Louise Fletcher is the President of Blue Sky Resumes (www.blueskyresumes.com), a resume-writing service specializing in marketing, media and entertainment. She is a frequent contributor to job search publications such as Monster.com, The Ladders, Net-Temps, Job Bank USA and Employment Spot, and her work is featured in ...
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The Number One Secret to Writing a Great Resume by Louise Fletcher - Feb, 2010 Search the web for ‘resume help’ or ‘resume advice’ and you’ll find lots of pearls of wisdom. All of which are true. But all of which are ultimately misleading. Most resume advice articles will tell you to focus on achievements not responsibilities, or to use lots of action-oriented words, or to be sure you communicate your ‘personal brand.’ I’ve written these articles myself and I meant well, I really did! But all of this ... |
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Is Your Resume a Used Car Salesman? by Louise Fletcher - Feb, 2010 Don’t we all dread buying a car? The hype, the evasions, the glib sales pitch...it all just reeks of desperation. Hiring a new employee can often feel the same way. One resume after another, all filled with hype and smooth sales talk, all with the faint whiff of desperation. By glib sales talk, I mean cliched ‘resume speak.’ The stuff you see on everybody else’s resume. Like this... Accomplished 10-year veteran with e... |
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How Much Should an Executive Resume Cost? by Louise Fletcher - Feb, 2010 Shopping for a new resume is not like shopping for a new car. There’s no ‘blue book’ to tell you what you should be paying and it’s hard to find even a ballpark figure. This results in confusion. As someone who writes a lot of executive resumes, I’ve found that client expectations are all over the map. Some expect a resume to cost $100-$200. Some are expecting something over $1,000. And with this much uncertainty, it can b... |
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How to Get Through a Big Change Without Having a Cow by Louise Fletcher - Feb, 2010 I haven’t blogged for quite a while. That’s not because I ran out of things to say (My husband will confirm that I never run out of things to say) or because I just got lazy and spent the last month eating chocolate and watching reruns of The Golden Girls. I haven’t blogged because our site was being redesigned. Once the blog content had been moved, I had to wait for the new site to go live before adding any new posts. A fe... |
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It’s All in a Name...or Is It? by Louise Fletcher - Jan, 2010 Question: I am in job search mode, and have decided to take the opportunity to transition into another field. It is a role I have performed in the past but not titled. Advised by professionals/experts in the field, that it is feasible. However, although my targeted resume has gotten to the hiring managers, and even some interviews, I do not get offers because I lack experience. How do I find the right balance? I don’t want to ... |
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You Had Me...and Then You Totally Lost Me by Louise Fletcher - Dec, 2009 I’m watching 60 Minutes and they have on a really moving piece about a small town in Ohio, and they interview this guy who’s probably in his late 40s/early 50s and he’s explaining how he used to have a great job managing a hundred people, but then his company shut down and he can’t find work. There’s a video of him as a senior executive a year ago, and then they show him now, and he’s not clean shaven and he looks older and ti... |
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Want to Find a Job? Pull a Susan Boyle. by Louise Fletcher - Dec, 2009 Earlier this year, Susan Boyle became famous for being able to sing well even though she was neither young nor pretty (apparently we find this surprising!). Simon Cowell rolled his eyes when she first walked on stage to sing on his TV talent show The X-Factor, although he soon warmed to her when she began to sing. A few months later, he was in the US filming the US version of his talent show, American Idol. As the season ad... |
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So Much Bad Resume Advice, So Little Time by Louise Fletcher - Oct, 2009 Every now and then, one of my clients sends their resume in to another service for a critique. When they send it to some places, they get an honest response - usually saying 'this is great and you don't need any more help.' But when they send it to one of the big resume mills (you know, Career Builder, The Ladders, Monster etc), they invariably get back a long critique telling them the resume needs a complete rewrite and offer... |
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Are Big Words Better? by Louise Fletcher - Oct, 2009 Do you prefer the word ‘reduced’ to the word ‘cut’? Given the choice, would you use “generated savings of...” or “saved”? I ask because recently I edited some website copy for someone who preferred big words to short ones and long, complex sentences to concise ones. I’m the opposite. I think simplicity is the key to good communication and I practice it all the time in my writing. I don’t like using three words when on... |
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How Much Time Would You Spend? by Louise Fletcher - Sep, 2009 Interesting experience this week with a client who signed up for a new resume. We’ll call him Eric. Eric is a high-level financial services executive who’s currently employed, but looking to make a move. A week after receiving our proprietary questionnaire, Eric called to say he didn’t have the time to complete it and would have to cancel the contract and request a refund. Now I’m a big advocate of our questionnaire - I... |
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