Resume Tools

I read a blog article about 10 things that you can do with LinkedIn of which you may not have been aware. One of them included the resume tool. I went in and set up my resume. It took about 20 seconds. Unfortunately, I would be better served by a combination resume and the tool only allows a chronological resume.

The LinkedIn tool is perfect as long as your profile is 100% complete, your profile reads the same way you would like your resume to read, and a chronological format is the approach you would like to use.

Another tool that we recommend can be found on www.illinoisworknet.com in the Individuals pathway "Prepare" section. The tool within Illinois workNet will create and save up to 20 resumes for you.  You can pick from several templates including both functional and chronological.  There isn't a combination option posted, but you can always copy and paste from the workNet tool into a Word document.


A free tool that is available in the Career Resource Centers at an Illinois workNet Center is Winway resume creator.  This computer program allows you to select which of the three formats you would like to use and offers suggestions for tasks you may have completed based upon the job title that you enter.  Once you have all of your information entered, you may then go in and edit the description and tweak the resume to make it completely personalized to your experience.


Last but not least, the Illinois workNet Career Resource Centers offer free professional review assistance for your resume from our Career Resource Professionals, as well as workshops to help you with your resume and interviewing along with many other resources. 


What is the best resume tool you have found?

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Best Places to work in Illinois

The Business Ledger published a list of 35 of the Best Places to Work in Illinois 2010 edition.  Congratulations to the winners!  If you own a business, you may want to look into these companies corporate culture to find out why they are award winners. If you are looking for a job, you may want to investigate some of these companies to find out why they are the Best Places to work:

• Assurance located in Schaumburg IL http://www.assuranceagency.com/ is an insurance brokerage company.
• Skender Construction in Chicago, IL http://www.skender.com/
• Radio Flyer, Inc. in Chicago, IL http://www.radioflyer.com/
• Geneca in Oakbrook Terrace http://www.geneca.com/ is a custom software development firm.
• Tasty Catering in Elk Grove Village http://www.tastycatering.com/
• Emkay Inc., in Itasca http://www.emkay.com/ is a fleet management company.
• Laurus Strategies in Chicago http://www.laurusstrategies.com/ provides human resource, financial and communications services.
• The Comprehensive Group in Glenview http://www.comprehensiveonline.com/ rehabilitation related services
• The Effner Financial Group, Inc. in Downers Grove http://www.effnerfinancialgroup.com/ benefits and investment services company
• Upshot in Chicago http://www.upshot.net/ advertising agency
• Marquette Group in Peoria  yellow page advertising
• Groupon in Chicago http://www.groupon.com/ internet based daily deals
• Alpine Consulting in Schaumburg http://www.alpineinc.com/ information management
• Perspectives, Ltd. in Chicago http://www.perspectivesltd.com/ Human resources
• Rippinger Financial Group in Schaumburg http://www.rfginc.com/ insurance and financial services
• Association Management Center in Glenview http://www.connect2amc.com/ management company
• R.H. Wine in St. Charles (Wine Sergi) http://www.winesergi.com/ insurance
• Corbett Duncan & Hubly in Itasca http://www.chdcpa.com/ accounting
• Vela Insurance Services LLC in Chicago http://www.vela-ins.com/
• Instant Technology in Chicago http://www.instanttechnology.com/ provide IT staffing
• Digitas in Chicago http://www.digitas.com/ marketing and media agency
• Draftfcb in Chicago http://www.draftfcb.com/ advertising
• Shared Technologies Inc. based in Texas http://www.sharedtechnologies.com/ sells and maintains telephone and data systems
• Edward Jones based in St. Louis http://www.edwardjones.com/ financial services
• Hitachi Consulting in Chicago http://www.hitachiconsulting.com/ IT strategies and solutions
• National Insurance Crime Bureau in Des Plaines http://www.nicb.org/ fights insurance fraud
• Lockton Companies LLC in Chicago http://www.lockton.com/ commercial insurance
• Ice Miller LLC based in Indianapolis http://www.icemiller.com/ law firm
• Sundance Vacations based in Wilkes Barr PA http://www.sundancevacations.com/ wholesale travel
• National Futures Association in Chicago http://www.nfa.futures.org/ safeguards the futures market
• Administaff based in Kingwood Texas http://www.administaff.com/staffing agency
• Burns & McDonnell in Downers Grove http://www.burnsmcd.com/ engineering, architecture, construction
• Quest Diagnostics in Wood Dale http://www.questdiagnostics.com/ medical diagnostic testing
• Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora http://www.rushcopley.com/
• ATI Physical Therapy in Bolingbrook http://www.atipt.com/

Your Personal Elevator Pitch – Can you highlight your resume in an elevator ride?

Marketers and public relations specialists know that in many situations you have just the time it takes for an elevator ride to grab the attention of a reporter. Hence, the phrase “elevator pitch”, came to be to explain the amount of time you have to explain your business or pitch your story. Can this correlate to your personal elevator pitch when it comes to sharing the key aspects of your career with someone?

A career coaching company in New York suggests a two-minute pitch. That isn’t how long it should take to “get to” your point, but it should take no longer than two minutes to share the best points of your career with a tiny bit of embellishment. Richard Skaare, a communications specialist, suggests that your resume should be able to be boiled down to the 140 – 160 characters you would use in a text message. Now, those two concepts work in concert with each other. To verbalize and expound on the 140 characters could take about 2 minutes.

Unless you are in that dream situation - sitting on the Metra next to someone who just happens to need someone with your exact skill set - the concept of using a 140 character resume is reserved for Twitter or a text message. The principle behind both thoughts mentioned above is you need to know exactly who you are, what skills you own, and how you have used them. Better still you need to be able to communicate those same things in a short, cohesive, cognizant statement if time is limited.

A couple of situations where your elevator pitch will work perfectly are networking events or job fairs. Yes, you may hand someone your “real” professionally prepared resume, but, what will you say to that job fair representative that will make him/her put your resume in the “second look” pile. What will you say to those you meet at a networking event that will pique their interest and entice them to spend more time with you, finding out more about you in greater detail?

Creating your Personal Elevator Pitch

You want to include a few key statements about yourself:

1. Your position – I am an architect – This is your key statement
2. General Experience – in commercial development for 10 years – this gives listeners an idea of what level of expertise you have.
3. Your sub-pitch – I’ve supervised over xx projects ranging from 10,000 square feet to 130,000 square feet in 20 major metropolitan areas
4. Add interest - including Singapore, New York, Chicago, and Little Rock.
5. Apply it to your listener – My concepts attract new business from companies like …. – if you are using your pitch in a cover letter or interview, direct this last portion of your pitch to create a comparison to the businesses situation, perhaps their direct competition if possible.

Let’s go back to the 140 characters. Forced brevity sharpens the mind. Work with a trusted friend or counselor to keep your pitch brief. Just as in creating new marketing ideas, you may need to brainstorm ways to keep the word count down.

Using your Personal Elevator Pitch - You have created your personal pitch, but if you don’t memorize it, practice it and know how to modify it depending upon your audience, you could end up stammering and jabbering just as if you didn’t take all the time to create your pitch in the first place.

Tell me about yourself is a typical question you will be asked on any interview. When asked, you want your personal elevator pitch to just flow. To do that you need to write out your pitch, memorize it, practice it in front of a mirror, a family member, your employment and training rep, your dog, or the car in front of you in line at the drive-through. You want the words to just flow.
You want your message to be crystal clear. Refer to it enough throughout the interview, that if the interviewer is asked to tell their boss about you when your interview is done, you know how they will position you after you leave.

Remember that when you are speaking, use a personal level. Standards today are based on the medium of TV, using a conversational style that is friendly and one-on-one. Speak as if you are speaking to an acquaintance and tell the interviewer something in your pitch that they won’t read by going through your resume.

How we can help – We offer many resources to help you gain a new position on your way to a career. The Employment and Training Representatives at Kane County Department of Employment and Education can help you create a professional resume, refresh your interview skills, or help you find ways to network effectively. Visit www.illinoisworknet.com and click on the JOBS link, you can find additional tips to help you in your job search.

Four Offices to serve you:

• Elgin – 30 DuPage Court 847-888-7900 x 230
• N. Aurora – 2 Smoketree Plaza 630-844-6640 x 203
• DeKalb – 1701 E. Lincoln Hwy. 815-756-4893 x 240
• Yorkville – 811 W. John St. 630-553-8304

http://www.kcdee.org/

Is your job search a noun or a verb?

Recently, the word career popped up as the Merriam-Webster’s word of the day in my email. I thought I knew what the word career meant, but I was surprised when I read that it was referring to the verb Career – meaning to go at top speed especially in a headlong manner. This made me think that one could “career toward a new career”.

If your job search is not actively moving forward in a headlong manner, maybe it is because you aren’t using some of the best action verbs to describe your skills. Following are some action verbs adapted from The Damn Good Resume Guide by Yana Parker. They are great for resumes. Even better, incorporate them into your cover letters and during the interview as you speak about your previous work duties.

achieve, act, adapt, address, administer, advise, allocate, analyze, appraise, approve, arbitrate, arrange, assemble, assess, assign, assist, attain, audit, author, balance, budget, build, calculate, catalogue, chair, clarify, classify, coach, collaborate, collect, communicate, compile, compute, conceptualize, consolidate, contract, convince, coordinate, correspond, counsel, create, critique, customize, delegate, demonstrate, demystify, design, develop, devise, diagnose, direct, dispatch, draft, edit, educate, enable, encourage, engineer, enlist, establish, evaluate, examine, execute, expand, expedite, explain, extract, fabricate, facilitate, familiarize, fashion, forecast, formulate, found, generate, guide, identify, illustrate, implement, improve, increase, influence, inform, initiate, inspect, institute, instruct, integrate, interpret, interview, introduce, invent, investigate, lecture, maintain, manage, market, mediate, moderate, monitor, motivate, negotiate, operate, organize, originate, overhaul, oversee, perform, persuade, pioneer, plan, prepare, prioritize, process, produce, program, project, promote, publicize, purchase, recommend, reconcile, record, recruit, reduce,refer, rehabilitate, remodel, repair, represent, research, resolve, restore, retrieve, review, revitalize, schedule, screen, set, shape, solve, speak, spearhead, specify, stimulate, strengthen, ,summarize, supervise, survey, systematize, tabulate, train, transform, translate, upgrade, validate, write

When you describe your skills and accomplishments with action verbs potential employers will take notice. Which example has more punch?

1. I had 7 people that reported to me while we put merchandise back on the floor that sold the day before. We would scan the shelf labels to see other merchandise that needed to be filled that didn’t arrive in the truck. We would also help store the merchandise in the stock room with a computer system.

2. Supervised 7 employees; Responsible for merchandise replenishment; Generated lists of merchandise for replenishment; Processed merchandise for storage.

Not only will the action verbs help your resume sound snappier, it will help keep it to the recommended one-page length that hiring managers like to review.

How we can help – We offer many resources to help you gain a new position on your way to a career. The Employment and Training Representatives at Kane County Department of Employment and Education can help you find all the information you need to make your resume get noticed. Visit www.illinoisworknet.com and click on the JOBS link, you can find additional tips to help you in your job search.

Four Offices to serve you:

Elgin – 30 DuPage Court 847-888-7900 x 230

N. Aurora – 2 Smoketree Plaza 630-844-6640 x 203

DeKalb – 1701 E. Lincoln Hwy. 815-756-4893 x 240

Yorkville – 811 W. John St. 630-553-8303

www.kcdee.org