The Benefits of Using a Resume Builder

When you are putting your resume together, you are going to want to make sure that you take the right steps to include all of the most important and relevant pieces of information.  This will relate to all of the positions which you have held over time and the amount of experience and education which you have to your credit as well as your personal ambitions and perceived goals with your career.  Keep in mind that you will have to do this in a limited amount of space, so you will have to do a considerable amount of screening and a few things that you need to keep track of.  This is where a resume builder may be recommended.

Why Would You Use a Resume Builder?

A resume builder can help you ensure that you get all of the most important aspects of your career into your resume.  There are a number of different sections that put together, will compose a resume. Now unless you already know how to craft a format that can get all of these parts into the document in an effective way, you will want to turn to a template for help.  A resume builder program will typically have several different templates installed and you should be able to figure out which one is best suited for your particular resume.

When you have a resume builder, you will get the opportunity to look through a various templates to figure out which one is going to best highlight all of your important qualities.  That will help you craft your resume in a way that will stand out against the crowd.  Ultimately, that should help you to make the strong first impression that is so crucial when it comes to landing a job.

Learning to Work With a Resume Builder

When working with a resume builder, it is always best to start off by composing a few different resumes using the various templates which are provided.  This will help you to highlight all of your beneficial qualities in several different ways.  Use the different templates in different job searches and try and determine which one has the most impact.  If one type of resume isn’t working well on your job search, you can start using another type to see if you get better results.  Sometimes, simply rearranging your information in another way can make a significant difference.
While you may be able to find different templates on the Internet that you could refer to, they will not give you the care and detail that a resume builder may be able to provide.  Working with a program will ensure that you hit all of the most important areas.  When you simply have your own resume template that you are building, it could be easy to leave off an important detail.  Therefore, you will want to make sure that you do everything you can to have the strongest resume possible and that often means turning to a resume builder program for assistance.

CareerRush has resume examples available in several different formats. Even the resume builder allows you to download your resume in multiple formats.

Preferred Electronic Resume Formats

A significant development that you will need to keep in mind is the fact that many employers now prefer candidates to submit their resumes electronically rather than the traditional hard copy.  This not only helps to cut back on the amount of paper that is being consumed, but it can help employers search quickly through the various resumes to figure out who would be the best qualified candidates for the vacancy at hand.  There are a number of different ways to electronically compose a resume, however, which is why it is important for you to pay attention to and learn what it is that employers like to see when they receive electronic resumes.

What Types of Formats Are Available?

You will see that there are several different formats that you can make use of to put together a resume on the computer.  Chances are, you would already be using some of these formats during your initial composition, even just to help you print out a hard copy of that same resume. However, a format that is effective for a resume that is being printed out is not necessarily the best format for a resume that will be sent electronically. It is important therefore to pay attention to the format you are using and make sure is in a compatible format with anyone who is going to be opening the resume.

Microsoft Word is the most famous processor and one that is most commonly used by most people all over the world. If this is a tool which is available to you, then this could be a safe format through which to compose a resume.  These documents will be encrypted, however, and only accessible to those people who have Word.  Therefore, you will want to compose a few additional formats of the same document to help you cover your bases.  Notepad is another text-based document that is available on nearly every computer.  Using Notepad could help you get your resume across to those people who do not have Word available.

Check the Formatting on Your Resume

It will be vitally important; however, that you check the formatting on your resume to ensure that it is being delivered intact.  When you send documents through email, an additional level of encryption is sometimes provided.  This can be troublesome, however, for sometimes that encryption will actually alter the text of the message and change the formatting. The result is a document with altered spacing, making the text itself very difficult to read.  To avoid this problem, you will want to test the formatting out to make sure that it sends in a legible manner.

Instead of simply checking the format with your own computer, enlist the help of some friends.  When you have additional people looking at your resume after you have electronically sent it, you can determine how well the transmission went.  This can help you to ascertain if your formatting is correct for the document and whether or not your electronic resume can be easily read by your potential employer.

CareerRush has resume examples available in several different formats. Even the resume builder allows you to download your resume in multiple formats.

How to Distribute Your Resume Effectively

Having a resume is going to do you no good if you do not take the time to make sure that it gets into the right hands.  This does not mean simply waiting until you hear about a specific job opening and then submitting your name; while this is an important step to landing the position that you are after, it is not the ONLY one. 

With the Internet becoming as popular as it has, it is now easier than ever for companies to go out and find people whom they want to consider for any given position.  Therefore, you will want to make sure that you post your resume on several established job sites in order to be given the consideration you deserve.

Posting Your Resume on the Internet

There are plenty of websites out there that are devoted to helping employers and employees find each other.  Some of them, such Monster.com, Beyond or Yahoo Hot Jobs have become extremely popular in recent times.  The best way to maximize your exposure and attract the attention of potential employers is to write out an impressive resume and submit it to some of these more well-known sources.  Don’t just stop at the bigger sites however. You stand to gain a lot and lose nothing by submitting your resume to some of smaller sources too.  The less competition you have, the more likely you may be to stand out against the crowd.

When posting your resume online, however, you are going to want to take the time to make sure that it is fully accurate and complete.  There could be a number of areas that errors could occur, from your past work experience to your contact information.  Treat this online resume posting as if you had personally submitted your resume to a company.  You never know when one is going to seek you out and potentially call you in for an interview.

Using Online Resources to Submit Resumes

These websites will also typically have listings from various companies who are looking to hire for new positions.  Therefore, when you submit your resume, you should also be able to run searches on various companies who are currently hiring.  That may give you the best chance of finding the perfect job for your needs, which is going to be an important part of your future financial and professional happiness.  The more resources which you have at your disposal, the more chances you have of getting your name out there and your resume recognized.

It is going to take you time, however, to figure out exactly when and where you need to get your resume up there.  Updating your resume regularly will be an important factor, as it can keep your postings fresh and help keep your visibility high.  You are also likely to be taking the time to improve your own skills while you are searching for a job, so your resume will ideally be updating itself as well.  With a little time and patience, you will grab an employer’s attention and get yourself called in for a job interview, which takes you one step closer to landing that coveted job!

Use CareerRush to quickly distribute your resume to the top job boards for free. If you don’t have a resume yet, take advantage of our completely free resume examples and resume builder.

Placing Your Contact Information on Your Resume

Contact Info on Resume Examples

The resume that you send out is going to work as the first impression that you make on any given person who is put in charge of making a hiring decision for a new company.  Therefore, you need to make sure that anyone who reads your resume will easily be able to get into contact with you if they are curious about learning more about your past.  Where you place your contact information on the resume is going to be vitally important, as you will want to make it accessible but still be professional within the range of the resume itself.

Top and Center is Recommended

Most people who are writing a resume will make sure that all of their necessary contact information is located at the top and center of the resume itself so that anyone reading it can easily find all of the necessary contact information.  While it may be acceptable to place this contact information toward the bottom of the resume itself, should that extra page somehow become detached, there will be no way for the reader to find you again.  Therefore, need to make sure that they know how to reach you very easily.

However, it is equally important that you do not break the format of the rest of the resume; you will still want to make sure that your resume looks clean and professional at all moments.  This means you should keep your contact information looking like the rest of the document itself.  One option would be using a different font to call attention to all of your contact details, although you will want to ensure that it still maintains a fully professional appearance.

Ensure Your Information is Correct

This may sound like an obvious suggestion, yet it is one of the most important tips that you are likely to receive.  There have been many people who have missed out on a job because their contact information was not listed correctly.  One single digit being off on a telephone number will not allow others to get in touch with you and a misplaced letter in an email address will cut off communication.  To avoid this, it is important to make sure that you double check all of your contact information before you submit any resume to an official employer.

It would be a good idea to have someone else help you check all of the details on your resume as well.  This can help you confirm that all of the information listed is correct, complete, and spelled correctly.  You will want to make your resume as perfect as it can possibly be which ultimately means that you are going to need to take all necessary steps to help the resume itself be a great representation of who you are as a professional individual.  While the contact information may seem like one of the smallest parts of the resume, it is also one of the most essential parts and its importance should not be underestimated when crafting your resume.

CareerRush offers many new resume examples that will help you create a professional looking resume. In addition to resume examples, you can use CareerRush’s Resume Builder absolutely free.

Creating a Clean Copy of your Resume

Clean Resume Examples

Your resume is undoubtedly the single most important tool that you have on hand to help you land a job.  For one thing, your resume acts as an effective means of introducing yourself to your prospective employer. Without a resume, it is impossible to reach out to any recruiting agent or prospective employer who is hiring for a new position opening.  However, just a generic resume is not the most effective. To ensure that you will be called back for a job interview, which is key to landing the position, it is important that you craft a resume that will grab the attention of whoever is reading it. To do this, your resume needs to be professional as possible.

Creating a Professional Resume

Everyone wants their resume to stand out above all of the others candidates who are likely to be applying for the same job vacancy. Towards this end however many people will go all out and use colors, graphics, and other methods to draw attention to the resume itself.  This is a very unprofessional approach and usually only results in the resume being ignored even more resolutely.

Making the right impression with a resume means that you need to take the time to understand what goes into professionalism.  What works best is to use a widely accepted font that can show personality while still demonstrating that you have a very businesslike approach to the task.  No company is keen to hire someone who will use flashy tactics in order to get attention.  Rather, if you hope to be the person most highly considered for a job, it is more important to make sure that your attractive qualities are all listed within the body of the resume itself.

The Cleaner the Resume, the More Effective it is

A clean resume is one of the most effective resumes that you can submit.  You are going to want to use clean, crisp white paper to print your resume on.  Many people may feel that off-colors will help bring more attention in, but the truth is that this will only drive attention away from your resume.  The whiter the paper, the more professional you will look.  You will also want to invest in quality paper of a good stock that is neither too thick nor too fine.
You will also want to make sure that the font you use is sharp and clean, demonstrating a professional dignity and self-assurance.  The ink must dry quickly, as you will not want to risk any smearing on the paper itself.  When you are able to find the best font that matches your own personality while still getting across a very clear professional attitude, you will have the best chance of making the right impression on a future employer solely through the way that your resume looks while they are holding in it their hands.  If you have the statistics to make the body of the resume valuable as well, you will be well on your way to landing the position!

The most widely used and accepted  resume formats that are used today can be found for free from CareerRush. Don’t make a mistake on a sheet of paper that can cost you a job you don’t even have yet.

In What Format Should I Email My Resume?

Resume Examples Formatted for Email

It is vitally important to figure out what steps you need to take to ensure that your resume is being received in the right formats when you are required to send it via email to a prospective employer.  Electronic forms of communication are becoming more and more prevalent, which means that you need to figure out how you should craft your resume so that it will be read in the right way when you send it through email.  There are a number of formatting problems which could cause problems unless you are careful about what you are doing.

How Does Email Formatting Mess Things Up?

One of the unfortunate facts about using email to send documents is the fact that some email carriers will alter the document itself when you send it.  This can be anything from introducing an extra line of spacing which can throw off the entire document, to encrypting the document itself so that only certain users can open it.  While this can be helpful in some circumstances, it can certainly hamper the way in which you get your resume out to all of the interested parties and finding a solution is important.

The first thing that you will need to do when sending your resume out by email is to enlist the help of a few friends that use various types of email services.  Send your resume to each of these friends so that they can report back to you how the resume itself came through.  This can let you know where it will be safe to send your resume as it stands and through which means you need to alter your email so that it arrives correctly.  It can be a very important stage to ensure that you keep your resume as professional as possible.

Prepare a Number of Formats for Your Resume

Another key factor may come through preparing a few different versions of your resume which can be sent to prospective employers.  Look to what some of the most popular types of documents are.  When you are able to craft your resume so that it can be used with each of these types of documents, you should be able to have a widely-accepted base for your electronic resume to be read.  This can include Microsoft Word, among other various popular word processing programs.

You may also want to consider crafting your resume in a format which is widely accepted, even if it does not have proper formatting tools on hand.  Wordpad is a very simple example of a program you would turn to when you need to ensure that your necessary information shows up on any given computer.  The text given with wordpad is not glamorous but it can get the information that you need across.  That can help you reach out to the various prospective employers and make sure that you are going to ultimately have the best chance of getting called back for the job interview that will help you land the position.

CareerRush offers free resume samples in formats that are most widely accepted by top recruiters and employers throughout the nation. Take advantage of these free tools and others. Get your career moving in the right direction now!

How to Write a Resume and Avoid Age Discrimination

Resume Examples: Avoiding Age Discrimination

One of the most unfortunate facts about businesses is that they like to hire younger people.  This may be for a number of various reasons, including the fact that the younger someone is when they are hired, the more likely that person will be to stick with a company for a longer period of time.  When a candidate is passed by for age reasons however, age discrimination has been committed.  While this is illegal, it is also something which is not easily proven.  Therefore, when filling out your resume, you will want to take steps to ensure that you do not become a victim of age discrimination.

How Do Employers Discriminate Against Age?

It will be harder for an employer to discriminate against your age once they have met you for an actual job interview.  You will not be able to easily hide your age from them at this stage and if you do an impressive job at your interview, you will prove that you are the most qualified candidate.  Age discrimination most often happens, however, when an employer first picks up your resume.  Looking through everything listed, a trained eye could begin to see what the true age of an applicant may be.

Although it is not legal for that recruiting agent to pass your resume by, there are a number of reasons that they could use for discarding your resume.  Therefore, you will want to know how to craft your resume so that you do not fall prey to this happening.  The area where most employers will discover what your true age may actually be could come in the area of your prior job listings and your educational experience.  By looking at your work experience, an employer may be able to get a better idea of what your age actually is.

How Do You Keep This From Your Resume?

You will need to be truthful when you are putting your resume together, although you will also want to take steps to make sure that you are as attractive as possible.  One way to do this is by only listing your work experience within the past 10 to 15 years.  Ideally, every position you have held within this time will have been in your job field and you can show that you have the necessary skills to perform.  Any positions held which do not have a bearing on applying for this current job should potentially be left off of the resume itself.

There may be pressure to include the dates at which you worked any specifics position.  If the dates may betray your true age, you could consider listing the length of time that you held those positions instead of the dates that you worked them.  This is one easy way to show that you have the necessary amount of time and experience to be valuable in any position without betraying what your true age actually may be.  That can get you called back for an interview whereupon you will be able to prove that you are the best qualified candidate for the job.

CareerRush has numerous free tools including free resume examples that will help you in you job search. It doesn’t matter if you are just out of college or looking for a new career after twenty years. See what CareerRush has to offer today!

Using Graphics And Images On Your Resume

Resume Example The importance of a powerful and attention grabbing resume cannot be underestimated. When you are crafting your resume, it is crucial that you do whatever is in your power to make your resume stand out above everybody else’s.  When crafting their resume, many people will inevitably look at the different formats that they can utilize to help draw attention to their resumes.  Some of these techniques will be more valuable than others however, so you will want to be careful about which solutions you turn to.  While the use of graphics and other images are highly effective, they are only beneficial in the right circumstances.

What Do Graphics and Images Do?

When you have graphics and images as a part of your resume, it will typically give off the impression that you feel the need to pack your particular resume with filler material. While graphics and images can make your resume seem glossy and professional, it can sometimes actually give off the impression that you feel the need to make your resume look good only because you do not have the qualifications or the confidence to make your resume stand out on its own merit.

Your resume is supposed to showcase your quality of work and all of your experience.  Using images to fill out your resume is ultimately only going to give off the appearance that you do not feel like your resume is capable of speaking for you.  It inadvertently betrays a lack of professionalism, which is the one thing you want to project the most.  Any hiring company needs to know that the person they are planning on investing in is someone who has the potential to give them top quality work.  It is crucial that your resume shows that you are this person.

When Would Graphics and Images Be Appropriate?

There will be cases; however, where including graphics and images in your resume would be appropriate.  Those circumstances will come about when you are applying for a job that would involve graphic design and other design-oriented jobs.  If you are going to be hired for a position which requires you to work closely with various graphic images, you will want to prove that you have the knowledge and the ability to produce great looking graphics that will sell well.  In one of these cases, building those graphics and images into your resume will be a crucial factor.

You will still want to keep these graphics and images separate from the rest of the resume, however.  Employers will want to have something, which is easily referenced to help them find a listing of your qualifications.  Graphics and other images that go with one of these resumes should be given as attachments, helping you to easily show off your diverse body of work without forcing you to insert those images into your resume itself.  You should be able to display your resume as well as your body of graphics all in one document, without portraying any hint of unprofessionalism.

Check out CareerRush’s free resume examples by industry and find the resume sample, which best suits your needs… OR Try our Free Resume Builder Wizard.

Resume Examples Templates by Industry from CareerRush

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CareerRush now provides jobseekers with another free tool in the form of resume examples. These resume samples can be used as a template to create your own custom resume and are downloadable in both Microsoft Word (.doc) format and Text (.txt) format. Our resume examples were built using the free CareerRush Resume Builder.

See our free resume examples and choose one for yourself.

- CareerRush Staff