MAR001

Today I received the good news that my government will give me full support for the first year of my MBA program so I will take the chance to enrol part-time in three modules in the first term to keep myself occupied and productive while building networking and still looking for perm or temp opportunities...

HUP

When I worked in the employment services industry (in Australia) I was training people in resume construction. One of the things that people do not do enough of is "customise" their resume. Picture someone ploughing through a big pile of resumes, what is the first thing that they want to do? It's get rid of the majority of them so that they can focus on the ones that look the most interesting.

What I used to teach people was to put the following structure in place

1) All contact details at top.
2) Career objective. A short simple sentence stating what type of job you are after. Each time you apply for a job you can check this statement infers you want the job that you are applying for.
3) Relevant Skills summary section. A bullet point list of your skills. Each time you apply for a job you look at this list and check that it has the skills that are relevant to the the job you are applying for (i.e. look at the job ad and see what skills they are looking for)

With the above structure in place the person viewing your resume should see very quickly that you want the job and that you have the skills that they are looking for.

4) Career history covering previous 10 years starting with most recent first. With the duties you performed listed in concise easy to read bullet points that quickly and simply convey what you did (remember they will have lots of resumes and want to get through them as quickly as possible so reading a paragraph where a line would do, would be a pain in the ass. If you have listed a skill once do not repeat it.

A few other points
1) Use standard fonts throughout. Not fancy scrolly fonts
2) Get someone else to read through your resume as what might make sense to you may be gibberish to others.
3) You may be applying for several different types of jobs so make sure you have several types of resumes.

Each time you apply for a job you should be tweaking your resume.

Some other job hunting tips

1) Go to Seek and set up job mails so you will get emailed all the jobs that match your usual search criteria.
2) www.alljobs.com.au is a great site for general searches. Put in your search terms and select your location and it wil search across several sites in one go for you.
3) www.careerone.com.au allows you to search by postcode. What you can do here is just put in your postcode and the distance you want to travel and it will show you all jobs in this radius. While you might see a lot of jobs you are not interested in you may see something that you had not considered before.
4) If you are lodging applications on sites such as Seek make sure your resume includes the duties and responsibilities listed in the job ad using the same words as the ad. This is because there is software behind the site that is doing the initial pass and looking for the occurrence of key words and phrases. Whilst there will be different variations you will be more certain of getting a hit if you use the same terminology.

I worked in the industry for two years and I saw lots of people getting work once they realised that their resume was their marketing tool and took more time over it. I myself prior to working in employment services was an IT consultant and had to leave for medical reasons (brain surgery). I had job mails set up for myself for IT jobs and one day I saw a job in my previous field. I customised my resume and wrote a cover letter and within 1/2 an hour the recruitment agency rang me. I had also been training people on how to prepare for interviews as well and I ended up getting the job.

When you are out of work it can be really depressing but you need to stay positive. Each time you apply for a job make sure you have fully read the job ad and your resume and cover letter should address as much of the job criteria as possible.

MAR001

Thanks HUP!

My CV is exactly as you have described in your post, and to be honest, generally the problem is not getting the 1st or the 2nd interview, is actually getting the contract.. As per my previous threads, some interviews/ers and companies are better than others..

In a positive note, I used to get one interview every three months in the UK while studying my last degree. Perhaps is because I didn't have a great Visa in the UK and here we are under PR but the difference of the number of calls and interviews is massive!

yesterday, I received a call from an agent and she told me that the thing have been dead because of the season and hopefully everything will start reactivating from next week.

Dorothy

That's true. Things will start to pick up again next week when people start back to work after the holidays.

brissybee

I would leave the call centre work until the absolutely last resort.

It's easy to get and quick (little) cash but it really is soul destroying work.

Better off, as others have mentioned, getting work in hospitality etc, low skill anything else.

Also agree to dumb down the resume is a must. (And obviously smarten it up again when you're ready!) Who's to say when you arrived if you filled in a couple of months as a waiter!

amomentofstillness

Depends on the type of call centre work I suppose and I guess some people will hate it, just like I'd hate hospitality work

Bermudashorts

Agreed. I never enjoyed hospitality work, when I was a student, I spent one summer working in a coffee shop and hated it. Next summer I worked for Barclaycard in a call centre it was preferable to me and after one month I won an award for most productive worker.

Turban Explorer

I've demonstrated such awesome hospitality skills I've been promoted to restaurant manager - after a mere 6 weeks!! It's actually quite fun and makes me laugh that most of the customers think I'm a German backpacker.

If you treat crap work as ridiculous and ironic it's fun! Don't think demeaning and beneath you - it's what immigrants to the UK have been suffering for years.