Going Back to Work and the Resume Nightmare.

I’m ready to work a day job other than being a Mom. I LOVE being a Mom, but Alex has an art degree and I have an MBA, and it may make more sense to have me dialing for dollars in corporate America than to have Alex at an IT help desk, losing his mind to ridiculous questions 40 hours a week.

My resume has been an ongoing ordeal, but I’ve learned SOOOO much along the way that I will share with all of you stay-at-home people and anyone else working on their resume.

For starters, and this is specific to stay-at-home parents…. Don’t leave your stay-at-home parenting off of your resume. You worked during that time, whether it was paid or not, you worked long hours, you gained skills AND you don’t want huge gaps on your resume.

What I wrote was ‘Career Sabbatical to Raise Children’… I wrote a VERY brief description that wasn’t the achievements you’ll want to use for other jobs, but its a nice tidbit to have in the event the person who’s reading your resume doesn’t understand how much work goes into keeping children alive.

Career Sabbatical to Raise Children

Gained knowledge with persuasion, communication, time-management, multi-tasking, collaboration as well as a variety of other skills

This would be a lame thing to write for your regular paying jobs, but it shows you were busy during that time.

Now for EVERYONE ELSE

1. DO NOT INCLUDE AN OBJECTIVE STATEMENT! Objective statements are dated. The average recruiter looks at a resume for like eight seconds or something, they’ll notice this. Use a professional summary instead.
2. USE Keywords. 93% of employers use the SAME keyword searching software… no joke. If your experience is in sales, Google “sales resume keywords” write down the ones that are applicable, and sneak those bad boys into your word experience. You need to do this these days. If you’re looking in different fields, work out different resumes for each job type so your resume isn’t just 150 keywords.
3. The difference between a career summary and an objective statement…. An objective says what you’re looking for, and career summary tells employers right out of the gate why you are awesome.. its a very brief rundown of the skills you have ALREADY acquired. Use the skills they are asking for that you already have.
4. READ THE ENTIRE JOB DESCRIPTION! Read the entire job description . Don’t send a resume off having only read the qualifications. You may meet the qualifications, but if your resume doesn’t specifically tell them why you’re a good fit for the specific job, they’ll likely move on to the resume of the next zillion applicants without batting an eye over yours. Reading the full description also better prepares you for an interview, AND lets you know if its a job you may or may not even like.
5. Being pretty may not be necessary for people, but appearances count when it comes to your resume. Spend some time formatting your resume. It should be either one full or two full pages. No more, no less. You should use bullet-points. Huge blocks of text are unpleasant to the eye, you need to break that text up as best as you can.
6. Don’t tell people what tasks you did, you need to let them know achievements. When I heard this the first time I said…. Geez, have I even accomplished anything? It was a rough concept, so I googled away and found some examples. The achievements don’t need to be huge, get that out of your head. … Here are some examples of “achievements”
   1. Saved the company money? How much?
   2. Reached your goals quickly? How much time did you save?
   3. Exceeded your goals? By how much?
   4. High Customer satisfaction? How high? Any statements from customers?
   5. Raised consumer satisfaction? How? How much?
   6. Created a database for your job? What kind? How did this help?

There are tons of other examples. just hit up the Google machine and find one or two that are        applicable to each of your jobs. If your experience was mostly school, include any awards, honors courses, symposiums.

These tips will hopefully give you a fighting chance. I wish you the best of luck. If you have more tips, include them in the contacts!

I love blogging, I have loved being a business owner and I love being a Mom, but I also enjoy