Robert Patterson and Five Steps to C.A.L.M.

Robert Patterson joins us today as our special guest blogger. Robert is the author of Five Steps to C.A.L.M.: Career and Life Management. Having spent many years in the corporate world and several at a management level, when I heard about Robert's book my mind instantly wandered to resumes. Now that I've been a stay-at-home mother for five years, I wondered what, if anything, had changed in creating resumes; so I asked Robert to discuss resumes and the top five mistakes job seekers make when drafting their resumes.



Readable Format Resumes

Have resumes changed in the last five years? No.

Are they better now? No.

Are they more creative? A little.

Is that good? No.

If you want to know how to create and use a resume that will do the job for you, you've already bought the right book. It's not the most expensive, but the information is the right stuff, and you'll not find it anywhere else--as far
as we know.

Here's where they go wrong:

Mistake #1. They use the wrong typeface-usually a sans serif one--so the resume becomes 75 percent less readable.

Mistake #2. They use the wrong layout; they write across the page,
instead of in a narrower column, so that the resume becomes less readable.

Mistake #3. They use even or straight margins on both the right and left sides (instead of a ragged or uneven; margin on the right side, which is much better). The result is that the computer gains control of your all-important spacing, and the resume becomes less readable.

Mistake #4. They crowd everything into, one or two pages because
someone told you that "no one will read it if it's; longer than one or two pages."

NONSENSE!

The corrected statement is this: "No one will read it-if it is
not readable."

A crowded resume is much less readable.

Mistake #5. They spend hundreds of dollars on hiring a professional to write the resume for them, instead of taking the time and the care to prepare 90 percent of their resumes themselves. If you prefer, when you have completed 90 percent of the work, you can go to the professional, for much less money, to have either her or him put a finishing touch on it, to make suggestion, or to print it.

You can visit Robert Patterson online at www.rpatters.com.


The FIVE STEPS TO C.A.L.M. VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '08 will officially begin on December 1 and end on December 23. You can visit Steven's blog stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com in December to find out where he is appearing!

As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available. The winner will be announced by Pump Up Your Book Promotion at the end of the month!