One of the valuable tips I received from the chapter was the reinforcement about using the people you know when looking for a job. I have experienced firsthand how your personal network can help you in job searching. I was able to land my first internship by knowing the owner of a small information technology solutions business. I also liked the helpful tips on creating a personal resume. The resume should only be one page. It should also be organized in a good manner. Chapter 15 made note of these types of organization that greatly decrease the amount of time it will take an employer to find the information they are looking for. To decrease this time a few key things are balance, alignment, grouping, consistency, and contrast. I think the organization of your resume is just like the organization of a document. Your audience will want to be able to easily find what they are looking for. Thinking of what key things they are looking for and making this stand out will make you stand out.
I fell that the section about the 2 different types of resumes is also very valuable. The first type is the archival approach. For this approach a resume is organized by job qualifications. The second type of resume layout is the functional approach. For the functional approach the resume is organized by talents and skills.
I think a few concepts from the previous chapter can easily be applied when preparing a resume. I think it is very important here to think about what your potential employer is going to be looking for on your resume. They are going to be your primary audience. You also will want for your resume to be appealing to your gatekeeper. In this case the gatekeeper is the individual from human resources who will be looking over your resume.
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Yeah looking back on the reading from chapter 3, your reading response reminded me that the people that are reviewing your resume act as the "raiders" from the primary audience. It also reminded me that a person really does not need to be a great writer to make a good resume. The resume just needs to be organized and well put together. It is important to not have flaws in the document and keep in understanding that the reviewer is only going to spend about 45 seconds reviewing your resume. If a document is "scanned" I think that using contrast will help greatly because document look different on computers. The bold words on your document or style of your resume will make it stand out.
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I too have relied on my ‘personal network’ as you refer to it and can say that thus far, it has proven highly successful. I think this is because much of the effort is taken out as the individual whom informed you of the lead has already filtered the position as promising or not. Also, many of the tips presented in this chapter were new to me; I’ve not had much exposure to preparing professional resumes and many of the suggestions in the source text will prove extremely beneficial in the years to come. Something interesting that you recapped was stressing how to arrange your resume so as to reduce the amount of time it takes employers to find the information they are looking for. This is something I’ve never considered when preparing my resume. I was only concerned with supplying any and all relevant information and not with the employer’s schedule in mind, which, in hindsight, may have had a negative impact on my call-backs, or lack of.
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I have actually found jobs both using personal network and by applying for a position I found in a job search engine. However while making my resume I had never thought about my audiences and thought of it in the way the previous chapter says to approach writing. When you think of employers as your audience and what they are looking for in a resume, it really enforces the point you made about how organization, balance, grouping, etc can all effect your resume and the time it takes employers to "raid" it for the information they are looking for.
Patrick Griffin
pgriffin@purdue.edu
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I think that it is appealing that you talked about the two different types of resumes that you can have as well as how they should be used. I liked that you thought outside of the box to discuss your experiences that you have had in writing resumes. The one thing that I wish you would of talked about is your feelings about cover letters. To me this is very important, but others in our class feel that the cover letter is not important. Overall, I thought that your response covered many good things about your feelings in writing a resume.
Personal networking
I know what you mean about knowing people, it certainly helps when looking for internships and jobs. Both of the interships I have had have been by working with people that I have known through my personal life or through friends. I also know how hard it can be applying for jobs where you know no one. My wife recently did a nation wide job search and had 10 resumes out to jobs in six different states where she didn't know anyone. The hardest part is not knowing who to follow up with when you don't know anyone within a company.
Mike Sheridan