One Darn Good Writer

Lisa Vaas is a journalist who analyzes technology and job-hunting strategies.

Brainstorm Your Way to a Kick-Ass Resume

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Writing about yourself is hard, even for many professional writers. But brainstorming techniques can get the ball rolling and the creative juices flowing. Check out the story here.

Customize Your Resume for That Plum Job

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With resumes, there’s no such thing as one size fits all; know where, how and why to tweak, advises resume pro Steve Burdan. Check out the full story here.

Resume Verbs: Before and After

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Certified professional resume writers Andrew Pearl and Tina Harlan provide some examples of how they’ve punched up bland resumes with action verbs. Click here for the full story on TheLadders.

How Verbs Make Your Resume Sizzle

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Your resume’s verbs can limp across the document and put hiring managers to sleep, or they can grab a recruiter by the throat, inspiring him to reach for the phone to schedule an interview. Lunge for the full story and devour it here.

The Problem-Solver Resume

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Your resume should present you as the answer to an employer’s problems. This article, posted on TheLadders, provides guidelines on how to uncover their pain points and put yourself out there as their solution.

How to Proofread Your Resume

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Should you proofread your resume backwards? Print out your resume? Give it to a friend to review? Yes, yes and yes — and that’s just a start. Read the full article here on TheLadders.

What to Bring to a Job Interview

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Resume hard copies, resume addenda, good questions, and *not* your annoying, buzzing appliances or lame, general questions. Read the full article here on TheLadders.

DirectAccess and the VPN Dragon

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Windows 7’s DirectAccess is a win for users: convenient network access, no virtual private network needed. But it’s a stickier prospect vis-a-vis security and administration. For this IT Expert Voice article, I got input from LOPSA, an early Windows 7 user and Sophos’ Chester Wisniewski. Check out the full article here.

Written by lisavaas

December 30, 2009 at 6:40 pm

Getting Your Cover Letter Noticed

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Understanding your cover letter’s electronic journey will give you an edge when matching wits with automated applicant tracking systems. This article gets into the ATS technology of how your cover letter gets parsed. To read the full article, click here, and for the accompanying article on TheLadders, which will keep you from making those lame mistakes such as the classic “Dear Sir or Madam” cop-out, click here.

How to Craft an Attention-Getting Resume Title

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Job titles: They can make or break a good first impression. You certainly don’t want to lie about your job history, but you do want to be descriptive. For example, “Accounting” is too vague, while “Management of A/R and A/P and Recordkeeping” carries both far more information and way more impact. This article I wrote for The Ladders delves into how to make sure your titles are both a) going to be acknowledged as accurate by your former/current employers, and b) attention-grabbers. Click here to read the full story.