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Your Resume is a Very Important Career Document during a Recession

Losing a job during a recession is probably more unnerving than seeing the prices rise all around us. This is because we identify ourselves with our careers. If you lose your job during a recession, the first obvious step is to start looking for a job so that there is no break in your career and the first step in a job search is to update your resume. There are varied opinions of what goes on a resume and what does not belong and no two people will advise you the same. However one thing for certain is that you won’t go far in your job search and career without a powerful resume. Let’s look at some things to consider for this very important career document in a recession.

Understand that it is not the resume that gets the job. Many have a mindset that by filling a resume with catchy words and phrases it will move theirs the top of the stack. During a recession when there are few jobs to go around, any given career opening will solicit numerous resumes. The likelihood that your elaborate phrases will catch the eye of the potential employer is unlikely. The employer does not have time to be a judge in a reading contest. The employer only has time to find those with the skills it is looking for. When those skills are spotted, you will more than likely be called for an interview and that is where you will win the job–through the interview and not the resume.

Resumes should be kept short and to the point. The employer only has a few seconds to look at your resume from a stack of possibly hundreds. If you don’t get to your skills, qualifications, and experience quickly in the resume, it will more than likely be tossed in the stack with the other rejected ones. Focus on what skills you would bring to your employer. You can list your education, credentials, and professional development as the first three sections on your resume. This will show the potential employer right away that you have formal training and education to handle the job.

Express your experience in terms of power words. Employers are looking for those who can take action. This is why you should always use power words to fill in the experience section of your resume. An example of some power words are accomplished, achieved, led, initiated, and promoted. Just go to an internet search engine and type in “power words resumes” and you’ll be shown a list of websites with power word ideas. The key point to remember is that power words are words that express action.

Keep resumes at one page if possible. Your final sections should be your experience, any special skills you have (such as languages), employment history, and military experience. Facts about you that are irrelevant to the job should be filtered out. When expressing employment dates, use only the years and not the months. If the employer wants to know more than he or she will ask but it is much more straightforward to just express the years. The advantage with just using the years is that if you had an involuntary employment break during a few months of the recession, it won’t show.

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