Greetings loyal users and guests!

ResumeBucketBlog.com celebrated it’s first birthday on Novemeber 27th, 2009! Not only are we still quite alive and kicking but it’s amazing to think how far we’ve come… And we are just getting warmed up! We want to thank every single one of our readers and subscribers for the positive e-mails, especially the ones about getting that call-back after applying the no-B.S. tips our blog has been providing for free over this past year. Those of you new to our site should definitely check out our archived blog posts for quality tips and information about the job hunt.

As some of you know ResumeBucket.com works closely with one of the top recruiting companies in California, so close in fact that I can bank a paper ball off the CEOs head and into the trashcan! This puts us on the cutting edge enabling us to monitor industry trends in real-time, like what do hiring managers and recruiters really look at on your resume? Or, Resume Writing Tips and How to Interview – just to name a few. These are all questions with constantly changing answers. For instance cover letters are dying fast (to the joy of HR departments everywhere). Unless you are explicitly asked to write one, save your time and some trees (You’ll make Al Gore proud). Use the time you would have been spending on the cover letter to build out an excellent Linkedin.com profile (which we will explaining soon!). It’s 2009! Social Media is your friend, but be sure to use it correctly, another upcoming “How To” blog to look forward too.

Stay tuned. Bookmark us. To celebrate our one year we will be rolling out some major changes to the format and content to make ResumeBucketBlog.com, evolving us to an even more efficient resource!  We’ll be leaking out these changes over the course of this week so stay tuned, and as always, we want to hear from you! What would you like to see here? What type of brick walls have you ran into during your job search? Remember – ResumeBucket.com is all about us helping you for free! It may not be the most profitable business model but we haven’t had a complaint yet!

Heartfelt Thanks from the ResumeBucket team to You,

Upcoming blogs this week:

“Following Up After an Interview”
“Following Up After Submitting a Resume”
“How to Write a Resume version 2.0 – The most detailed crash course online”
“2009 Job Industry Wrap Up: What Have We Learned?”

Your body language may inform some other individual what sort of person you are, your emotions, and frame of mind, since the employer would be seeking out a resourceful and smart worker. Thus, you should know and make note of the bearing keep, movements to impress, and gestures to avoid during the interview.

#1 Introduction
You can show your level of interest as well as self-confidence using handshakes, and you could provide a decent initial opinion too, however there’s instances in which starting a handshake may make you seem overconfident. Extend your arm and point your hand downwards, your palm should be able to touch the palm of your interviewer. When you shake hands, make sure you make eye contact, but not longer than 3 seconds.

#2 Posture
Don’t slouch, no matter if you’re sitting or you’re standing still, as slouching will give the idea of laziness or a lack of confidence. Don’t position on the edge of the chair this will indicate that you’re too tense – just relax into your chair and place your hands upon your lap. Crossing the legs is okay as long as the focus of your body is towards the interviewer.

#3 Expressive
Eye contact is important within a job interview because that shows that you’re honest, sincere, and even confident since a lack of eye contact might indicate that you’re lying or you feel uneasy. When responding, make use of your hands, showing your palm while describing a thing indicates that you are being relaxed, trustworthy, and even assured, plus the interviewer will believe that you know what you are talking about.

#4 Listen
You may display your interest and that you are listening attentively to your interviewer using head motions, nodding is a display that you comprehended or even agreed to what he or she has stated. While there are ideas that you will most likely dislike, nodding is still better rather than arguing and the latter might be the grounds for why you don’t get the job.

#5 Do-not
Avoid placing your hands into your pockets because this can underline your nerves, or can give the interviewer the impression that you might be hiding something from him, or you’re disinterested in getting the position. You can utilize hand movements while speaking, though do not use them frequently since too many movements can distract your interviewer from hearing your answers.

Body language does not always display what you intend to convey or really feel. But, it is an advantage that you understand the gestures that you must utilize or stay away from during a job interview to give a decent impression for that phrase that you long to hear: “Good News, you have got the position!”

Looking for a new career?

Numbers show that the majority of people change careers five to ten times during their lives. Once the initial excitement wears off most employees tend to burn themselves out and go through what’s called a “Midcareer Crisis.”

“Midlife crisis” may be many things — depression, a reassessment,
dissatisfaction, or unease — but a key contributor can be career
issues.”

Other factors such as location, layoffs, and personal issues influence may also impact this decision. While sometimes it is necessary to ‘reinvent’ yourself.. tread carefully because it’s easy to harm relationships, burn  bridges, kill-off networking opportunities, and emp you down the line with a resume which has no specific industry focus and short employment histories.

If you fall into this category you need to focus on presenting yourself to hiring managers as an asset that can fill the role just as well as your competition, most of whom have had experience in tyour potential field for years. The key is being able to associate your past employment history, skills, and qualifications into your new venture.

Four Tips To Transitioning

1. Identify your accomplishments, skills, and expertise that your new venture will expect you to have. Knowing these traits will be your best resource in transferring into a new industry.

2. Extensively research the ins and outs of any new opportunity. Running into an interview blind will fail nine out of ten times. If you don’t have someone in the space to pull information, the Internet is your next and best resource.
3. Combine the the first and second steps above to identify the vital skills and competence you’ll bring to this next opportunity. Establish yourself as confident and valuable resource.

4. Formulate your resume around this information and be ready to elaborate on it during the interview. You will be grilled on it. This is your chance to prove your worth, and where all the above steps come into play.

Using the Internet to promote your resume is now the quickest and most effective ways for employers, hiring managers, and recruiters to discover you. With the internet becoming the new medium for promoting yourself it’s critical that you create a resume with the following in mind; they are looking at hundreds of resumes, it’s imperative that you make your resume stand out.

1. Minimalism is key

Just because Microsoft Word lets you use Clip Art and Symbols doesn’t mean you should. The NUMBER ONE thing that should be in your mind during the creation process is “Is this easy to read?” Employers want to be able find what they are looking for in seconds. Keep it clear, keep it concise, keep it simple.

2. Keywords are your friend

When employers and recruiters are using job search engines to browse resumes they use specific keywords to locate potential candidates. If you list yourself as a software engineer on your resume, but an employer is using the search term ’software developer’ you may get overlooked. A viable solution for these types of jobs (graphic designer/graphic artist) is to pick the most common term and insert the other relevant terms at the very bottom in small text.

3. No one cares about your objectives

You objective is to get a job. Plain and simple. Writing out a paragraph about your future goals and previous life story is almost always looked over. To often a resume gets tossed out because their objectives are a turn off or intimidating; for instance “I want to manage people” or “Eventually I wish to run my own company”. Employers are looking for experience not wishes and dreams, or people who want to use them as a stepping stone. Keep them to yourself.

4. Lead with your most recent job

This is the most important part of your resume and 95% of what the reader cares about. Since you aren’t leading with objective or education (we’ll get to that next) put down your current employment or most recent. The first question you’ll be asked is “Why do you want to leave?” or “Why did you leave?” Save the employer time and answer these questions but be careful, if you are currently employed it may not be the best idea to put your resume online with this information explaining why you no longer want to work for them.

5. Education and Time lines are not for everyone

The only time you should lead with education is if you are still in school or just graduated. The exception here is if you have a Master or PhD from a top tier school. Putting down a junior college or state college you attended fifteen years ago will never help you.
Employment time lines often harm more than help. If you were employed for six months or even two years you will be passed over or at the very least grilled by the interviewer as to why. However this really is determined on a case-to-case basis but more often than not it’s a good idea to leave exclude information.

Graduting with no experience? Follow these 3 student resume steps.

Your diploma, unfortunatly, isn’t a ‘get a job free’ card. All to often graduates have no clue what to include on your resume and cover letter. Unless you have a few extra-curricular activities under your belt, the only things you can list are common part time jobs which most likely involved absolutely nothing relevant to the position you want.

Often the question that comes up is if you are applying for a full time career position, how do you create a resume for a full time career if your only previous experience in the workforce was at a clothing store or fast food joint? It shows you have experience but is it the experience they are looking for? Follow the quick three step guide in this first installment of Student Week at ResumeBucket.

1. Make the layout professional

• Don’t go overboard with fancy fonts, graphics, or a confusing structure. While you may think this makes you look good, it’s painful to read for the employer.
• Keep it simple and easy to read. You can find resume layout examples in our database of sample resumes.

2. Content is key

• Employers and Recruiters don’t care about any part type job you had in high school or college. Unless you moved up to a management/supervisor position, omit this information.
• Instead include any type of extra-curricular activities you may have been involved in on campus, this includes sports, clubs, student body government. Anything to show you were more than just a body who showed up to class then left.
• Write a 2-3 short and concise introduction about yourself and your goals, be careful and don’t make it to wordy. Tailor this to suit the job you are applying for.
• Finish it with any references you have. Many people lie here and get caught. Employers DO check. Make sure to use reputable people and not friends or family remembers.

3. Clean up

• Keep it to a one page. Employers who are looking at a fresh resume don’t expect you to have that much experience in the work force. Padding your resume with trivial information is a turn off to hiring manager reading your resume.
• Most likely your name will be Googled by employers. Make your Facebook or any other social sites that may come up private. You don’t want them seeing your pictures from Friday and Saturday nights. Instead build out a Linkedin.com profile, sign up and post your resume on ResumeBucket.com. Google yourself and see what comes up and work from there.

Post up your comments! We love to help out our users with any questions they have, and if you really want an outstanding resume check out our top tier resume writer.

Free resume samples? Free cover letter samples? Yeah, we got ‘em.

The only one stop website for literally hundreds of free resume samples and free cover letter samples. With the less-than-ideal economic times our world is pushing through, your resume and cover letter are the first tools of the trade for landing yourself that new career path, first job, or getting back into your industry. The first step…

You need to have an industry specific cover letter AND resume.

Now more than ever both your cover letter and resume need to compliment each other and be written flawlessly or you risk getting lost in that dreaded pile of other applicants.

Take advantage of our free, MASSIVE database of resume and cover letter samples.
We cover all our bases when it comes to sample documents for any type of career.

Preview the screen shots below to see what we offer to our users looking for a free cover letter and resume in the Nursing industry:

With an complimentary resume to follow up the cover letter:


Not bad, but if you were looking for something a little different, but still related to the Medical field, just glance at the plethora of free samples ResumeBucket offers just for that niche. Resumes. Cover Letters.

• Free Administrative Assistant Resumes!
• Free Banking Resumes!
• Free Clerical Resumes!
• Free Teacher Resumes!

That’s just a SMALL taste of what we have to offer. ResumeBucket.com houses so many free sample resumes and free sample cover letters, it would take hours to list them all! GO CHECK ‘EM OUT FOR YOURSELF!

Find one of that fits your needs, edit it, use it as a guide to create your own, or print it out as is. We have some of the most highly acclaimed resume and cover letter writers in the industry handing them to you for free. You are only a few clicks away from creating your own FREE professional sample resume and professional sample cover letter!

SIGN UP FOR YOUR VERY OWN RESUMEBUCKET ACCOUNT
It takes just seconds!

ResumeBucket.com is more than just a resume posting website like Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com. We provide all users with multiple media tools that enable them to become more visible to employers which significantly increases the chances of being contacted for an interview.

The following is a step by step instructions and a few creative ways to have more people view your resume. The guide assumes you utilize the larger business minded social media tools on the Internet such as LinkedIn and Twitter. We recommend you familiarize yourself on those websites to assist in increasing your visibility online.

LinkedIn.com FAQ page

Twitter.com FAQ page

1. Head to Linkedin.com and edit your profile. Add your Unique ResumeBucket.com Link to your profile.

* Log in to your account and on the left hand side, click on “Edit Your Profile”.

Under Websites, Click Edit.

Select “Other” and label it “My Resume” then activate the link by placing your custom ResumeBucket link (http://www.resumebucket.com/YOUR USER NAME) i.e. http://www.resumebucket.com/JoshStomel

Then SAVE CHANGES at the bottom and you are done.

2. Edit your Twitter Profile to have your ResumeBucket.com link displayed, prominently.

* Log in to your Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com

* Click Settings;

* Then change the “More Info URL” to your Unique ResumeBucket.com Link, i.e.  (http://www.resumebucket.com/JoshStomel)

3. Take your ResumeBucket.com badges and place them on your Blog or anything that accepts HTML

* Log in to your ResumeBucket.com account, or click here to go straight to the Promote Page;

Link: http://www.resumebucket.com/members/promote

* You can put this HTML code on your Blog, Myspace Profile or ANYWHERE ELSE that accepts HTML.

4. Add your ResumeBucket.com link to your email signature.

* You can use the above section to access our images & logos; http://www.resumebucket.com/members/promote or by clicking here;

* Right Click on the Images, and save the image.

* In your email client, add the Image in to your signature, then right click the image and make it a LINK, then add your unique Link to the image.

5. Share your ResumeBucket link EVERYWHERE, by DOING THIS!

* Go to your ResumeBucket page i.e. ResumeBucket.com/JoshStomel

* In top right of the resume, you will see the following bar.

* Hover your mouse over the SHARE Button.

* You should see all your favorite social-sharing sites listed such as Twitter, Linkedin, Digg, Myspace, and Facebook.

Integrating the above profiles into your ResumeBucket.com profile will significantly increase your chances of having your business profiles come up first on all the major search engines when a prospective employer searches for your full name. Your resume should be immediately accessible by anyone online because you never know where opportunities are going to come from. Being prepared is the best offense.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, tips please contacts us at info@resumebucket.com

ResumeBucket just rolled out our recession proof toolbar. This toolbar has everything to help you cut your finances, find jobs, and save money!

Here is a complete list that comes with our toolbar.

• Job Search function Powered by Resumebucket

• Free Stuff search that scours websites like freecycle.com

• Cost cutting resources such as: cheap gas, coupons, bill shrink, organizing and combining finances, current bank rates, and your credit report.

• Scrolling CNN news feed with up-to-date news about the economy

• Stock ticker

• Free Stuff from websites

• Deals of the Day

The best part about this toolbar is that is all completely FREE. Our goal here at Resumebucket to help out as many people as we can with no cost to our consumers. This toolbar can only help you on your way to surviving the recession.

If you want more information or want to download it now click here!

Cover Letter tips you need to know.

Sometimes cover letters can be a bit tricky to write, so we decided to write a short tutorial on how to go about it. Don’t be intimidated by writing the cover letter; it’s where you can show off your talents and writing skills. So here it is, 8 simple steps for a great cover letter:

• Address the letter to the person who could hire you by name and title. If you can’t find their name use a functional title like “manager” or “selection committee” and remember to never use “To whom it may concern.” You are writing a simple letter to another person to let them personally know that you have interest in their company.

• Show that you know a little about their company. Do some research and be up to date on their current interests, priorities or problems. You don’t want to waste your time and the recruiters time by not doing any research about the company you are apply for.

• Express your enthusiasm to work for that company. If you have a good idea for a current problem a company might be having, offer to come in and discuss it. That’s one way to get your foot in the door, offer to help them with a current situation they might be having. Be creative, use your imagination to get as much face-time as possible with any company you want to work for; it really does help.

• Keep your tone warm and friendly while being professional. Avoid generic and cliché phrases. Recruiters can go through hundreds of resumes a day and it only takes a couple keywords to have your resume in the trash before it’s cracked open.

• Set yourself apart from the crowd. Put someone really unique about yourself in the cover letter. This gives the recruiter some incentive to look into your resume and will remember you. This may seem obvious, but make sure your unique skill is relevant to the job you are applying to.
• Take the initiative about what will happen next. A lot of times people will say that they will follow up with an e-mail of phone call about setting up an interview. Here is a great way to follow up on a resume.

• Keep it to one page. All cover letters should be less than one page. Short and sweet is the way to go; don’t waste anyone’s time.

• Proofread multiple times. This is overlooked more than you could imagine.

When you write your cover letter let your creative process flow. The person reading it will have an idea of who you are instead of taking a template and inputting a few words sporadically throughout the letter. It might be easier to write your cover letter after you have tweaked your resume so that the whole packet flows together. If you need help with writing your cover letter or resume, feel free to contact us.

Our Resume Converter is back up and running.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused but the problem has been fixed and all users should be able to upload their resumes.

Please contact support@resumebucket.com for any issues or questions you may have.

Thanks,

ResumeBucket Team