How To Make Your Résumé For Applicant-Tracking Systems

“Many job seekers have long suspected their online employment applications disappear into a black hole, never to be seen again. Their fears may not be far off the mark, as more companies rely on technology to winnow out less-qualified candidates.”  This quote is from the WSJ article: “Your Résumé vs. Oblivion”  where the author explains how recruiters and hiring managers deal with your resume when you send it via email or upload it on a job board, company’s career websites or Linkedin. In the age of electronics and downsized organizations, companies are overwhelmed by the number of resumes they receive from job applicants so they will first scan your document into a database and a software will screen the resume for specific key words.

Guidelines for making electronic resumes:

Scanned resumes are first translated in ASCII format, a very simplified way of looking at alphanumeric characters without formatting such as bolding, italics and underlines. If you’re submitting a paper resume to a company and you think the resume is going to be scanned into an electronic resume, then you need to make sure the scanning process understands what you’ve written. Remember, the database is going to convert the resume into a simple ASCII format.

Tips for writing your electronic resume:

Make sure your name is the only thing that appears on the first line of the document.

• Remove any graphics or artwork on your resume including shading, vertical and horizontal lines.
• Bulleted items can confuse scanners, so convert them to simple hyphens or asterisks.
• Move all text to the left margin. Tabs, tables and centered text can sometimes confuse the scanning software.
• Restrict your use of fonts to Times New Roman, Arial or Helvetica.
• Use only one font size, preferably between 10 and 14 points.
• Remove all underlining, bolding and italics.
• Use 8.5″ x 11″ paper that is white with black ink and print your resume only on one side of the paper. This will improve the contrast of your  text and help the scanner to read your resume.
• If possible, do not fold or staple your resume. That means mailing the resume in 9″x 12″ envelope.

Please note that the above recommendations are for US standards. In many other countries, the format is metric and paper size is A4 . If you don’t know where your resume will be scanned, ask the recruiter who posted the job.

Keywords in Electronic Resumes 

If you want to make it through the screening and ranking process, then you need to make sure you have the right keywords or key phrases in the body of your electronic resume. Resume keywords are simply the nouns and adjectives that are relevant to the position to which you’re applying. That means the choosing of keywords for your resume requires a thoughtful process.

Mailing Resumes: 

When submitting a resume by email or through mail it’s advisable to send two copies.  One copy can be the simple format the human resources department can efficiently and accurately scan into the electronic resume database. The second can be the elegantly designed resume that uses bolding and italics to highlight the job titles and keywords the writer wants to emphasize.

 Conclusion: While it is important to adapt your resume format to applicant-tracking software, the single best method of getting a job remains a referral from a company employee.

Related articles:  

• Today’s Resume Is Not About YOU, It Is About The VALUE You Add To Employers
• Get Your Resume Noticed: “The Power of Less”
• How To Network Like A Pro!

 

References :

• Guidelines for Preparing Electronic Resumes by UCLA 
• Electronic Resumes by Money-Zine

 

Today’s Resume Is Not About YOU, It Is About The VALUE You Add To Employers

A successful resume today replaces the “this is what I want” objective statement with a “this is the value that I offer” branding statement (Arnie Fertig in 7 Key Elements of a Great Personal Branding Statement)

3 Key questions you need to ask yourself to create your brand mission statement

 1-What are your passionate about ? what’s your interests ? values ?

2-What is your unique talent ? What are your technical and people skills ?

 3-Who do you want to work for?  Assess your job market to find potential employers and jobs opportunities you like

By combining the answers to those three questions you can create your unique brand value statement that includes :

How will you solve potential employers’ problems better than your peers ? Look at your past experiences both professional and in your life to make great stories, avoid boring listing of job titles. Make a unique and specific brand statement for each job you apply.

Related articles

• How To Stand Out In A Crowded Job Market: Forget The Traditional Resume (forbes.com)
• How to get hired in a buyer’s market (twinpillars.wordpress.com)
• The Pros and Cons of a Virtual Résumé (money.usnews.com)

Intercultural training important to expats’ success

See on Scoop.it – Global Leaders

Intercultural training programs are designed to develop cultural awareness and speed the transition process, by providing employees and their families with the knowledge, skills and tools necessary to effectively interact across cultures.

See on www.chron.com

Related articles

• Avoiding Cross-Cultural Faux Pas
• What can we learn about american culture from Captain America ? (zestnzen.com)
• Research Findings: The Value of Intercultural Skills in the Workplace (zestnzen.wordpress.com)

• Catalysts For Intercultural Conversations and Insights: Advertisements (culturaldetective.com)

What motivates us at work? 7 fascinating studies that give insights

Reblogged from TED Blog:

“When we think about how people work, the naïve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,” says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in today’s talk, given at TEDxRiodelaPlata. “We really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like.”

When you look carefully at the way people work, he says, you find out there’s a lot more at play—and a lot more at stake—than money.

Read more… 1,223 more words

• The less motivated an employee is, the more money he is asking !

• If employees are not intrinsically motivated chances are very high that they are not creative as well. and won’t work hard enough as passionate people do.

• Being passionate is coming from the inside-out. You can break somebody’s motivation very easily but it is very hard for leaders to inspire people to give happily the best of what they have to offer if they don’t want to and don’t have trust in the management.

The Three ‘E’s of Engagement: Engage, Empower, Enable:

Engage

leaders must provide a clear view of the company’s future, connect the company values with the individual life purpose, identify individual contribution to a higher level than self . Employees who feel good about themselves and think they belong to a team get the intrinsic motivation to deliver performance.

Empower

Let people decide how to set goals, how to get the expected results. Increase their personal power in making decisions at all level of the organizations. The leaders’ role is to coach and mentor individuals and teams to remove self-limiting beliefs, provide immediate feedbacks and develop strengths while minimizing the impact of weaknesses

Enable

Provide highly personalized support and enough resources. Lead teams based on matching personal communication, behavior and management styles of each team member. Provide talent development programs.

Related articles

• Motivation: Why People Don’t Do What You Tell Them To Do ?
• Why Incentives Do Not Always Motivate Employees ?
• Does Money Really Affect Motivation? A Review of the Research (blogs.hbr.org)

Avoiding Cross-Cultural Faux Pas – Career Skills From MindTools.com

See on Scoop.it – Global Leaders

Learn some common mistakes to avoid when traveling or working in a different culture.

Quote from the article:

The Importance of Cultural Awareness

It’s not just professionals working overseas who need to learn cross-cultural business etiquette. Stop and think about how many different cultures you come into contact with at work.

Even if you work in your home country, your colleagues and suppliers could hail from other cultures. Your organization might decide to acquire or merge with an organization in a different country. And your customers, too, may be located in dozens of countries worldwide.

Considering Cultural Differences:

Consider the following questions when thinking about how a culture might differ from your own:

What values does this culture embrace? How do those values compare with those of your culture?How do people make decisions, conduct relationships, and display emotion?How does this culture treat time and scheduling?What are the social rules and boundaries surrounding gender?How does this culture display and respect power? Which authority figures are revered?How do individuals relate to their employers?How do people in this culture communicate? How direct are they in what they say and mean?

Key Points

Cross-cultural awareness is an essential skill, regardless of whether you’re working overseas, leading a cross-cultural or virtual team, or dealing with a global customer base. Learn about the culture of the country where you’re doing business to avoid cultural mistakes, and to demonstrate respect and understanding.

Research key differences in decision making, relationships, dress, food, dining, and social etiquette before working with or traveling to a different culture. Your hosts will notice your efforts, and appreciate that you took the time to learn about their culture.

Read more on www.mindtools.com

Cultural intelligence cannot be learned by simply visiting different countries for few weeks, learning languages, attend cross-cultural webinars or read books.

Cultural intelligence is acquired by being exposed directly to cross-cultural  challenges at work and everyday life, preferably with family.

 

Related articles

• Wanted: True Global Business Leaders !
• Virtual Teams and the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Differences (worklifestrategies.net)
• Beyond Cultural Differences: Cross-Cultural Comfort (culturalsavvy.wordpress.com)

Get A Personal Brand Assessment On Twitter Using Twylah

 

You Are What You Post  Online !

If you are looking for a job or you are starting a business, it is time to consider Twitter to build your personal brand. If you are already using Twitter for building your reputation online, it’s time to look at the value of your brand.

Based on the frequency and date of your tweets, Twylah creates a dynamic, engaging, navigable website of your Twitter content, organized by topic.

Have a look at my page : http://www.twylah.com/AnneEgros

Most recently Twylah has launched a “Brand Assessment and Action Plan” to understand how your tweets are aligned with what you want to be known for, in other word with your personal brand.

• Is your Content Focused ? Choose the right key words for the rig audience

• Are You Consistent ? Maintain visibility requires you to tweet frequently about  your top brand messages

• Is what you post has resonance ? You have high resonance when your content fits your target audience

Watch the video from Eric Kim, CEO at Twhylah for more details:

I also discovered WeFollow, a utility created by Digg creator Kevin Rose that helps users find online experts  who have same shared interests providing you a source of relevent content for your brand.

What Do You Think About Twitter To Build Your Reputation ?

Related articles

• Big Trend for 2013: Visual Aggregation of the Social Web (prwarrior.typepad.com)
• Tweetsumé: 6 Steps to Tweet Your Résumé (socialmediatoday.com)
• How to Create a Big Brand by Going Small (slideshare.net)

The Stigma Of Being An Extrovert

Sigmund Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung; Back row: Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi. photo taken in 1909. (Wikipedia)

I am writing this post as I really feel there is a wrong debate about extroverts versus introverts and their supposed capacity to lead effectively. If you Google the words “extrovert” or “introvert” you get two times more results for “introvert” than for “extrovert”. There is also an overwhelming number of articles supporting the fact that extroverts are bad leaders and introverts their victims.

Definitions:

The introversion or extroversion personality trait, first described by Carl Jung, is used in many psychometric tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to describe how individuals respond to various situations. Those tests are supposed to help people understand how they process social information (cognition) and what type of emotions, motivations and behaviors they have under typical social interactions such as work.

Basically, an extrovert is a person who is energized by being around other people and an introvert is energized by being alone.

Are introverts better leaders than extroverts ?

You can find many articles and books with negative bias toward “extroverts“, especially in the U.S., such as “Leadership Tip: Hire the Quiet Neurotic, Not the Impressive Extrovert”,  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. or The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World

Saying that introverts are better than extroverts in leadership seems to me a bit too simplistic and worst, this assumption is not backed by serious studies. in addition, introversion is not necessarily linked to shyness or extroversion does not makes you the center of the party.

According to MBTI, I am an extrovert but although I do get energy and ideas by talking with people, I also like spending time alone without being bored. I am also not comfortable in big parties where I know nobody, I prefer one on one interactions.

Daniel H. Pink, author of  A WHOLE NEW MIND, describes  in a recent article the results of a study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management. In the study researchers collected data from sales representatives starting by giving them an often-used personality assessment that measures introversion and extroversion on a 1-to-7 scale, with 1 being most introverted and 7 being most extroverted. Then they tracked their performance over the next three months.

The introverts fared worst; they earned average revenue of $120 per hour. The extroverts performed slightly better, pulling in $125 per hour.

So, according to Daniel Pink, the best sales people are neither strongly introverted nor strongly extroverted, they are “ambiverts”.  

Ambiverts tend to know when to push and when to hold back, when to speak up and when to shut up. 

I am Extrovert but with a low % and I test positive as an Ambivert in Daniel Pinks’ test : http://www.danpink.com/assessment

I also think that best leaders are the ones who have high listening skills and emotional intelligence regardless of being extroverts or introverts.

Personality traits in multicultural teams

American culture is often described as being dominated by extroverts. It is true that compared to other cultures, such as French, Russian or Japanese,  American children are taught at very young age to speak in public, develop self-confidence and believe they can do anything if they adopt a positive and outgoing attitude.

However, it is not clear if culture has a strong influence on personality traits in adults as all cultures seemed to have extroverts and introverts.  Some studies have shown that personality traits have a single normal distribution replicated in each human society, while other researches tend to prove that culture influences socialization patterns, which in turn shapes some of the variance of personality. I believe it is very difficult to draw a clear line between innate and acquired personality traits.

Deloitte Australia had the opportunity to evaluate impact on culture and individual personalities in a  “new” team working on a 3 month project in Australia. The project team consisted of 7 members from Spain (the team leader), Australia, Japan, the United States and Germany (the team members), as well as the client who was from Australia. Intriguingly, it appears that the expectation of

“cultural differences caused team members to become more conscious of their own behaviors and to become more flexible and adaptive. Moreover, cultural diversity provided a unique point of connectivity and enjoyment”

Conclusion

Extrovert leaders are not worse than introvert ones because introversion and extroversion have nothing to do with today’s leadership. Data also show no clear evidence that extroverts are better sale people than introverts.

Personality tests should be used with caution and more as a discussion base to help individuals discover their own behavior and communication style rather than stereotyping and stigmatizing people especially in highly diverse environments.

In multicultural teams, it is not clear if cultural differences are related to the country of origin or to the individual personality, or both, but well managed, cultural diversity can lead to better performance.

Related articles

• Being an Extrovert among Introverts

• Working in multicultural teams: A case study

• Yes…Extroverts and Introverts Can Lead Brilliantly!
• Move Over Extroverts, Here Come the Ambiverts (forbes.com)