Trying to land a job out of college has changed in the last decade. In some ways it's easier to find the best career path, but other factors have increased the challenge. Christy Palfy, recruiting manager for Progressive Insurance, gives listeners inside knowledge of the best ways to find a great job to start their career. Christy shares her personal knowledge and experience, having hired college graduates and countless tal...

Want to distinguish your leadership brand among competing candidates? Then ditch the boring language you’ve seen on other executive resumes. Just because other resumes (both professionally created and self-written) employ a blend of monotonous, overused words doesn’t mean you have to follow suit. Shake things up and inject some power into your personal brand message by refusing to add these mundane descri...

Companies with new budgets and new demands for products and services start posting new openings in the first quarter of the new year (and some companies have already begun). Is your executive resume prepared for a 2017 job search? Let’s state the obvious: your executive resume should be ready to go at all times, even if you’re not actively seeking a new position. You don’t want to miss out on a great...

The other day I was working with a client who started a comment with “I don’t like to brag but….” I laughed and told her that her resume was one place where she should never worry about bragging. A little bit of bragging goes a long way in making your resume stand out from the competition. What type of bragging is most beneficial on a resume? Exceeding goals. Your company set a goal of a 5% in...

As you’ve probably already heard, executing the art of compelling resume writing can be the difference between landing a dream job and simply crash landing into a sea of comparably boring applications. Maintaining a professional tone while avoiding the dreaded bland zone can be a delicate balance. To create a compelling resume, start with the basics and consider the ABC’s of resume writing that will have empl...

Who wrote your resume? At first glance, that may seem like an odd question for a job interviewer or recruiter to ask an executive job candidate. Even if it’s not the first item on the interview agenda, however, reports from the interviewing front indicate that it comes up often enough to be worth a few words of advice. There’s good news. The question may seem to come from left field, but handling it is str...

Anyone who has job searched in a technical field—engineering, IT, software development and so on—knows about unrealistic expectations. Many job postings, advertisements and calls from recruiters involve a list of desired technical skills that could take two lifetimes to accomplish. Yet, you still need all the required skills for that exact job posting. This level of unrealistic expectations is just one way th...

Before you sign up with any resume writing firm, you should ask these five essential questions: Can I see examples of your work? Chances are, if you do not like what you see in the past examples, you will not like the resume they prepare for you. How long have you been writing resumes? While length of time as a resume writer is no guarantee of quality, you do not want to trust your resume to someone who is comple...

If you “Google” the phrase “resumes are dead,” you’ll see a long list of items covering a wide range of views on the subject. More to the point, I think, is the question, “Is your resume DOA (dead on arrival)?” Why? Experience tells me that resumes in one form or another are likely to be around for quite a while yet, but that doesn’t matter if yours is lifeless when an empl...

If 2017 is anything like 2016, we’ll be bombarded with sound bites, powerful memes, and intense communications messages. And by incorporating these concepts into your resume (even in a conservative field), you can use the same methods to make a powerful impression on employers. No matter your industry or position, employers and recruiters will be performing a fast scan of your executive resume to get a feel for yo...