The results are in! Resume Format Rundown

The results are in! Resume Format Rundown Last week I introduced you to Loft Resumes, a service that provides custom-designed resumes to job seekers in a variety of industries. I also provided sample formats from some of The Essay Expert’s successful resumes. I then asked you to vote on which you preferred. Here’s what the survey looked like for those of you who missed it   Id still love your input! Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the worlds leading questionnaire tool. Thank you to the 25 people who responded to my survey! Here’s the tally: Do you prefer the designs of Lofts designs or The Essay Experts? 1 person preferred Loft Resume’s designs. [This person was in the insurance industry] 17 people (68%) preferred The Essay Expert’s designs. 1 person liked both equally. [This person was in the IT industry. Note that The Essay Expert has some   other formats you might like better!] 1 person did not like either one. [This response came from an attorney. I agree none of the formats presented would be appropriate for an attorney. For attorneys we use much more straightforward designs.] 5 people chose â€Å"Other† and provided the following feedback: ATS Concerns Essay Experts designs are better, but I fear the inserted box and other graphics might skew an Applicant Tracking System preventing the information from being read and stored, costing an applicant the job by not registering properly within its system. If physically scanned, the Essay Expert is more professional and provides information employers want. [from a career professional/resume writer] My response: It is true that text boxes and graphics can skew an ATS system. After posting my article, I was contacted by a representative of Loft Resumes who stated that their resumes do well in Applicant Tracking Systems as well. I would have to test a resume myself to know if that is an accurate statement (Loft does not advertise that their resumes are ATS-friendly). Keep in mind that every job seeker must have TWO resumes: one for the computer robots and one for humans. Hiring managers, in my experience, really love The Essay Expert’s resumes. I do not have any information on their response to Loft’s designs. Too Dense I dont like either one, they are both too dense with info, the eye doesnt know where to go to quickly pick up the pertinent details. [from someone in the High Tech industry] My response: Thanks for your feedback. Thankfully the hiring managers who looked at The Essay Expert’s resumes appreciated something in the resumes, since both of these candidates got job offers for their targeted positions! Neither was in High Tech, and we would certainly use a different format for a high-tech position. Industry-Dependent Design It greatly depends on the industry/position. If in creative industry would prefer LOFT.   AND I think Lofts resumes are a little too designy the design has more impact than the information contained within it. But Lofts could be very good for people in the arts, film production, etc. My response: In fields like marketing and sales, you might be right that LOFT resumes could be viewed more favorably. In a field like graphic design, of course, it would be preferable for the candidate him or herself to design the resume! Its position AND audience specific. My response: I couldn’t agree more. We use different looks and feels for every industry we work with. As stated above, if the audience is a hiring manager a highly formatted resume is generally viewed favorably; recruiters hate them. Even The Essay Experts samples here might be too â€Å"fancy† for an accountant, although two responders in Accounting and Finance stated they were very likely to purchase an Essay Expert resume and very unlikely to purchase a LOFT resume. One responder whose industry is aerospace/defense wrote, â€Å"The Loft’s [formats] would never work in my industry.† And I received one response from a person in â€Å"consulting† who stated he or she would be very likely to purchase from The Essay Expert and very unlikely to purchase from Loft. I like LOFT designs for their uniqueness. They are probably appropriate for someone in more in a creative field versus an executive position. I like Essay Experts designs for their clean, uncluttered appearance. They are easy to read and probably more scannable than the LOFT design. My response: Thank you! I believe I addressed this comment above. â€Å"How likely would you be to purchase a resume design by Loft Resumes, The Essay Expert, or Another Service?† Overall, my readers (who I admit might be predisposed toward resumes by The Essay Expert) are much more likely to purchase a resume designed by The Essay Expert than they are to purchase a resume from Loft or another service. It was also striking to me that 50% were very likely or somewhat likely to purchase a resume from The Essay Expert. A gift to you! Thank you for your support, and if you responded to this survey and are considering purchasing a resume package from The Essay Expert, I will be happy to offer you a 20% discount on any package (maximum discount $100), offer good through April 30, 2012. Note you must complete the survey to qualify for this offer! This is your reward for being a loyal reader and participant in my interactive media opportunities and for reading to the end of this lengthy article! Category:Resume TipsBy Brenda BernsteinApril 16, 2012 2 Comments Rebecca Robin says: April 26, 2012 at 3:39 pm I did not find Preptel to be particularly valuable. For another opinion, I shared the site with a friend who is the head of recruiting for a 900 employee organization. She agreed. While the concept is wonderful, the execution leaves much to be desired. Many of the suggestions to improve keyword matches were nonsensical and words that were important matches were ignored. For example, the program missed the term CAD (computer aided design) but picked up plan and lost the connection between them both. A site I do like is wordle.net, but I use it to get an impression of what words are used most frequently in a job description. I might exchange the words highlighted in wordle with those in my resume to get a closer match. Thank you for your posts, I find them quite helpful. Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: July 17, 2012 at 4:14 pm Thank you for your comment Rebecca. The issue is that of companies who use ATS systems, about half of them enter the desired keywords by hand, thus making sense to a human, and half let the computers determine the keywords. For that second half, unfortunately the keywords are often non-sensical. Thats why a program like Preptel can be useful! Im glad you are getting value from my posts and appreciate your feedback! Log in to Reply

The Founding of Thebes

The Founding of Thebes The founder of Thebes is known as Cadmus or Kadmos. He was a descendant of the union of Io and Zeus in bull shape. Cadmus father was a Phoenician king named Agenor and his mother was named Telephassa or Telephone. Cadmus had two brothers, one named Thasos, and the other Cilix, who became king of Cilicia. They had a sister named Europa, who was also carried off by a bullZeus, again. The Search for Europa Cadmus, Thasos, and their mother went to look for Europa and stopped in Thrace where Cadmus met his future bride Harmonia. Taking Harmonia with them, they then went to the oracle at Delphi for a consultation. The Delphic Oracle told Cadmus to look for a cow with a lunar sign on either side, to follow where the cow went, and to make sacrifices and establish a town where the bull lay down. Cadmus was also to destroy the guard of Ares. Boeotia and Ares' Dragon After finding the cow, Cadmus followed it to Boeotia, a name based on the Greek word for cow. Where it lay down, Cadmus made sacrifices and started to settle. His people needed water, so he sent out scouts, but they failed to return because they had been killed by Ares dragon who guarded the fountain. It was up to Cadmus to slay the dragon, so with divine assistance, Cadmus slew the dragon using a stone, or perhaps a hunting spear. Cadmus Founds Thebes Athena, who helped with the slaying, advised Cadmus that he should plant the teeth of the dragon. Cadmus, with or without Athenas help, sowed the teeth-seeds. From them emerged fully armed warriors of Ares who would have turned on Cadmus had Cadmus not thrown stones at them making it appear that they were attacking one another. Ares men then fought with each other until only 5 worn out warriors survived, who came to be known as Spartoi the sown men who then helped Cadmus found Thebes. Thebes was the name of the settlement. Harmonia was a daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. The conflict between Ares and Cadmus was resolved by the marriage of Cadmus and Ares daughter. The event was attended by all the gods. Offspring of Cadmus and Harmonia Among the children of Harmonia and Cadmus was Semele, who was the mother of Dionysus, and Agave, mother of Pentheus. When Zeus destroyed Semele and inserted the embryonic Dionysus in his thigh, the palace of Harmonia and Cadmus burned. So Cadmus and Harmonia left and traveled to Illyria (which they also founded) first handing over the kingship of Thebes to their son Polydorus, father of Labdacus, father of Laius, father of Oedipus. Founding Legends Athena reserved some of the dragons teeth to give to Jason.Thebes was an Egyptian city, too. One story of the founding of Thebes says that Cadmus gave the Greek city the same name his father had just given to the Egyptian city.Instead of Polydorus, Pentheus is sometimes named as the successor of Cadmus.Cadmus is credited with bringing the alphabet/writing to Greece.The continent of Europe was named for Europa, the sister of Cadmus. This is the background for the first of three sets of stories from Greek mythology about Thebes. The other two are the sets of stories surrounding the House of Laius, especially Oedipus and those around the conception of Dionysus. One of the more enduring figures in the Theban legends is the long-lived, transgendering Tiresias the seer. Source Ovids Narcissus (Met. 3.339-510): Echoes of Oedipus, by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos; The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 121, No. 1 (Spring, 2000), pp. 129-147/