Essay Online

Most job seekers have the same problem when writing their resumes: they feel overwhelmed when it comes to presenting themselves in such a concise format. If you’re suffering from this problem, you might want to work with a partner, a friend, a fellow job hunter, a counselor, or a professional resume writer, someone who can ask you probing questions and provide objectivity.

Gather and Check All Necessary Information - Learn to write a resume by writing down information under headings. Write your resume example that embraces your education; experience; honors; skills and activities and make a list of your training and education relating to your job choice.

Match Your Skills and Experience with an Employer’s Needs - Choose a target job/title that works best and write a good resume by matching your wishes with positions that are actually available.

Highlight Details That Demonstrate Your Capabilities - Learn to write a good resume by selecting details of your information that best matches the employer’s needs. Results need to benefit your employer and make you a viable candidate for the target job.

Organize the Resume Effectively - You write a resume by organizing your Personal information followed by a Summary of key points, Education, Experience, Honors and Activities. Write a good resume chronologically listing primary jobs held, including unpaid work that fills a gap or that shows you have the skills for the job. Write your resume example and compare with other like-positions resumes and create a draft based on the resume format you choose. References are a separate entity and may not be included, but always have solid reference available if requested.

Consider Word Choice Carefully - You write a resume that accurately describes you &ndash your skills, talents and expertise. Write a good resume by utilizing active verbs (in many forms) such as achieve, analyze, adapt. Learn to write a resume that describes you positively and accurately. Write a good resume using adjectives and nouns such as analytical, resourceful, capable.

Ask Other People to Comment on Your Resume - We at Houston Job Search will help you write resume and then we will critique it. Remain open-minded when you write a resume and with our constructive criticism, the final resume will achieve its objective. Ask your friends and trusted colleagues to review and critique your resume.

Make the Final Product Presentable - A resume should be printed on a high quality (24 lbs stock or more) paper using a laser printer. We at Houston Job Search can provide the resources.

Use dynamic action verbs such as: accomplished, collaborated, encouraged, established, facilitated, founded, managed, etc. Do NOT use the subject I, use tenses in the past.

Writing a Resume

Not that long ago, the easiest way to get a job was to visit the company you wanted to work for and ask for one. Today, however, it’s not quite that simple. Most companies require you to submit your resume to them before they’ll consider you for a position. So the resume has become a great deal more important, because it’s the first, and possible last, chance you have to make the right impression. That’s why it’s so important to get it right!

First off, you need to start writing a resume by being clear about what you’re trying to achieve. Which company are you planning to apply to? What type of job are you hoping to get? The answers to those questions will give you a direction for your resume. Remember, no matter how good your resume is, if the person reading it doesn’t think you’re suitable for the job, you won’t get any further. So make your resume good, but don’t spend countless hours stressing about making it perfect; you’re probably wasting your time.

It’s a good idea to keep your resume short and simple. The person reading your resume probably has dozens, if not hundreds more resumes to read through, and rather than waste time reading your lengthy life history, will put your resume aside and read somebody else’s. Work out the types of things the employer is most likely to want from an employee, and make sure your resume shows you have those skills or qualities. For example, if the job is likely to require attention to detail, mention your ability in that area. Summarize your past job responsibilities with a focus on skills requiring attention to detail. Give your prospective employer plenty of chances to see how your skills could benefit their organization.

Perhaps you’ve never had this type of job before, and so don’t know exactly what the employer will be looking for. That’s okay; just spend some time researching the industry. If possible, ask some professionals in that industry what type of skills or qualities they’d look for in a person holding the job you’re applying for. Look at job advertisements, searching for clues, particularly if they mention certain qualities they’re looking for. Check out newspapers at the library, or search on the Internet. Even better, look at the website of your potential employer, if they have one. Learn as much as you can about the business you’re trying to join, so that you have a better chance of targeting your resume correctly. That knowledge will pay off in an interview, because you can show you know something about the employer’s industry.

One word of warning - never make the mistake of writing a general resume, hoping that you’ll hit all the right buttons. That almost never works.

Now that you have an idea what sort of direction you need to give your resume, start putting it together. Most resumes contain the following sections, although they can vary a little depending on the industry. Still, you should always try to cover these areas somewhere in your resume:

- Employment history

- Positive personal characteristics

- Computer or technical skills

- Educational background and results (include GPA if it’s over 3.0)

- Any other relevant accomplishments, such as a public speaking award

Once you get the hang of it, writing a resume really isn’t hard. All you have to do is put in everything you can to show the prospective employer that you can add value to their business, and take out anything that doesn’t.

Some speeches are so powerful and inspire so much passion that they plant the seeds for a revolution or a big change in society. Why are some speakers so good at connecting with their audience and some so bad at it? At the root, a speech is about conveying a message and making an impression. Good speakers know that to be heard, they have to be clear, inspirational, and … lead. Indeed, giving a speech is about leading people in the right direction with one’s vision of how things should be.

That’s why speeches are so important in politics. The leader of a political party has to be able to affirm himself as someone with direction and drive in order to inspire confidence in the electorate. But no matter how many attributes we associate to “good speeches,” it all comes down to one thing: “making a statement.”

A good speech is about “making a statement.”

Those that fail when they stand in front of a crowd are those that have no real clue of what they want to say, have no confidence in themselves, or couldn’t say it eloquently enough. All that translates into one thing: no conviction. A leader must have conviction in order to succeed.

The same holds true for resumes and cover letters. It’s about connecting with the recruiter and making a statement: “I am the best candidate for the job. Give me at least a chance at an interview.” Faced with a good application, a recruiter will always give that applicant the benefit of the doubt. No employer wants to let go of a potentially good recruit.

So when you are facing the difficult task of writing a resume or a cover letter, keep that in mind. When you are done writing, let it rest, come back on it later, and ask yourself this question: “Have I made it clear that I was the best candidate for the job?” If the answer is “no,” you know what you’ve got to do…

The last paragraph of your cover letter can be very powerful. How you end it could leave a lasting impression with the employer &ndash good or bad. So before you sign off using your typical, “Please call me at your earliest convenience to set up an interview” kind of mumbo-jumbo, take care to let the employer off the hook and put the responsibility to follow-up squarely on your shoulders.

Mark this date

By stating that you’re going to follow up with the employer on a particular day makes you appear confident and willing to go the extra mile for an interview. It makes them feel important and that you honestly want to know about the job if you are willing to follow up with them.

It also eases the pressure off of them since they expect you to call. If they’re interested in speaking with you, they might set your resume aside and mark it down in their planner that you are going to call. That way they can be prepared to schedule and interview.

Do what you say

Whatever you do, if you write in your cover letter that you’re going to call them on a specific day, by all means &ndash do it! By not following through, you have jeopardized ever getting called by the employer.

This is actually worse than including a passive ending in your cover letter. By not following up like you claimed you would, you’re showing yourself to be irresponsible - not a highly sought out trait for a new employee.

Go the extra mile

If you follow up the date that you stated and never could get in touch with the contact, you can leave a voice mail stating that you were following up on the specific job posting. You can choose to follow-up with an email and/or try to call them back another day. The point is to let them know that you followed up when you said you would.

Now don’t get me wrong, you do want to try to actually speak to them. However, you don’t want to harass them either. Give it a couple of shots and if you can’t get them on the phone, leave a message and follow-up via email, if you so choose.

Follow-up is very important. That’s why stating you’re going to do so in your cover letter is impressive and important to the hiring manager. Keep it simple, keep your word and you might just come out with an interview.

If you have a good appetite and a way with words, food writing may be a career option to consider. Not only is doing research for food writing one of the more enjoyable tasks in freelance writing, but you’ll never be short of restaurant recommendations and potential free meals — though you may run short of well-fitting pants.

To become a successful freelance food writer, you’ll need to know how to describe food well. The key to description, at least in traditional literature, is to make focused, concrete comparisons. To see why, ask yourself which sentence you find more appealing: “It was the tastiest shrimp I’ve ever eaten,” or “The lime-pressed garlic shrimp, grilled over applewood, had a texture between the crunch of caramelized sugar and the soft resistance of a medium-rare salmon filet”?

The fundamental law of food writing is to make your reader wish that he or she had some of whatever delicious dish you’re writing about, to make the reader personally invested in the food. And there’s a strange quirk in the human mind: whenever we think about an object or activity, we activate the parts of our brain that turn on whenever we’re interacting with that object or engaged in that activity. In other words: if we think about throwing a baseball, the nerves in our arm twitch. Or, if we think about eating a thick steak, our stomach grumbles and our mouth waters. When you’re writing about food, you want to activate those same parts of the brain to make your reader feel that he or she is sharing in the experience of eating it. Words like “tasty,” “delicious,” or, worst of all, “really good,” won’t do anything for your reader’s emotions. Only words related to food — or words and images with strong emotional connotations — will really get your readers’ mouths watering.

Once you’ve written your articles, where do you market your food writing? If you live in a large city, you can write for a local newspaper or an alternative paper (i.e. the LA Weekly, the Austin Chronicle, etc.). Millions of people read these papers daily or weekly, and a good portion of those millions read the food section. When anyone in a major city needs to make restaurant reservations for a date, business dinner, party, or other social engagement, they look in the food section of the local paper for hot new restaurant reviews. Stay on top of restaurant openings and closings in your city. New restaurant openings can be your “bread and butter.” Local newspapers and online city guides are always wanting to print new restaurant reviews.

If you have a favorite local hangout that not many people know about, write an article on it. Submit your article with a proper query letter to a local newspaper. You might be the first one to write about the place, throwing needed business their way. In the end, you collect a decent paycheck from the newspaper, along with a published clip, a byline, and hopefully more work and referrals.

Another option is to write for magazines dedicated to food, dining, city nightlife, general lifestyles, or for the tourist market. If you plan to write for magazines, your choice of what to write about becomes much broader. You can write how-to articles, interview pieces, cookware reviews, and so on. If you plan to write for local tourism guides, your best bet is to write restaurant reviews. Tourists may not know about any of the well-known restaurants or diners in the area. Tourism guides provide insight and guidance to what’s hot and what’s not in the area. This means that there’s a steady flow of potential readers for your restaurant reviews and other food writing.

If you don’t live in a large city, it’s much more difficult to become a food writer. The mom n’ pop cafe downtown may have some of the best omelets you’ve ever tasted, but how are you supposed to sell an article if everyone in town already eats at that cafe every Friday night? Consider selling your articles to regional magazines. The Department of Transportation in several US states often publishes a monthly magazine about regional news. The editors of these magazines often look at local restaurant reviews as a source of human interest, or a way of boosting out-of-state tourism to non-traditional destinations.

Additionally, you might try writing sample copy for cookbooks, press releases for food suppliers, or ads for food companies. Companies and book publishers hire good food writers to help market anything from new varieties of pasta sauce to gourmet steak dishes. Even a nearby supermarket might be willing to pay for copy in weekly ad flyers.

Unfortunately for rural types, full-time food writing is more often than not an urban game. For urban types, food is one of the products that won’t ever stop being popular, especially when it’s offered as part of a good restaurant experience. Thus food writing means job security, and more importantly than that: it’s just outright enjoyable writing. So get to it!