********* RESUME WRITING *********

THE FIRST GOAL OF WRITING A RESUME IS GETTING THE DARNED
THING READ!

THE SECOND GOAL IS TO CONVINCE THOSE READERS THAT THEY
SHOULD HIRE YOU!

There are some great books down at your local library that
can give you some wonderful tips on how to prepare your
resume and provide excellent examples of various formats
etc.  Look at these and experiment a little bit.

Some things to leave OUT of a resume.

PHOTOS. Make your impression in person. They may form
misconceptions about you based on a photograph.

REASONS FOR LEAVING PREVIOUS JOBS. These are best
explained during the interview.

SALARY REQUIREMENTS. Just plain stupid until you know
what's going on.

DATES. Both the date of your resume preparation and the
date you are available for work can tell the reader how
long you have been looking. It's okay if you are only
looking for seasonal work.

REFERENCES. Of course you are going to give good
references, but put them on a separate sheet and tailor
the sheet to each employment situation. You might have
different references for a sales job than you would for a
managerial position for instance.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS. Unless they relate specifically to
traits that an employer wants, don't bother. You may
alienate someone. Never list dangerous or time consuming
hobbies. Never list anything political or religious
oriented. You have no idea what your potential employer is
like.

ASSURANCES. We all know that you are thrifty, kind to kids
and dumb animals, loyal and able to leap tall buildings.
But DON'T put these things on a resume. Instead,
illustrate these qualities during the interview with
specific examples.

UNEXPLAINED OR VAGUE TIME GAPS. Explain those holes in
your resume as accomplishments. Research for example, or
study, travel to improve language skills etc. Make no
claims you can't back up however. If you claim you went to
Mexico to study Spanish, you better know some. If you
claim you were a consultant, you better be able to prove
it with names, addresses and phone numbers.

      ----------- BASIC TIPS -------------

Write it yourself. This way you are intimate with it. You
know that it is targeted to your interviewer. The
interviewer might recognize a local resume preparers
style.

This is not a time to be modest! Be specific and pitch
your accomplishments and then illustrate with facts and
numbers. But remember to be brief and succint.

Keep it moving! Use action and verbs. Some great action
terms are:

Created              Reduced               Increased
Administered         Designed              Planned
Presented            Promoted              Produced
Solved               Helped                Improved
Modified             Set-Up                Supervised
Trained              Instructed            Changed
Directed             Established           Implemented
Expanded             Coordinated           Began
Initiated            Innovated             Achieved

Ask yourself what you would be looking for in a
prospective employee if you were hiring. Don't let your
ego get in the way here and think only of those skills you
possess. Write your resume with this scenario in your
mind. "If this resume doesn't get me an interview, I will
be shot at noon tomorrow."

Sounds spooky doesn't it? But what if your life depended
on your getting that interview? What if the only way you
had to get in the door was a resume? How would you change
it? Believe me, if you write it as if you would die should
it fail, you will have a different outlook. Visualize
someone else seeing your resume, how will they react?

DO NOT LIE!

Let me repeat that. Do not lie! Even if you get hired,
they will fire your butt for lying so fast your pants will
smoke.

Once you make a resume, USE IT! Don't leave it sitting
around collecting dust.

If you have an answering machine or service, one telephone 
number will suffice. Otherwise list two. Get a friend or 
relative to take messages for you on their line if 
necessary. You don't want to miss an opportunity because 
you were unavailable. 

If you do have an answering machine, be sure the message 
to callers isn't something cute, or something your kid 
did. This is serious business, treat as such. 


    +++++++++ REGARDING REFERENCES +++++++++

Call potential references first and get not only
permission, but an agreement on what they will say about
you. Once this is done verbally, confirm it in writing by
sending a short thank-you type letter. This letter should
bring up the points you agreed upon and will also serve as
a reminder and perhaps even a script when someone does
call.

If you are going to list someone as a reference, have a
friend or relative call them first, as a prospective
employer.

You may get surprised. When you use someone as a
reference, you expect them to say great things.

This is not always the case. Some of the people you think
of as solid references may harbor feelings you are not
aware of. If this is the case, you want to know about it
first.

Better you than a prospective employer.

TAILOR YOUR RESUME FOR EACH PROSPECTIVE EMPLOYER. Try and
make it easier for the reader to pick out the highlights
that apply to this particular job. You should have a
separate resume for each different field you apply for.
The word here is TARGET.

ALWAYS TRY TO ADDRESS your resume and cover letter to a
specific person rather than a title such as Personnel
Director.

      ========= COVER LETTERS =========

A cover letter should be nothing more than a brief
introduction and perhaps a summary of your qualifications
as they pertain to that particular job.

There are exceptions to this rule. I once wrote a cover
letter that listed each and every qualification I
possessed that I thought would help me perform the job I
was applying for. It was a great job and I knew that the
competition would be fierce. I illustrated those
qualifications with brief examples.

I made that cover letter stand out.

After reading the cover letter, if you didn't want to hire
me, or at least see if this guy was for real, you had
absolutely no vision. . . It worked.

It was simply a list of what I thought they were looking
for in an employee with an explanation of how I excelled
in those specific qualifications.

               * HERE IT IS *

Dear (Name withheld),

You are looking for an Account Executive. One who possibly
possesses the qualities of:

DETERMINATION: Someone who will take the necessary steps
to secure an account and KEEP IT.

LOYALTY: My Father called it "Ridin' for the brand," and
it is a principle I have grown up with and believe in.

AGGRESSIVENESS: Fear of failure stops so many people from
even trying. I'm not one of them.

TENACITY: When the "going gets tough," so do I.

EXPERIENCE: I have been involved in sales since I was 7
years of age. I blew away the competition then and still
do.

ABILITY TO LEARN: You can never know too much about your
product and sales is a field in which you can ALWAYS LEARN
something new. You can never be TOO good.

ABILITY TO ACCEPT CRITICISM: If I make a mistake or am
doing something wrong, I want to know about it
immediately! I may be good, but I am not perfect.

ADAPTABILITY: I can be comfortable with a "good ole boy"
redneck or a politician. I'm not on any ego trips.

CREATIVITY: Just try and hold me back. I've always got
ideas. Lots of them are even good ones.

ENTHUSIASM: If I believe in what I sell, my enthusiasm and
pride is almost contagious.

PROFESSIONALISM: You simply can't succeed without it!

SUCCESS ORIENTED: I loathe failure and always strive to be
the best I can be. I am quite aware that my income is
solely  determined by my own efforts.

BOLDNESS: Is what it takes to write a cover letter like
this. It can also be what it takes to secure new clients
and accounts. I am not afraid to ask for the sale!

Enough build up.

The above qualities will be discussed at the interview.
Unless I hear from you sooner, I shall phone early next
week to schedule our first meeting.

Sincerely,

ME

        ^^^^^^^  END LETTER  ^^^^^^^

I was selected out of more than 300 applicants. It was
something that stood out. I grabbed your attention and
made you curious. Be careful about being too cute or too
innovative however, it could backfire.  Stick to
verifiable facts and put something in there that will
arouse the readers curiosity.

Always remember to close with your next step. In the above
letter, I asked for the sale and made an assumptive close
by stating it would be our "first" meeting. The man who
hired me told me later that every other resume and cover
letter was compared to mine. None compared, even though
many of the applicants had better qualifications and more
experience. I SOLD THEM!

Footnote: Not only did I get the job, I started at
$5,000.00 a year more than they had advertised.

Also be sure and include instructions for starting your
Resume On Disk so that they will have no problems. Just a
short sentence, something like this will do; "Insert disk
into drive (usually A:), access drive (type A: [Enter]).
and type  GO [Enter]."

            ***************************

Your resume must be your own creation. You have three main
subjects in the Electronic Resume (or Resume on Disk),
Work History, Skills & Experience, and Personal
Information. You can of course subdivide these three main
areas to as many sub-areas as you wish. Notice that
Mortimer's Personal Information is divided into 4
sub-areas, Education, Health, Marital Status and Goals.
Yours may include Courses Studied, Languages Spoken, Golf
Handicap or whatever. It is important that you have a
design goal in mind when you compose your own Electronic
Resume.

There are two main schools on resumes and how they should
be composed. The traditional is chronologic, beginning
with your last job and following with the next to last and
so on. The other is a Targeted Resume. This is the one
preferred by most employers today. It includes a work
history (dates are not usually given) but is written
specifically for the position applied for.

That is one of the benefits of your Electronic Resume. Not
only does is set you apart from the crowd and convey a
technological comfort to your potential employer, it can
also be easily edited and revised for EACH AND EVERY
DIFFERENT JOB YOU MIGHT APPLY FOR.

TEST your resume before sending off. Have friends and
relatives look it over for misspelling and grammatical
errors. It must be impeccable.

You can also upload all files to Electronic Bulletin
Boards etc. If you're cruising the help wanted ads in
Compuserve for instance, and see something that catches
your eye, compress your resume files, write a note (cover
letter) to whomever posted the ad and attach your resume
file. Call it HIREME.ZIP (PKzip) or HIREME.EXE (ARC).

You WILL make an impression.

Don't despair, if nothing else you've learned enough here
to set yourself up as an employment counselor. You can
also make Electronic Resumes for a fee once you register
this program.

That's right, you can make Electronic Resumes for other
people for a fee if you choose. With your registration,
you will receive license to use this program for
commercial work.

You can make some decent money doing this if you want.
There is one company in existence that charges $60.00 to
make a Resume On Disk. You could charge $20.00 apiece and
still make some decent money.

Network with some of the people in your area that produce
hard copy (paper) resumes for a fee. Tell them what you
are doing and either offer them a percentage of your fee,
or have them add on $10.00 as their cut.

Take out an ad in local newspapers, put up flyers and
notices in colleges, bulletin boards, state employment
offices etc.

You never know, you may make enough money doing this that
you won't have to look for a job!


              - END FILE -