Ten Things That Spell Checkers Won’t Catch! Be Careful Out There!

10 Things That a Spell Checker Won’t Catch!

We always tell applicants to have their applications and resumes proofed carefully before hitting the ‘submit’ key on the application website. That means printing out your application and resume and having it checked for errors ‘by eye’ rather than trusting a spell checker to do the job for you. In case you’re wondering why, here are some examples of mistakes that most spell checkers will not catch:

• Homonyms (words that sound the same but mean different things depending on their spelling and use): Spell checkers won’t realize that you intended to write ‘pair’ instead of ‘pare’ or ‘pear,’ or ‘there’ instead of ‘their.’
• Incorrectly divided compound words: Spell checkers won’t tell you that ‘court yard’ should be spelled ‘courtyard,’ or that ‘inter net’ should be ‘internet.’
• Incorrect pronouns: Spell checkers won’t realize that you typed in ‘his’ or—worse—’its’ when you should have typed ‘hers,’ or ‘she’ when it should have been ‘he.’
• Usage errors: Spell checkers probably won’t alert you to typos involving ‘its’ and ‘it’s.’
• Missing words: Spell checkers probably won’t catch the missing word in a phrase like, “I attended University of Michigan… “
• Wrong words: Spell checkers won’t alert you to a gaffe like, “My supervisory experience sensitized me to the martial difficulties that married employees can encounter when pressed to work overtime.”
• Wrong dates: Spell checkers won’t question a statement like, “Entering the workforce in the late 0200s, I learned…”
• Misspelled names: Spell checkers won’t catch mistakes with people’s names or with most place names.
• Incorrect verb tenses: Spell checkers won’t warn you that you mixed up past and present verb tenses.
• Repetition: Spell checkers will alert you if you’ve typed the same word twice in a row, but they won’t catch other kinds of repetition, like typing the same phrase or sentence twice in a row—or saying the same exact thing twice, in different words.

Spell checkers are a handy tool for screening out many of the small mistakes we all make when we write. They can’t catch every mistake, however, and they’re not able to catch the really big mistakes, which can only be recognized and corrected by careful editing. Use a spell checker as a first step in proofing your application, but don’t count on it to do the entire job for you.

Source: Admissions Consultants -Hiring Manager Resources

How Important is a Thank You Letter?

So, how important is it to follow up with a Thank You Letter?  Let’s ask the experts:

Market Yourself Well
Thank-you notes are a nice gesture, and I would always encourage candidates to follow up with one after an interview. However, as far as influencing a hiring decision, I have yet to see someone being extended an offer because of it. The strongest candidate will get the offer. Every little bit helps in marketing yourself as the best and most enthusiastic person for the role. If you do send a thank-you note, always check for spelling and grammar.
– Bob Hancock, senior manager of global talent acquisition, Electronic Arts

No Question About It

Sending a thank-you note is a must. When a job candidate sends me a thank-you note, it shows me the person is truly interested in the opportunity. This simple gesture can distinguish one applicant over another. In fact, when considering multiple people for an open position, I typically recall who has and hasn’t sent a thank-you note.

The thank-you note is valuable for job seekers beyond demonstrating their interest in a position. This also is an opportunity to re-emphasize the skills and expertise they would bring to the role and address any outstanding concerns they may have from the interview.

The best strategy is to send a quick e-mail shortly after the interview followed by a handwritten note. Whether you choose to send a thank-you via e-mail or in writing, the key is to send one.

– DeLynn Senna, executive director of North American permanent placement services, Robert Half International

A Good Way to Stand Out

While my hiring managers or I would not make a hiring decision based solely on a thank-you note, a short and well-written note from a candidate following an interview will certainly not hurt their chances. As most candidates don’t follow up this way, you will automatically stand out if you do, and this can set you apart from the crowd in a positive way.

For example, a tasteful handwritten card sent to your interviewer is thoughtful, and will probably end up on their desk or bulletin board for a while, further reminding them of you when they see it. An alternative is to send an email note, which may appear more professional, will arrive more quickly and has the advantage of being able to be forwarded on to other interested parties within the company.

– Suzanne McFadden, senior technical staffing consultant, Wells Fargo

Boost Your Impact Easily

According to surveys, about 85 percent of executives say that a post-interview thank-you note has some influence on the hiring decision. While only half of candidates send thank-you notes, it seems to be an easy gesture everyone should use to greatly impact the hiring process. Surveys also suggest that hiring managers are divided in terms of preference for receiving thank-you notes by email or letter. It is therefore up to you to decide which method best fits the culture of the organization.

– Yves Lermusi, CEO of Checkster

What Color Is My Parachute?

“What Color Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers” is the best-selling job-hunting and career-changing book in the world. Twenty thousand people buy the book each month, and there are more than 8 million copies in print. In its lifetime, it has been on the New York Times Best-Seller List (paperback) a total of 288 weeks.

In 1995, the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book listed it as one of “25 Books That Have Shaped Readers’ Lives” (alongside such works as Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Saint Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” Henry Thoreau’s “Walden,” Cervantes’s “Don Quixote,” Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” and Mark Twain’s, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”).

The author coined the word “parachute” to mean career transitions, back in 1968 when people commonly said, “Well, I’m tired of this job – - I’m going to bail out?” Bolles’ playful rejoinder at that time: What color is your parachute? It later became the title of the book.

A writer for Life Magazine said that the phrase “golden parachutes” appeared for the first time a decade or more later, as a “play” on this book’s title. In fact, a number of common phrases in our culture: “golden parachutes,” “informational interviewing,” “transferable skills” etc., were all born out of this book.

It was first published December 1, 1970 — self-published, in fact, with the author using a local copy shop (CopyCopia) in downtown San Francisco. Its first commercial edition was published in November 1972, by Ten Speed Press in Berkeley, Calif. It began appearing on best-seller lists in 1974, has been revised and updated annually since 1975.

Recent reviews have called it “the jobhunter’s Bible,” “the Cadillac of job-search books,” “the most complete career guide around,” and “the gold standard of career guides.”

Resume Tips

Make sure your résumé is FOCUSED -

The employer should not have to dig through your résumé in order to determine what it is you offer.  Avoid the all too common “catch all” approach of inundating the employer with volumes of unrelated experience. If the employer has to “guess” what you are targeting or offer, you’ve immediately lost their interest in what could be some dynamic qualifications.

Be CONCISE -

Keep the employer’s valuable time in mind when submitting a résumé.  Many people believe they need to provide excessive details, when in fact, what most busy employers want is a QUICK SNAPSHOT of what you offer them.  This is particularly true in challenging job markets in which the employer has plenty of résumés to choose from.

What Your Resume Is – And Is Not.

Your Resume is a very important tool in your search for a job.  With the current state of the economy, a powerful resume could be your key to finding employment.  It is essential you understand exactly what a resume is and is not.
Your Resume is:

•     A concise presentation of yourself targeted to the needs of a specific employer
•     A marketing tool that distinguishes you from the competition (highlights your major accomplishments)
•     A document that focuses on “the whole person” (your unique qualities, experience and strengths)
•     A results-oriented document, which highlights not just what you did but the IMPACT your efforts had on previous employers
•     A document that demonstrates career progression or an increasing level of complexity in your work experience

Your Resume is NOT:

•     A history of your life from high school to business school
•     An autobiography which describes your life to date
•     A laundry list of everything you have ever done
•     A long (2+ pages) document that is dense and difficult to read; 2 pages are fine if your work experience requires two pages
•     A detailed list of all your job responsibilities

Information regarding Certified Professional Resume Writers (CPRW) and the Professional Association of Resume Writers (PARW)

Professional Resume and Career Development Center – 415.314.0982

About PARW/CC
The Professional Association of Resume Writers & Career Coaches was founded in January of 1990. Prior to that time, there had been no association for career professionals to exchange information, enhance their skills, or demonstrate their commitment to providing professional services to the general public. Today, those who display the association’s logo affirm their dedication to excellence in meeting client career goals. In addition, many members then choose to seek certification to further affirm their expertise as career professionals. For information on joining PARW/CC, please click here.

About PARW/CC Members
Association members include independent business owners, as well as non-profit career centers such as colleges and universities, military bases, workforce development offices, and state Departments of Labor. Their participation in PARW/CC demonstrates an on-going commitment to learning, exchanging ideas and information, and gaining the expertise to best help each client achieve their personal career goals. Working with a PARW/CC member is similar to hiring a personal advertising agency to market you successfully. The resume is your “sales message” that must stand out from the competition! Association members can guide you in targeting your message to appropriate employers through networking, targeted mailings, the Internet, your own career field’s association, etc. Then, they help you prepare for the hiring interview so you stand out from the other finalists as the best choice for the available position.

Certified Professional Resume Writers (CPRW)
Are the career industry’s leading experts in the development of strategic resumes. The purpose of the resume is to secure a personal interview from among the dozens or hundreds of applicants for a given position. Since 1991, CPRWs have demonstrated their knowledge, talent and writing expertise in meeting the industry standard of excellence and in serving the client’s career interests.

Certified Employment Interview Professional (CEIP)
Represents association members who have undertaken specialized training to prepare their clients for the critical employment interview. From possibly hundreds of resumes, an employer will select perhaps 10 or so of the best candidates for personal interviews. Candidates who have practiced their interview skills and are best prepared for this decisive meeting will be more confident, relaxed, and able to make a positive presentation that leads to the job offer.

What Job Hunting Is Not…

Job Hunting Is Not:

• Wasting time
• Worrying about how to get started
• Feeling lost
• Sending Resumes that companies don’t read
• Losing documents or other important information needed for applications and internet postings
• Forgetting the critical follow-up (thank you letters and call backs)
• Spending time what to say in a cover letter
• Sending the WRONG resume
• Not understanding your unique value in the marketplace
• Having the tools needed to get the job you deserve

Professional Resume can help you transition into a new job.

Professional Resume Potential has a VALIDATED CAREER ASSESSMENT with worksheets
designed to help you understand your strengths and career potential, specifically
matched to your abilities, interests and personality.

Professional Resume Research is designed to help you find the hidden opportunities within the
unpublished job market, which account for over 75% of available jobs today. Without
these skills, your chances are slim of finding your ideal job.

Professional Resume Marketing provides all the tips and tools you will need to market yourself to
prospective employers.
Professional Resume Interviewing contains the do’s and don’ts of interviewing, prepares you for
the difficult and unusual questions, shows you how to resign, negotiate your compensation
and handle the difficult transition from former company to future company.

Professional Resume Career Assessments help you identify and search for job opportunities
that best match your experience and abilities. All our assessments are validated
and exceed U.S.Government Guidelines for industrial use.
Professional Resume provides a link to the online U.S. government informational website on job
classifications. This is a user-friendly resource, providing an easy-to-understand
frame of reference for occupational profiles as stated in our Career Reports

Professional Resume can help you in the job hunting process.  Call our staff on 415.314.0982 and we will help!

Welcome to Professional Resume and Career Development Center

Here is some information about Professional Résumé and what we do:

What We Offer:

We offer two basic levels of service:

The first is a writing service. We take your raw data and transform it into a powerful marketing brochure that will tell the prospective employer why you are the best candidate within that critical 15-second window of opportunity.

Secondly, we offer reformatting if your résumé does not require editing.

How much does it cost and what form will it be in?

We have résumés from $50 to $400. That’s a broad range, but we work with people in all fields and at all levels, from entry-level high school students to senior-level executives and professionals. We have a broad range of styles and samples, but our signature trademark is a distinctive brochure style of résumé that is available in one, one and one-half page, and two-page styles.

All final products are available in hard copies, scannable copies, fax copies, electronic copies including Adobe PDF files ready to send as an e-mail attachment, or post to the Internet.

Lifetime updating means that if you lose a copy of your résumé, we’ll still have it. We have a secure database of thousands of résumés.

Tell me about your company:

Our company is part of the world’s largest and oldest résumé writing service established in 1959.
We are certified by the Professional Association of Résumé Writers (PARW) and each writer on our present team has a minimum of five years of experience.  We’re members of the major trade associations including the Professional Resume Writers Research Association (PRWRA).
We’ve been represented in the Kansas City and the Bay Area marketplace for nearly 40 years.

Have you worked with many people in my field and do you have a specialty?

We’ve written résumés for every imaginable occupation – A to Z from dog catchers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, morticians, musicians, senior marketing managers, executives, evangelists – about every profession you can think of.

Writers on our staff have expertise in different specialty areas.  We have writers who specialize in senior-level candidates, sales professionals, IT/IS consultants/analysts/programmers, education, healthcare, insurance, engineering, accounting, food service, retailing, etc. You name it and we’ve done it.

On a one-on-one basis, we will show you concrete examples of résumés we’ve prepared for people that you will be competing with — real résumés that have proven results.

How do you work, what is the process?

We conduct our business by conference call, internet, email and Skype.

1. We start out by setting an appointment (phone interview) for a free consultation.
2.  We  review the résumé you’ve used in the past, or you fill out a profile to provide us with the information. We talk to you about your goals, how you intend to market yourself, where your skills lie, clarify your job duties, and any unique circumstances we  need to know about.
3. We then talk to you about current trends, philosophies and what human resource managers want to see.
4. We will describe, fax, or e-mail Adobe PDF file samples of résumés that will  be in your area of specialty.
5. If you are satisfied with what you see, we will then settle on the price of the package. This initial process takes approximately 30 minutes.
6. If we’re going to develop a résumé, it will take about another 45 minutes after the initial interview to collect the information we need to properly tell your story. We schedule a time to visit by phone if required.

The benefits and features of a professional writing service. Our services far outweigh the cost.
We specialized in developing a résumé that sells YOU on paper/electronic file.
We maximize your number of interviews by telling why you are the best candidate in the first half of the first page, or 15 seconds, the average length of time a résumé is read.

Our résumés are like a sales brochure. WE CAN GUARANTEE A 60% INTERVIEW RATIO TO RÉSUMÉS MAILED OR SUBMITTED ELECTRONICALLY.

What information do you need from me?

A. The chronology of employment and education.

B. Your areas of strength, effectiveness, demonstrated performance, quantifiables, how you’ve been able to solve problems or make money for the companies you’ve been with.

C. Accomplishments,achievements, recognition, anything that you can tell us that will help us tell someone whey you’re the best candidate for the position within the 15-second window of opportunity. That’s the average length of time résumés are read.

We give the résumé the proper focus and write a scenario that tells your story. We use the combination style of résumé that employs the best parts of a chronological and functional style.

We have a profile form that we may fax or e-mail to you. Fill it out with your detailed information and/or submit your old résumé, and we’ll schedule a time to talk with you.

Most importantly:

We specialize in is developing a résumé that WILL INCREASE YOUR NUMBER OF INTERVIEWS – a résumé that will tell why you are the best candidate in the first 15 seconds! A SALES BROCHURE, about you — we SELL you on paper to maximize your interviews.

MORE OF THE BASICS:
We craft:
Résumés
Cover Letters
Follow Up Letters
Thank You Letters
Salary Histories
References
Custom Letterhead
Custom Labels
…anything you will need to market yourself professionally and discounted packages containing all of the above

Where do we go from here?
If you’d like to request a profile form to fill out, submit a resume, schedule an appointment, provide intake by telephone, fax, or e-mail more information about yourself, contact us in one of these ways.

The staff at Professional Résumé is looking forward to working with you!

Applying for jobs and not receiving call backs? It is your resume…

Looking for a new job but wondering why you’re not getting interview calls?

It must be something to do with your resume.
Why do you need a professional resume writer?

Your resume is the first thing that communicates with recruiters. Remember that it has just 30 seconds to make an impact on them. It should provide relevant, up to date, true and compelling information about you and your work experience. In addition to providing convincing and gripping information, you must take care of font sizes, font colors, grammar, spelling, punctuation and choose the right resume format for the kind of job you’re looking for. Make sure that the details included in your resume are not conflicting with each other. Make use of a spell check software in order to ensure that there are no fundamental spelling errors. Read more >>

Creating the Best LinkedIN Profile – A Must Have Job Search Marketing Tool

Think of your LinkedIn profile as an interactive business card. It’s a summary of your professional experience, interests,
and capabilities that is designed to attract the attention of important people who are searching for you online — recruiters,networking contacts, and grad school admissions officers. A strong profile is a key differentiator in the job market. So let’s get started…
1. Craft an informative profile headline
Your profile headline gives people a short, memorable way to understand who you are in a professional context. Think of
the headline as the slogan for your professional brand, such as “Senior Product Management Expert”. “Student, National University” or “Recent honors grad seeking marketing position.” Check out the profiles of professionals you admire for ideas and inspiration.
2. Display an appropriate photo
Remember that LinkedIn is not Facebook. If you choose to post a photograph — and we recommend that
you do — select a professional, high-quality headshot of you alone. Party photos, cartoon avatars, and cute pics of your
puppy don’t fit in the professional environment of LinkedIn.
3. Show off your education and accomplishments
Be sure to include information about all institutions you’ve attended. Include your major and minor if you have one, as well as highlights of your activities. It’s also appropriate to include study abroad programs and summer institutes. Don’t be shy— your LinkedIn profile is an appropriate place to show off your strong GPA and any honors or awards you’ve won.
4. Develop a professional summary statement
Your summary statement should resemble the first few paragraphs of your best-written cover letter — concise and
confident about your goals and qualifications. Remember to include relevant internships, volunteer work, and extra
curriculars. Present your summary statement in short blocks of text for easy reading. Bullet points are great, too.
5. Fill your “Specialties” section with keywords
“Specialties” is the place to include key words and phrases that a recruiter or hiring manager might type into a search
engine to find a person like you. The best place to find relevant keywords is in the job listings that appeal to you and the LinkedIn profiles of people who currently hold the kinds of positions you want.
6. Update your status weekly
A great way to stay on other people’s radar screens and enhance your professional image is to update your status at least
once a week. Tell people about events you’re attending, major projects you’ve completed, professional books you’re
reading, or any other news that you would tell someone at a networking reception or on a quick catch-up phone call.
7. Show your connectedness with LinkedIn Group badges
Joining Groups and displaying the group badges on your profile are the perfect ways to fill out the professionalism of your profile and show your desire to connect to people with whom you have something in common.
8. Collect diverse recommendations
Nothing builds credibility like third-party endorsements. The most impressive LinkedIn profiles have at least one
recommendation associated with each position a person has held. Think about soliciting recommendations from
professors, internship coordinators and colleagues, employers, and professional mentors.
9. Claim your unique LinkedIn URL
To increase the professional results that appear when people type your name into a search engine, set your LinkedIn
profile to “public” and claim a unique URL for your profile (for example: www.linkedin.com/in/yourname). This also makes it easier to include your LinkedIn URL in your email signature, which is a great way to demonstrate your professionalism.
10. Share your work
A final way to enhance your LinkedIn profile is to add examples of your writing, design work, or other accomplishments by displaying URLs or adding LinkedIn Applications. By including URLs, you can direct people to your website, blog, or social media pages.