Formatting A Career Change ResumeWritten by Ann Baehr
I'M CHANGING CAREERS - HOW DO I FORMAT MY RESUME? The best resume format to use is combination resume. This resume format is not chronological nor functional. It combines both! It is extremely flexible and allows you to use strategies in a way that would normally be considered wrong. The difference between combination format and chronological format is that chronological format resume is very easy to follow. The hiring manager will typically start to read chronological resume at bottom of work history or professional experience section (heading depends on your career level) and will continue reading his or her way up towards top to trace your career history. If there are employment gaps, it will be obvious because it is difficult to hide breaks in employment using this resume format. This is why most hiring managers prefer chronological resume format. It is easy to read and leaves little to imagination. This can be a great advantage (marketing tool) if you have been in same type of position because it shows continuity and progression in your industry. But what happens when you've held different types of positions across several industries? Some reasons for gaps in employment or holding too many/unrelated jobs include raising children, caring for a family member, illness, returning to college, corporate downsizing or merger, joining military, and difficulty finding work for long stretches of time because of a tight job market or weak resume! Hey, things happen. That’s life! You can’t worry about past. It’s time to think about future. So, first thing you will need to do is toss your old resume. It will not help you to change your career. It’s time to make a fresh start! First, create a resume that clearly indicates at top what type of position you are seeking. Include a career summary section that highlights where you've been in your career, being careful to only mention what would be of most interest to this particular company. Emphasize your transferable experience and skills that match qualifications of position (if there is a job ad, study it and do your
| | HOW HR WORKS TO GET THE JOB DONEWritten by Ann Baehr
HOW HR WORKS TO GET THE JOB DONEHuman Resources is just what it says: resources for humans – within workplace! Its main objective is to meet organizational needs of company it represents and needs of people hired by that company. In short, it is hub of organization serving as a liaison between all concerned. Depending on size of company, HR Department might be called Personnel with a manageable workforce that can be handled by a personnel manager and a small staff. For larger, more complex organizations with hundreds of departments and divisions, task is much more demanding, taking on a life of its own. Some companies have more than one HR Department - Corporate and Union. For example, a food service industry might have a Corporate HR Department that oversees “white collared” employees and an HR Department that oversees “blue collar” workforce with an emphasis on labor relations. With such diverse needs, organization will institute these two HR Departments to manage unique needs of both union and non-union employees. Some of many core functions of Human Resources function involves following: Organizational Development: To ensure its success, a company must establish a hierarchal reporting system. Picture an organizational chart with boxes representing each position starting at top with first and single-most important being highest-ranking role. Following lines, more boxes are branched off to define each department head and their direct reports. As company expands, so will this chart. The funnel of responsibility is critical to efficiency of a smoothly operating business entity in which there is a clearly defined understanding of who is responsible for what. This is what HR does for a company. They provide consultation to a company’s management team to identify what company’s core business and culture is about, and proceeds to plan and map company’s organizational infrastructure to support those needs. Employee Recruitment and Selection Process: There are many steps to recruiting and selecting qualified employees. First, a department head must inform HR manager of an opening in their department. Then HR manager must obtain job description to formulate a Job Description Sheet for publication either internally, publicly, or both. Then HR must field (many) responses to that job announcement to weed out qualified from unqualified applicants. Once that is completed, interview process must be coordinated. This is a full time job! If one job ad generates 80 responses, there’s a good chance that only 10 applicants are highly qualified for position. If department’s hiring manager were to interview other 70 less-than-qualified applicants, their department would come to a complete standstill because there would be no time for anything else! That’s where HR, a.k.a. Fort Knox, comes in. They prepare job description, contact newspaper, run ad, field calls, faxes, and emails, compile a list of potential candidates from dozens of in-coming resumes, submit their list of potential candidates to department’s hiring manager for approval and selection, contact chosen candidates to set up preliminary interviews, and interview candidates! Yes, that’s right. Preliminary interviews! Although most interviews are with hiring manager or their associates, not all applicants get to meet with department’s hiring manager right away. It is not uncommon for a company to filter out those who fail to impress HR manager first. For those select few who make it through, HR manager schedules interviews between department’s hiring manager and potential candidates, and follows up with hiring process to establish new hire with company. Not unlike screening process for American Idol, a job seeker needs to perform their best to impress “judges.” Employee Training & Development: As a company and requirements of a position evolve, a company needs to take certain measures to ensure a highly skilled workforce is in place. The Human Resources Department oversees skills development of company’s workforce, acting as an in-house training center to coordinate training programs either on-site, off-site, or in field. This might include on-going company training, outside training seminars, or even college, in which case an employee will receive tuition reimbursement upon earning a passing grade.
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