Today’s tip is pretty simple and straightforward. It deals with one small but important detail related to telephonic interviews. It’s very relevant for us at Alliance because we do thousands of telephonic interviews (both real and practice) with our candidates. You may have never thought of it, but telephonic interviews are actually the most common […]
Resumes
White Space
Today our topic covers a simple yet important point related to resumes: White Space. Your resume serves a pretty simple purpose: to convince a hiring authority that you are worth interviewing. Generally, that means your resume needs to provide a hiring manager a clear sense of your education, work experience, and accomplishments. But just because someone sees your […]
Dealing With a Low GPA
If you performed very well academically in college, naturally that’s something you should bring attention to on your resume by including your GPA or academic honors. But if your GPA wasn’t stellar, say less than 3.0 (on a 4-point scale), then it’s not so advisable to include it. But rest assured that if your academic record […]
Three Resume Dilemmas and How to Deal with Them
We’ve got resumes on our minds here at Alliance since we are deep into providing resume feedback to candidates slated to attend our November hiring conference. After having coached thousands of military candidates over the years, we thought it would be a good idea to mention three common dilemmas that many have asked us about, […]
What vs. Why
As you ponder future job interviews, you may be thinking about all of the stories that you could be telling. Most interviewers tend to rely heavily on behavioral-type interviewing questions which are ripe for story-telling. These questions call upon you to describe how you behaved in various situations. Some common examples include: The common feature […]
Why You Lost the Interview You Thought You Won
Perhaps the worst part of competing for a job is to come out of an interview believing that you nailed it, only to find out that you didn’t make the cut. If this should ever happen to you, you might think “How could they not have liked me? I had a great answer to all of their […]
3 Things You Don’t Need on Your Resume
Having spent the last 15+ years in the recruiting sector, I’ve seen countless variations to the resume. When I think back to my own transition from the Army, I believe I worried about my resume more than any other single thing. I was so accustomed to the Army’s way of dictating precisely how things must […]
Approximation vs. Precision on Your Resume
This week’s message focuses on some best practices for reporting numbers in your resume. My experience is that most candidates realize the importance of using numbers to describe their responsibilities and achievements. As a leader, it’s probably been beaten into your head: you gotta hit your numbers, you gotta hit your numbers. It’s generally understood that using numbers […]
Wasted Space
When teaching resume classes, I like to say that you should treat your resume like a valuable piece of real estate. But here’s the thing: it’s also a very tiny piece of real estate measuring at a mere 93.5 square inches! That’s assuming it’s a one-page resume, which we require at Alliance. So given this valuable real estate, you […]
Resume Tip of the Week: Say it with Less
How to say more with less on your resume