Thursday, February 11, 2010

Tip for Linked In

Ever notice when you check to see who’s viewed your profile you get the nebulous “someone in the staffing and recruiting industry has viewed your profile”? Want to be just as unidentifiable? Click on Settings in the upper right corner of your Linkedin page, scroll to “Profile Views”. Once you’ve clicked on “Profile Views”, select the option that appeals to you. You can reveal your name and title, be anonymous with just a general description of your industry, or request that no information be released to the profilee.

How cool is this trick?  I learned it from the AIRS newsletter this month, which I found through someone I follow on Twitter.  Love me some Twitter!

Miss Recruiter

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Resume Tips

Being a recruiter, I see ALL kinds of resumes - many formats, colors, flavors and many of them are baaaad.  Please allow me to give you some tips on how to best format your resume for ease of reading (for the recruiter) and so that your resume can navigate applicant tracking systems (which are notoriously counterintuitive and buggy) more easily.  I hope this helps!

1.  Keep your resume simple.  Skip fancy formatting that's hard to change or requires you to use the space bar repeatedly in order to keep columns in line.  Advanced formatting often gets jumbled once scanned or uploaded to applicant systems, so just stick to the simplest format possible - it mostly looks better that way anyway!  Those templates that many word processing programs provide are the WORST - avoid them.

2. Be sure to note any social networking handles that are professionally appropriate.  This does NOT include Facebook, but does include your Linked In profile, any professional blogs you might keep, or professional-related Twitter accounts.  This shows that you're keeping up with today's technology, which is attractive to most companies/ recruiters.

3.  Don't worry about spacing your resume perfectly to fit on one page - just take the space you need to describe your background and experience.  Recruiters rarely print resumes anymore anyway, so it's less of an issue than it used to be.  However, don't let your resume become too long! I don't know about others, but I start to lose interest after so many pages...

I could go ON and ON, but these are a few tips that I think are most important for putting together a good-looking resume.  Comment if you have any other questions or input!

Miss Recruiter