Career Coach: Polishing Your Resume During The Pandemic
CHICAGO (CBS)-- More than 30 million people have filed for unemployment since the coronavirus shutdowns started.
CBS 2 is Working For Chicago and serving as a Career Coach by offering real-time advice on how to re-enter the workforce.
Career coach Lynee Alves is helping with resumes and providing the resume layout dos and don'ts. She is the president of the company Interview Like An Expert.
"There are a lot of programs out there that you can access online that give you layouts with columns and headers, those are just difficult to read, they don't flow," She said. "It's really important to have a text-based resume that has a pleasing layout, easy to read, that can easily be scanned by the applicant training software."
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Alves said putting an objective at the top of a resume is outdated. Instead, she recommends starting with a professional summary, highlighting some of your key strengths and skills to give a "wow factor" right out of the gate.
"One thing people ask me about is how many years of experience should I put on my resume," Alves said. "I really don't want to have age discrimination but, the rule of thumb is that you really don't list much more than 20-to-25 years of experience with dates attached."
For jobs you have to leave off, she said it's okay to simply list other skills you gained in those jobs. When listing education, she said you can put the name of the college, city and state and the degree you earned. She said to leave out when you attended.
If you're facing the challenge of trying to make a job transition with job titles and experience on your resume that do not match the roles you are applying for, Alves has advice.
"You're really going to highlight where your strengths are and your experience is and take it from there," she said. "If you've been a stay-at-home mom, you just put on there what you can put on there. If you've done volunteer experience that would be relevant to the work you'd be doing or if you did part time work that relevant to the work you're pursuing."
Avers said the biggest mistake people make is creating a resume that reads like a job description. She recommends adding something unique about your skills or experience.
