Internet Resume Service- A Different Approach

Internet Resume Service is a division of Dixie Search Associates (DixieSearch.com) and DSAid. Dixie Search Associates was founded in 1977 and has more than 30 years of experience in candidate counseling, resume evaluation, resume development and executive search.

Internet Resume Service was developed to give you access to that wealth of experience. You will benefit from valuable insights and a clear philosophy of what works in the development of your resume.

We are different. Maybe that difference will work for you and maybe it won’t. We invite you to explore our site to find out what sets us apart from other resume writing services.

Keep in mind that we look at 300 to 400 resumes each day. We know what works and what doesn’t. We look forward to having the opportunity to share our insights with you. Sending out an ineffective resume is a waste of your time. Maximize your job search efforts with a resume that fully outlines your experiences, successes and unique skills.

You will find our philosophy slightly different than most resume writing services. Our years of experience have caused that shift in point of view. We understand that not everyone will agree. If you don’t, then we aren’t the company for you. However, if you’ve been sending your resume out without results, maybe a different approach is just what you need.

Tell the Truth: We believe a resume should be truthful. Does that really even need to be said? Unfortunately, yes. If you don’t have a degree, don’t say you do. Don’t cover up a gap in employment by “fudging” the dates of the jobs before and after. Don’t give yourself a promotion in title. These things will come back to haunt you. Why take that risk?

Show Me the Numbers: In other words, quantify, quantify, quantify. We believe what sets a resume and therefore a candidate apart is their ability to quantify their experience and success. Read a great example of this here on our website. You have only a matter of seconds to grab a hiring authority’s attention, don’t make them play the “what does this person do” game. That game will land your resume in the trash. Instead, tell them what you do and how you do it better than the other candidate.

Foo Foo is a No No: As we said above, a resume should present your background in an accurate and quantifiable way. Don’t let that get lost by overdoing the formatting – fonts, lines, shading, boxes. All that foo foo distracts from what the employer is really looking for – Experience! In the worst cases, it can actually make the resume difficult to read. Now we aren’t saying you’re going to get a resume from us in plain text format. We’re just saying that we like to focus the majority of our efforts on discovering your talents, expertise and accomplishments. Then we present it in an attractive and clean way that grabs a hiring authority’s attention because it SAYS SOMETHING OF VALUE to them. That’s what gets an interview and a job!

Reality Check: The reality of a job search is that you are not qualified for every single job you see advertised. Sorry. We know that’s not the popular view today, but we warned you that our philosophy was slightly different. To make the most of your efforts, do a reality check. Seriously evaluate whether you have the qualifications the company says they need. We are all for “selling yourself,” but we believe there are real limits to that endeavor which are grounded in reality.

What is Success??

To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

The bottom line is that the definition of success and a satisfying career is different for every person. One single how-to-do technique might be an excellent avenue for one individual and a total waste of time for most other people.

So where does that leave you? It leaves you standing in the on-deck circle getting ready to come up to bat without really knowing what game you are playing. All of the things you might do at this point in time would probably be a waste of time if you have not done your homework. An old saying goes that you have to cover one base at a time. I am suggesting that you cannot cover one base at a time until you first get up to bat and understand the game. And in order to understand the game you first have to define in your own terms what the definition of success and career are.

Everyone has their own best way of meditating and thinking and coming to a decision. If you have a technique that works for you, use it – invest half a day or more in thinking through how you are going to define success and career. If you do not have a method that works, try the “Six R” program that is outlined in the steps below.

Regard. The concerns, desires and feelings of those who are close to you must be analyzed. Have extended, very serious discussions with all of the principal people and family members in your life – your spouse, parents, children, friends and respected associates. Let them know that their input is very important in your deliberations. Don’t be afraid to take some notes.

Read. Designate a number of weeks where all of your outside reading will concern work on self analysis, evaluation and direction. Take notes.

Research. Talk with knowledgeable people and again read about any area or discipline that might be of interest to you. Don’t be afraid to call and make an appointment to talk to someone in a particular industry who is doing something that is of interest to you. People love talking about themselves and what they do and can give you insights that are available nowhere else. Take notes.

Retreat. Get away, take at least half a day, preferably a whole weekend, where you can be by yourself and think. Stay away from the phone and interruptions. Go to the mountains or the seashore where you can be alone.

Review. Take all of your notes and go back over all that you have read and think about the discussions that you have had. Look into the conflicting statements and viewpoints and then stack them up against your own personal interests and desires.

Reach a Decision. Your decision should not be set in stone. What is necessary is a general direction and focus to your efforts. What you are developing is a tract and a philosophy to defining “success” and ‘career” in terms of your life, your aspirations and your happiness. Do not forget to include all aspects of your life.

What will you have? Definitions. Write them down; come up with a purpose and a goal.
Through this exercise, you are looking to abstractly take feeling and knowledge that you have concerning (1) what you have done professionally; (2) what you can do based on your professional, personal and educational skills; and (3) what you would like to do, and combine all three components into your definitions of “career” and “success.”

The key point here is that you decide for yourself what you want out of your life before you begin looking for it and working for it. I am not so naïve to not know that unfortunately there are many considerations that may not allow you to do what you really want to do the most – things like paying for college educations, older parents who must be looked after precluding relocation, and various other obligations. Even if you do not put as much effort as I suggest you do into the project, at least sit down and in your mind formulate a plan to which you can refer.

In effect, we are talking about you, your family and the rest of your life. There is truly nothing more important in this world.

References Can Break The Best Deal

One of the most important items to prepare before you get to the interview are your references, both personal and professional. I have known many people who have had multiple in-depth interviews with one company after another and not come up with the job because of something that was being said by one of their references.

In this day and age when hiring the right employee is so very important to the profit and loss of a company, references are checked more often than you would believe. A recent survey revealed that in general they were checked over 70% of the time, and in cases where the position paid over $50,000, they were checked in 95% or more cases.

We recommend a four-step process to develop good references:

1) Decide whom you will use. Choose at least three professional and two personal references. One of the professional references should be your supervisor in your last job. Even if you do not supply this person as a reference, you know that the employer is going to call them anyway. (In cases where you are still employed, you need to identify someone who was formerly with your firm or who is aware of your search to whom interested parties might speak.) Your other professional references can be carefully chosen to show you in the best possible light. If you are going to have trouble with the reference from your recent supervisor, make sure one of the other two is from your most recent company so that there can be a counter-balancing influence. Your personal references should be your pastor or banker or an individual with whom you are active in civic activities to complement and emphasize your outside and personal strengths.

2) Write down what you would like each of your references to say. Emphasize strengths; do not overlook any negatives, but state them in the best possible manner. For example, if you were fired, “We had a philosophical difference in opinion on how an account should be handled and decided to part ways.” Include how they know of you, your accomplishments, skills, knowledge of your personal habits and traits, and why you left the company.

3) Meet personally, if possible (if not, talk to them on the phone), with each of your references and discuss the reference you have written out and would like for them to give when asked. If they have a problem with any part of it – discuss it; change the wording so they will be more comfortable. Do not get into an argument with the individual; just make sure that you know what is going to be said. If you come away from that discussion unsure of how the person will speak about you by all means find an alternative reference.

4) Mediate any bad that might come from your references by letting your interviewer know in advance what they are going to hear and why. For example: If your former supervisor is going to say that you were terminated because you were never able to finish a project on time, say (if it’s true) that the reason for this is that projects were constantly being thrown upon you with conflicting deadlines and changing parameters which were impossible to meet. By getting your side in first, you can take a lot of the damage out of that type of statement.

5) The real problem in the process is not being able to ever know what is being said about you.

If you are running into roadblocks go back and try and find out where the problem is. Many years ago I had a candidate who had been unemployed entirely too long for their skill set. We did his references and found out that one of the references that he had thought would be his best was giving him a reference that was torpedoing every job opportunity that he had. This person was a Senior Vice President and his reference while positive included a statement of “I cannot comment for legal reasons about the incident that occurred while he was in our employ”. This man was at least three levels above the position that our candidate had held and he was using him simply because of the stature of his position. Most companies hearing that type of statement would quickly eliminate a candidate, as they are more afraid of the unknown than the known. It turned out when we asked him about his relationship with the Senior VP our candidate said that he knew him very well as he had been, at one point, engaged to the man’s youngest daughter. Apparently breaking the big boss’s little girl’s heart was the motivation for breaking the former suitor’s career. Without spelling out the reasons we suggested he offer a different reference and he was in a wonderful new job within a month.

Universities and Social Security Numbers

There is one question that we ask applicants that invariably gets them very nervous –What is your social security number? In this day of identity theft people are rightfully extremely cautious when giving out that information.

Why do we ask it? Well unfortunately virtually every college and university in the United States uses the social security number to catalog their graduates and they ask us for it in order to verify degrees. Believe it or not they also almost always ask for a birth date too!

An important part of our referrals to our client companies is a verification of any academic credentials that you have worked so very hard to achieve. We have all read and heard of the many people who claim to have college degrees that they have not earned. As we do not do the confirmation on a preemptive basis we do not need the number until we are ready to move forward but please understand why we and other recruiters ask you for that extremely confidential information. We keep all of our records in a secure locked environment with appropriate security systems and alarms in place. We do not commit the number to any type of on line data system or in any in house computer.

Dating for a New Job

During waking hours you probably spend as much time at work as you do with your spouse so is it any wonder that there is a dating and falling in love aspect to searching for a new job? Mind you it is not appropriate to hold your potential new boss’ hand or expect a goodbye kiss on the first interview but outside of that there are a number of parallels that may help you make the right decision if you are contemplating a divorce from your current job and acquiring a new “mate”.

We, as professional recruiters, are adept at matching a candidate’s job skill set with a company’s specifications. We can also do a good job of evaluating a position to see if it would be a good career choice for an applicant. That’s where our expertise ends and the “dating process” begins.

Like a first date you want to begin the interviews by putting your best foot forward. Your dress and demeanor should be at the top of their game. Chemistry is from this point on everything in the process. You will be called upon to discuss your experience and will learn about the opportunity but, in fact, the elephant in the room is a discovery about whether you would work well into the synergies of the group and company culture. They are trying to decide whether to invite you into their business family and you have to decide if it is a family you wish to marry into.

We can certainly carry the analogy to the extreme but the final critical parallel is that if you receive an offer or proposal, if you will, you will need to decide whether or not to accept. I suggest that you think back on what it was like to fall in love and have on those glorious rosy glasses. Your significant other could do no wrong, was absolutely perfect, floated on air and lived in your dreams. You need a similar feeling about the company you have interviewed with and job that has been offered to you. You need to feel that it is the perfect job that you would “die for”.

Because……..guess what. You will find things out about the person you fell in love with after marriage. Things like they prefer not to shave on weekends, or that they leave clothes on the floor, are not keen on doing the dishes, leave the paper in shambles after reading it, etc.. But love overcomes all and you will live happily ever after. So with the job you will discover things like personalities and habits of co-workers, company policies and rituals that you don’t care for and a boss who may have some idiosyncrasies that you did not notice during the “dating”. But your love of the position and company will sustain you, allow you to overlook the mundane and you will have a long successful career.

If you go into a relationship or a job and have doubts, if you make concessions and settle for something that may not feel right to you, if the chemistry is just not there, then the discoveries will exacerbate your concerns and you will be destined to have an unhappy relationship or job. Understand the process in this manner and you will be certain to find happiness in your home and profession.