How to Get an Interview

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Resume paper
Computer
Quality Printer
Belief in yourself
Patience and Faith

Step 1

If you want an interview you are going to first need to sell yourself on paper. This means putting together a dynamic resume. There are four most important areas that must be covered in a resume and they need to be used wisely. Some people add a few more, but I believe it's best not to clutter or complicate things for the reader.

The first question I want to address that people often get confused on is, "What about the objective heading?" Let's think about that for a moment. What is the point of sending in your resume to Company A? Duh, to obtain employment. You know that and Company A knows that, so why waste valuable space and someone's time with useless information. When you get the interview, that is the time to share your thoughts and ideas on where you see yourself headed with the company.

Now, we know where not to start, let's proceed to what makes an excellent beginning. I believe it is always best to start off with a SUMMARY of your main competencies. Your summary should explain your experience level, achievement record, your value to the company and at this point it is possible to sneak in a possible immediate career goal. The summary is a very crucial part of the resume, because you need to brag without being arrogant. You need to grab the reader's attention so they want to continue to learn more about you.
Step 2

Section two, most known as the PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE content section, needs to have powerful descriptions of what you have done. Sometimes people will get too vague with descriptions because they know what they have done, but they just have a hard time expressing it in an exciting way or even a way that tells the whole story. If you are worried about using up too much room, don't be. The rule that resumes must be one page only is a fallacy. Again employers are looking for achievements and results, not just bland descriptions. What if I told you, "Every year I go for a long walk." And then said, "Every year I walk for 3 days to help raise money for cancer and last year I raised $4000." Which statement about my walk is more interesting and makes you want to learn more about me. This is a time to be proud of your achievements, no matter how insignificant you may think they are. If you don't take credit for a job well done, somebody else will and they will be the one getting the job, so believe in yourself.

After the professional listing, you will want to list any EDUCATION or CERTIFICATIONS. This is not a real make or break key area, but it is important to list in case the job requires specific degrees or certifications. Also if your a little older and you don't want to date yourself, there is nothing wrong with leaving off the graduation date from college. Companies are not supposed to discriminate, but lets be real, we all know it happens.
Step 3

The last two resume areas I'm going to combine. They are mechanics and design. As far as mechanics, eventually all resumes start to read the same to employers after a while. You will want to make sure you use language of a leader. Everyone at sometime has been in charge of somebody. Think carefully and build from whatever leadership experience you hold.

As far as design, this is most important to make it readable. If you start your dates with no abbreviations, then you must continue on with that same set up throughout the resume. If you bold the titles of your professions, then make sure they are all in bold. If you switch fonts or layout in midstream you will annoy the reader. Make sure you use a nice easy to read font from the beginning.

The last thing I want to touch on are KEY WORDS. With today's electronic scanning of resumes, it does not hurt to add this section for any resumes that are down loaded, faxed or emailed to the company. Key words would be a list of words that are relevant to the position and should include some of the skills you obtain. If key words is what depicts the first shuffle of resumes then you'll be glad you used them. Personally I think they look unprofessional on a resume, but you wouldn't want to take the chance that a computer turned your resume away because you omitted key words.