Resume Scoring

Do extracurricular activities make a difference on your resume? The answer is a resounding yes! There are many reasons why dedicating some of the space on your resume to your personal interests and extracurricular activities can be of interest to employers . In some cases, it could even tip the balance when you’re in a particularly competitive selection process. Read on now to find out why it’s worth sharing a little information about your non-professional activities . We also look at some of the best example pursuits to include as well as where and how you can highlight them when building a resume. Why to Include Extracurricular Activities on Your Resume Space is always tight on a resume. By design, you should always be extra selective on what you include, make sure that the information on the page serves the job you’re targeting and gives a positive overall picture of you as a candidate. However, it can also help to give the recruiter a brief insight into what you’re like as a p...

Knowing how to shorten a resume can be key to creating an effective document. Recruiters sometimes have to read hundreds of applications daily . Therefore you should aim to create a resume that’s quick to read and doesn’t go on too long. However, shortening a resume is a tricky balancing act . After all, you don’t want to cut something that could enhance your prospects. Nevertheless, leaving too much on the paper could make information harder to pick out and reduce the influence of your document. In this guide, we’ll show you how to construct a resume that’s both not too long or too short. We examine what can be deleted safely and where you can use some space-saving techniques to get more impactful information on the page. Start With an Easy-to-Organize Template A clean and organized template is one of the best methods to start on your way to a shorter document. By optimizing the space you use, the more you’ll be able to fit on a single page. This can be done in a few ways. F...

Writing your resume in your voice may undermine your value Your authentic voice may be diminishing your executive resume story. It may be tempting to do so, but writing your resume how you naturally speak or write is not always good advice. This is because when everyone is trying so hard to be their authentic selves, they often become storytelling pragmatists, leaving marketing and sales strategy in the dust. However, it is generally more powerfully worded resumes that strike a chord rather than your sensible bottom line voice. Humble language can unintentionally lead you down the path of dullness and invisibility. Being overly modest and underplaying your wins will in turn weigh down the reader with the work of having to search out your strengths, influence skills and results-cinching talent. Moreover, when your executive pragmatism and self-consciousness intersects with your colleagues’ or mentors’ opinions, you further shrink your value, weakening your resume message....

In the old days, before we had email, we all used to mail our resumes off to potential employers. Along with the resume, we would attach a letter explaining why we were the right person for the position. Because this letter was generally attached to the front of the resume with a staple or paperclip, it became known as a cover letter. Nowadays, it’s highly unlikely that you will ever need to mail a resume via postal service, but the tradition of the cover letter lives on. Only now, it is sent either as an email attachment with the resume, or pasted into the body of the email. Do you need a cover letter? Before I started my resume company, I used to manage HR departments and I saw a lot of cover letter during that time. The truth is that I rarely read them. I preferred to just skip straight to the resume. My boss, however, was a different story. He always read the cover letters and he put great store by them. This means that, although there there is a chance your letter w...