Preparing an e-resume
One of the things you will quickly realize as your job search
progresses is that every employer wants the same basic information. But
each employer wants it served a different way. There are employers with
online application forms, others with text box forms that invite you to
cut and paste a cover letter and a resume and others that provide an
email link and specify a file format for any correspondence. Of course,
we also have that most curious employer who posts jobs online and then
asks you to fax or worse yet mail your resume. What's a nurse to do?
Even if most employer's haven't figured out how to use the
internet properly there are still a few things you can do to make the
job application process less painful. The beauty of digital technology
is its ability to let us write once and use many times. Those wonderful
aids, the mouse and the copy and paste buttons permit us to slice and
dice our resume information so it is served exactly as any potential
employer may want to see it. However, to be efficient and effective you
must change the way you think about your resume and how its assembled.
You must become a digital thinker.
Compared with the good old days when presentation was everything, the
digital age has almost completely destroyed any aesthetic considerations
in the job application process. Today your resume if printed at all will
be printed out on low grade copier stock, so that rich feel that you
sought by having your resume reproduced on watermarked bond is gone
forever. So are colours, fancy fonts, pictures or anything else
decorative. Today it is just the facts and nothing but the facts,
because anything else is a potential rejection in the digital world.
Being digital and understood
In the digital days of the e-resume your resume should be prepared
using sans serif fonts, that is, the fonts with names like Arial, Helvetica
or sans serif and a font size of no less than 10 point. This ensures
that your resume if printed and then scanned into a database - yes,
believe it or not some places are still doing this - will scan with a
minimum chance of transcription errors.
Plain language is important for two reasons. First, by using a clear
concise writing style you tell your potential employer you know how to
write - this is important. Secondly, the first viewing of your resume will probably be by
someone who is not a nurse so they won't be moved by the fact that you
can single handedly care for MSOF pts. on IABP, CVVH and HFJV. They will
be moved if they can see quickly that you are a critical care nurse with
5 years of current experience. Databases are much the same as clerical
workers, they will be asked to identify a limited number of keywords,
nothing else will register.
Learn to use keywords. This is much more difficult than it sounds
because nursing, beyond its capacity for making up new and often
nonsensical words, also likes to change generally accepted terms. For
example, once upon a time, patients after an operation went to the
recovery room. This term lacked precision so it became the post
anaesthetic recovery room or PAR and now to make sure we kept up with
the times we now have the post anaesthetic care unit or PACU. All three
terms are still in current use, and yes, the people working in the area
regardless of its name still do the same job. The best way to identify
keywords is by reading lots of job ads for your area of interest or
expertise and identify the most frequently occurring terms.
Building your working resume
To make your online job search more productive it pays to prepare
what I call a working resume. A working resume is a text file that
contains a series of stock phrases describing key experiences, summary
statements, a detailed work history and educational qualifications. The
purpose of making a working resume is to allow you to quickly apply for
jobs both on and off line without having to painfully retype the same
information.
The working resume is an exercise in function over form, it is the
repository for all of your accrued knowledge and experience even though
only certain parts will be used in any one application. The document can be
broken up under six major headings;
- Personal Data
- Keywords
- Summary Lines
- Professional Experience
- Employment History
- Education and Credentials
Personal data is exactly that name, address and phone number.
Keywords as discussed earlier are those terms employers consistently
refer to in job ads. You want them available near the top of your
working resume so you can clip them and do a search and replace in the
body of your resume based on an potential employers preference, i.e. PAR
vs. PACU. Don't put a keywords list on your actual resume or
application.
Summary lines are those bones you put at the top of a resume to whet
their appetite. Usually phrased like; "Experienced nurse
manager" or " Advanced practioner in Critical Care". Cook
up as many as are necessary to reflect the best of all your experience.
Remember you only copy and pate the ones most relevant to the job you
are applying for.
Professional experience is where you flesh out that bone you tossed
them as a summary line. Quantify your specific experience; "Managed
team of 20 full time nursing staff" or "Fiscal accountability
for 3 million dollar budget".
Employment history should be a complete chronological listing of your
work history account for any breaks in employment by listing what you
were doing in that period. On your working resume also list the
employment reference for each job as some on line forms now request that
information
Education and credentials should itemize all education,
degrees/diplomas held and continuing education activities.
Each piece of data from each of these sections should be on a separate
line this makes it easier and faster to copy and paste together a
resume.
Remember to always print a copy of your online application or resume,
there is nothing worse than getting called for an interview and not remembering
what you had said in your application.
A note on privacy
Be cautious about how you give out personal information. There is
usually no benefit to completing an online resume with a job board, the
information is mostly used to attract employers to buy paid advertisements
on their site and chances are the employer will still ask you to submit
a resume anyway. Use the job boards to shop for a job but apply directly
to the individual employer. Most job boards do little more than promise
not to sell your personal information to someone else. There is no
disclosure about whether or not they tell employers how many jobs you've
applied for in the past or how many positions you are currently a
candidate for. Agencies and Job Boards are loyal to the people paying
the bills, so when they let you post your resume for free ask yourself
what's in it for them.
Questions, comments or personal anecdotes. Send them to me at baddison@canadianrn.com.
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