were very insistent to leave it there, as they felt it "said all they needed to say". Funny thing, they didn't get the job. :P

Haha! you get so many Clients who want something 'their way'. No matter how much you tell them otherwise, they insist on certain things. Well, it's their call at the end of the day. We can only say so much.

Feel free to drop us a message once you have used the Resume Builder-- would love to hear your thoughts.

How long should a government (US) resume be for a mid career professional? I'm hovering at 5 pages because HR folks keep saying we have to put every keyword into our resume that is in the job announcement on usajobs.gov. It seems excessive to me. What can I cut?

Hi! 1st things 1st - you should definitely avoid a 5 page resume! It will actually do more harm than good to you. Hence, stick to a maximum of 2 pages.

The keyword part makes sense - however, what you need to do there is to put in as many keywords as possible in those 2 pages. Once you work forward with that goal in mind, you will definitely be able to make it concise enough. Another best practice (from a keyword matching point of view) is to have a key skills section on your resume - you should include all the major skills that are mentioned in the job (and which you also have) in that section. The key skill section provides a direct input to the keyword matching algorithms used by most applicant tracking systems. But do cut all the flab to make it a 2 pager resume.