Resume Tips And Advice

There was a blog post at BNET.com last month that reinforced some of the resume advice we offer at Pongo, that your resume should be error-free. But the comments on the post demonstrated that the perfect resume is a subjective judgment. For example, one hiring manager may disqualify you over a misspelled word, while another may not even notice, and if he does, may not care.  More »

One topic that seems to resonate most with our readers is how to address a gap in your resume. Almost everybody has one (or more) employment gaps, but nobody seems quite clear on what to do about it. We tackled that issue back in a March 2008 post, and here it is again.  More »

Ever notice that people tend to make things harder than they have to be? Wouldn't the job search be simpler, for example, if you could forgo the trouble of crafting a brilliant resume that details your past experience, and instead just sum up your essential nature, your true value, in the form of a haiku?  More »

Once you submit your resume and cover letter to an employer, it can feel as if your precious career documents have fallen into some kind of abyss, never to be seen or heard from again. At best, you might get an auto-reply email that acknowledges your application, but promises nothing. Wouldn't it be nice to know what's happening to your resume after you send it?  More »

Fighting the effects of aging is all the rage these days, with everything from little blue pills for your you-know-what to facial injections that promise freedom of expression (that's expression, singular). If everything else gets softer and flimsier as we age, why does job seeking get harder? This post offers three quick and easy tricks to put that youthful vigor back into your resumes and cover letters.  More »

If I could give the clueless job seeker only one piece of resume writing advice, it would be this: Start your resume with a summary of your best qualifications. Beginning the resume with this kind of short preview of your most impressive and relevant accomplishments, skills, and experience helps readers see within seconds how you fit their needs.  More »

I finally received my Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) diploma this week, so I'm no longer the only writer on staff without that accreditation (woohoo!). But getting that piece of paper meant I had to update my blog bio to match. I noticed that my first bio was an ill attempt at making me sound as experienced as my fellow writers, even though they're years ahead of me on their career paths. What was I thinking? Take this revelation and apply it to your resume.  More »

Educational institutions teach us lots of things that will (theoretically) help us succeed in our jobs. But they rarely teach us how to write a resume, which is what you need to get hired for those jobs. As a result, we have a lot of otherwise smart people who are pretty much clueless when it comes to resume writing. In this post, you'll find basic Dos and Don'ts for providing contact information (name, address, phone, email) at the top of your resume. (We'll cover other resume sections in upcoming posts.)  More »

You may have heard this before but it's worth repeating: Your resume has only 10 to 15 seconds to grab a hiring manager's attention, so you need to make every one of those seconds count. An effective way to get the hiring manager to continue reading is with a headline in your professional summary that effectively shouts your value.  More »

The short answer is: maybe. Ask all your favorite career experts that question and some would tell you to send a new resume, while others would tell you not to worry about it. What it really boils down to is whether the hiring manager is likely to notice the typo, and whether they'll care if they do. And that largely depends on how good your resume is overall, along with the kind of job you're seeking.  More »