I was delighted to receive a review copy of Susan Ireland’s new edition of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Perfect Resume” because frankly, I needed a refresher. Plus, I have followed Susan on Twitter and her blog and I knew she shares high quality info online so I was excited to see what she would say in her book.
I was not disappointed. Susan does some great teaching in this book. She starts where it all should start, figuring out what job you want next and the keywords that go with it. People often want to jump right to the look of the resume and finding a template. That is not an awful thing except that it often results in a person getting in a mode of doing what everyone else is doing and blandly listing responsibilities. Most importantly by starting with keywords first and encouraging you to customize a resume for each vacancy announcement you respond to, Susan is teaching a critical strategy that is extremely relevant for your resume to compete well and rise to the top for interview consideration.
From there, Susan moves on to resume format and details each section of the resume one-by-one sharing her expertise thoroughly yet succinctly, and giving lots of example resumes to boot. In parts 3 and 4 of the book, you get other important pieces of the resume puzzle like cover letters, thank you notes, and how to get a resume and portfolio online to take advantage of web technology in your job search.
Tagged with: book reviews • resume writing
Filed under: Job Search
