If you’ve been asked to review a resume or would like guidelines to make sure yours is good to go, download our free Resume Critique Checklist (Adobe PDF format). The checklist provides a quick way to evaluate a resume’s first impression, resume sections, use of accomplishments, writing style, and other key factors that can make or break a resume. Be sure to address any factors that received a “No” response — your resume needs to be perfect to compete in today’s job market.

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I hate New Year’s resolutions, and I didn’t even make it to February with my 2007 Stamp Diet. Yesterday, I had to go to the P.O. for a perfectly legitimate reason, and the clerk was taking quite some time analyzing my boxes and trying to figure out shipping. I tried to divert my eyes, but the sparkly displays with the DC Comics Super Heroes stamps and the Valentine’s Day With Love and Kisses stamps were talking to me. I asked for the stamps in an addict’s voice, almost seeking permission to buy them when the clerk asked, “Do you have a problem with stamps?” Yes, I do. And in a sick kind of way, he wanted me to have them and gladly sold them to me. Enabler! He did say that if that’s my worst addiction, I’m in good shape. That works for me! Here’s to a fresh start in 2008.

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I’ve been interviewing recruiting professionals from Hudson, a leading staffing and recruitment firm, for an article on the top resume mistakes made by job seekers. Surprise, surprise — typos lead the list of pet peeves. In fact, one error on your resume can send it directly to the circular file without even landing in resume purgatory for a possible second look.

Job seekers: It’s time to take back your power. You know you can do the job, so stop taking yourselves out of the running by making silly mistakes on your resumes. If there can be a National Squirrel Appreciation Day, then surely there can be a National Proofread Your Resume Day. I declare this day to be February 1 — by then, those pesky New Year’s resolutions will have waned and there will be more time to focus on perfecting your resumes.

Of course, you can start proofreading your resume now, which is a good idea if you’re in an active job search. Whatever you do, don’t rely on spellcheck — it doesn’t catch everything. I like Jacci Howard Bear’s About.com primer on how to proofread text and layout. If you doubt your proofreading abilities, enlist the help of a pro. Check out the following article on what can happen if you fail to proofread your resume:

Ten Classic Resume Bloopers
Know Them So You Won’t Make Them
by Kim Isaacs
Monster’s Resume Expert

If you’ve ever watched those TV blooper shows, you know how funny slip-ups, gaffes and blunders can be. But while laughter may be good for the soul, it’s certainly not the response you want your resume to produce.

Baby Boomers (or Gen-X and Gen-Y fans of Nick at Nite) will recall the often hilarious pronouncements of Archie Bunker, the patriarch of the popular 1970s sitcom “All in the Family.” With just a slight slip of the tongue, Archie’s intended meanings frequently became completely convoluted (e.g., “consecration” instead of “concentration” and “mental pause” instead of “menopause”).

If your resume contains any such Archie-like malapropisms, it’s sure to be memorable, but it won’t leave the lasting impression you’re shooting for. Proofread your resume meticulously, and share it with trusted friends and colleagues to make sure you haven’t inadvertently substituted one word for another. Keep in mind that your computer’s spellcheck function often will not catch these errors, since the problem is one of incorrect word choice rather than misspelling. To help ensure that your resume finds its way to the interview pile and not the circular file, avoid these 10 classic resume bloopers, culled from real-life resumes of job seekers from all levels, industries and career fields:

1. “Revolved customer problems and inquiries.” Just what every employer is looking for — an expert in passing the buck.
2. “Consistently tanked as top sales producer for new accounts.” Sales managers aren’t likely to be impressed with this self-proclaimed underachiever.
3. “Dramatically increased exiting account base, achieving new company record.” If customer accounts were leaving in droves as this statement implies, it’s probably fair to assume that this candidate also tanked as a top sales producer.
4. “Planned new corporate facility at $3 million over budget.” Every hiring manager is searching for employees who exceed budgets by millions of dollars.
5. “Directed $25 million anal shipping and receiving operations.” Either this person is showcasing compulsively stubborn management qualities, or he has a challenging product packaging/storage problem.
6. “Participated in the foamation of a new telecommunications company.” This job seeker was also in charge of bubble control.
7. “Promoted to district manger to oversee 37 retail storefronts.” This is a common resume typo. There must be literally thousands of mangers looking for jobs in today’s modern world. Here’s a tip: Use your word-processing program’s find/replace feature to quickly correct this common mistake. You can also modify your application’s spelling dictionary so it won’t recognize the word “manger.”
8. “Experienced supervisor, defective with both rookies and seasoned professionals.” Many of us have had a boss like this at some point in our careers, but you usually don’t find them being so up-front about their leadership inadequacies.
9. “I am seeking a salary commiserate with my training and experience.” There are a couple problems with this statement. To begin with, salary requirements don’t belong on a resume. Secondly, a salary should be “commensurate” with experience (meaning proportionate to), not “commiserate” with (meaning to express sympathy for).
10. “Seeking a party-time position with potential for advancement.” Sounds like a fun job.

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Copyright 2007- Monster Worldwide, Inc. All Rights Reserved. You may not copy, reproduce or distribute this article without the prior written permission of Monster Worldwide. This article first appeared on Monster, the leading online global network for careers. To see other career-related articles visit http://content.monster.com.
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This article was written by Kim Isaacs, director of ResumePower.com and author of The Career Change Resume book. Visit the ResumePower.com site to learn more about resume services to jump-start your career.

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My father’s electronic inventions were always accompanied by diagrams that could make my head spin. But when he sat down to explain the schematics — breaking down the functions of each component — they actually started to make sense. Enough sense that I was able to explain and answer any questions about my third grade science project — a wireless remote entry dollhouse. The lesson learned is that all components were interrelated, and worked in tandem to produce the desired result.

The same holds true for a resume’s organization. If you want to impress hiring managers with your excellent academic credentials because your work history is limited, place Education before Experience to draw attention to your degree. If you’re returning to a former career and would like to highlight your earlier experience, break your work history in two and move your related jobs to the top of your Experience section. Use common sense when organizing your resume — lead with your strongest selling points, omit information that doesn’t help market you, and be sure to end with a bang (testimonials are a great way to end your resume with a “Wow!” factor).

Review your resume and look at its organization. Is each section strategically placed to produce the desired result — more phone calls for job interviews?

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Digital Inspiration points us to ASCII-o-Matic, a cool tool that lets you convert a 60×50 pixel JPEG image into ASCII art. I wish there was a similar tool for converting a Word-formatted resume into a nice-looking ASCII file. ASCII resumes are necessary if you need to email your resume or copy and paste to online forms, but properly converting the file is time-consuming. The “save as” text option in Word is handy, but there is always a lot of cleanup necessary to make the file look as attractive as possible in plain-text format.

Any developers out there able to automate this process? While we wait for the magic tool, here is an article that provides more detail on converting a resume to ASCII format:

Why You Need Two ASCII Resumes & How to Create Them

by Kim Isaacs, Resume Expert and Director of ResumePower.com

Many job seekers don’t realize that it’s necessary to have two ASCII (plain-text) resumes — one for emailing, and the other for posting to online forms. The emailable version should have forced line breaks at 65 characters or less, and the webforms version should not have forced line breaks.

Why should the webforms version not have forced line breaks? Because if you copy and paste a plain-text resume to a webform (say, on a company website or job board) and it has line breaks manually inserted, the end result will be a jagged-looking resume. Each webmaster has a different default setting for how many characters an online form will break text, so if your resume exceeds this limit, your resume will look terrible. If you create an ASCII resume without line breaks, the text should wrap around the webform’s box, eliminating the need for you to go in and reformat the text.

Why do you need a plain-text resume that has line breaks at 65 characters or less when emailing your resume? Because there is no standard email program used by everybody, so you need to accommodate email systems that don’t automatically wrap line breaks. Your resume might end up as one long horizontal line of text — this is a “pet peeve” of recruiters who state that they would rather the line breaks are pre-inserted before receiving the resume via email.

Here’s the main difference between the two formats:

ASCII for Emailing - Has forced line breaks at 65 characters or less
ASCII for Webforms - Has no forced line breaks; instead, the text wraps naturally

It’s best to create the webforms version first, and then convert the webform file into an emailable version. The following instructions are meant to be a basic guide to preparing your ASCII resumes. There’s a lot you can do with ASCII, so feel free to play around with keyboard symbols to see what works for you. Your resume should be easy to skim through, consistent, and attractive given the limitations of plain text.

To create an ASCII resume for webforms using MS Word XP:

• Open your Word document, go to Save As, and under “Save as Type,” select “Plain Text.” Give the file a new name like YourName_ASCIIforWebforms. Important - check the box “Allow Character Substitution.” Click “Save” to save the new file.
• Exit Word and open Notepad (Notepad can be found on most Windows systems by going to Start> All Programs> Accessories> Notepad).
• Change bullets to asterisks or dashes if they didn’t convert properly after you saved as text.
• Make sure the text is coherent, especially if columns or tables were used in the original document.
• Review the heading to ensure that the address, phone number(s), and e-mail addresses are placed in a logical sequence.
• Add stylistic elements to the header sections so that they stand out. A horizontal line may be created by using a series of dashes or asterisks. Example:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professional Experience
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• If you have a cover letter (which you should!), paste the letter on page one (before the resume). Remove extra line breaks by the sig line and add the word “RESUME” where the resume is about to start. Example:

Sincerely,
John Doe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
R E S U M E
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• Remove contact information and page data from the secondary pages if your resume is longer than one page. So information such as “John Doe Resume - Page Two” and “ABC Company, accomplishments, continued” should be removed. The ASCII resume is meant to be read on a computer screen, so there is no distinction between pages.
• Add a line break before and after job titles to help them stand out.
• Place “Key Accomplishments” (or whatever the Accomplishments section is called) on its own line preceded by a couple of dashes.
• Add an extra line between bullets if you have text-intensive bullets. Large paragraphs of plain text can be cumbersome to read.
• Add two spaces between sections and between jobs.
• Look for and remove special characters that might have crept in, such as accents over the “e” in “resume” or “San Jose”). Look for special characters that might have morphed into something like the letter “n” or “?” or “1″ - this could happen by the address header if symbols were used to separate phone, city, etc. Symbols may also appear in the Education section if symbols were used to separate courses, schools, etc.
• Look for bullets that have sub-bullets (it’s necessary to refer to the original resume), and use a dash to indicate sub-bullets.
• Carefully review the document to make sure the resume is perfect and nothing strange is left in the file.

When the ASCIIforWebforms file looks good, it’s time to create the second file - ASCII for emailing:

• Open the ASCIIforWebforms file in Word. Select all text, change the font size to 13.5, and scroll to the end of each line to see how many characters are on the longest lines. If it’s in the range of 55-65, you’re good to go. If it’s running past 70 characters, that’s not good and you should try changing the font size to 13 or smaller.
• Go to File> Save As > choose “Plain Text,” but this time check the “Insert line breaks” box and rename to “YourName_ASCIIforEmailing.”
• Close the file and reopen in Notepad. Look for “orphans” - short lines that can be moved up to the line above (as long as it doesn’t exceed 65 characters). Orphans often appear if a series of slashes are used in the resume - Word considers the string of words separated by slashes as one word and may move the whole string to the next line.

When you’re ready to email your resume or post to an online form, just open the appropriate file, select all, copy, and paste the text to the message box or form. Remember to customize the cover letter to suit the opportunity.

Best wishes for success with your ASCII documents, and let me know how your job search is going!

You can view a couple of ASCII samples on the http://www.resumepower.com site:

ASCII Sample #1: TV Network Operations Manager

ASCII Sample #2: Network Administrator/Technician

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Last night, I spent several frustrating hours trying to plan a trip to London. I used to go regularly and miss my friends too much to put it off any longer. Well, I was in for a shock on the airline prices — round-trip for two was over $1000 (taxes and fees were actually higher than the fare!). Realizing I shouldn’t have spent my credit card points on holiday gift cards, I had to start the mental process of accepting the higher fares.

I started thinking about all that I get with my ticket: The employees at Virgin Atlantic who will make the pre-and post-flight enjoyable; the chance to be shot into the sky on a B747 and land safely on the other side of the Atlantic (luggage included, fingers crossed); and inflight goodies like individual TVs on every seat, food and drinks, and a cute little amenity kit (even given to us commoners in Economy Class); and the list goes on and on. When I think about it, the airlines are offering excellent value.

I’ll have to remember the initial price shock when some potential clients question the fee for a professionally prepared resume (”You charge how much for a resume?”). They may not realize how much work is involved in creating a dynamic resume that will change the course of their job searches. We spend hours researching the client’s career goal; strategically writing the document to create a value proposition; designing a layout that will stand out from the crowd; rewriting, editing, and proofreading until the resume is perfect; and providing excellent customer service throughout the process. Clients also benefit from the years of education and expertise we’ve developed in the field, and can give them an edge even with tricky situations like job-hopping, employment gaps, or a career change. When the resume starts to generate interviews — often at much higher salary levels than expected — clients have received excellent value.

There’s no doubt that our clients receive high-quality services, just like Virgin Atlantic offers high value for their fee. I’m off to book my tickets…

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The government has dubbed Martin Luther King, Jr. day, “A day ON, not a day OFF.” Dr. King worked tirelessly to promote equality and freedom, and the best way to honor his memory is to devote time to volunteer service. Good deeds also come back to you in many ways, and one way is to help advance your career. According to Jason Willett, director of communications at VolunteerMatch:

Leverage Volunteer Work on Your Resume

by Kim Isaacs, Monster’s Resume Expert

You may have altruistic reasons for volunteering, but giving your time has career-enhancing power, too.

“Volunteer work, whether in addition to a current job or an activity in between jobs, shows an employer that you are willing to try new experiences, be involved in your community and generally demonstrates a willingness to take initiative and make things happen,” says Kara Montermoso, content manager at Idealist.org, a site that connects people and nonprofit organizations and has partnered with Monster on Monster Volunteering.

So how do you leverage these positive traits on your resume? The best way to format your volunteer work depends on your career level and track. Follow these tips:

New Grads

Entry-level workers with minimal or no work experience should emphasize their volunteer work — even make volunteerism a central part of the resume.

“Many recent college grads do not have that much work experience, so highlighting — in a skills-oriented way — their volunteer experiences is a great way to go,” Montermoso says. “They can highlight communication, leadership and planning skills while showing that they are adaptable and self-motivated.”

You can incorporate volunteer work in the regular experience section if you have little or no paid work history. Treat the experience as if it were a paid job — list the organization’s name, location, your functional title, dates and accomplishments. Be sure to indicate your volunteer status in the description or next to the title.

Career Changers and Workers Reentering the Workforce

According to Jason Willett, director of communications at VolunteerMatch, volunteering is one of the best ways to develop and showcase new career skills. “Just because you weren’t financially compensated for a skill doesn’t mean that you don’t have a talent for it,” he says. “Mentioning volunteerism-related skills that are relevant to the professional world is one of the best ways to position yourself for a new career field.”

Quinn Sidon, director of recruiting and alumni development at Cross-Cultural Solutions, a leader in the field of international volunteering, spreads the word about the benefits of volunteering. “If you’re between careers, including your volunteer work may help to offset the professional path your resume outlines and facilitate a discussion toward explaining your career change,” says Sidon.

Willett emphasizes it should be clear you’re listing volunteer experience and not paid employment. “It doesn’t minimize your skills in any way, but it does indicate that you value good communication and are not in any way trying to misrepresent yourself,” he says.

Those on a Steady Career Track

“When seeking new employment, you shouldn’t overemphasize volunteer experience at the sake of directly relevant career experience,” says Willett. “Simply stating volunteer organization name and date may be entirely appropriate.” He advises against listing every organization you have volunteered with for the past 15 years — rather, focus on the most recent ones.

Sidon suggests most volunteer work is best placed in a separate section. “Your volunteer work should supplement your professional accomplishments and talents, not distract from them,” he says. The Affiliations section of Monster’s Resume Builder is the perfect spot to mention volunteer activities.

Too Much Information?

If you’ve volunteered with organizations that would reveal information you wouldn’t want a prospective employer to know, consider leaving them off your resume. “It’s a personal choice to include your volunteer work, and your decision may vary depending on what you want to highlight about yourself and where you are applying,” says Sidon. “Consider that it’s more helpful to include the skills you learn instead of emphasizing the affiliations the organization had.”

Target the Employer

Willett recommends researching the employer to discover how much emphasis it places on community and philanthropy. “Your volunteer section should mirror the results of your research and be modified to suit the background of the company you are interested in,” he says.

Adds Montermoso, “If the place that you are applying to works within a specific issue or cause, it could be beneficial to highlight similar organizations you have volunteered with to show that you are familiar with the issue area or to display a long-term/growing interest for a particular cause.”

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