After hours of formatting, taking small breaks to check your facebook, editing, eating your cold leftover pizza…you have crafted the ideal resume!

Feel like your resume is being left in the dust? Like you’re not impressing the pants off of your potential employer? Well that needs to stop. And here’s how.

This is your senior year.  The end all be all.

Hey ThinkTalkers,

Today I want to address a topic that still makes me cringe… resumes. If you are anything like me, your apartment would be cleaned, laundry done, homework completed, moldings dusted, cat fed, neighbor’s hedges trimmed, and TV wires organized before you got down to your resume (yes folks, some may call me a procrastinator, and I accept my title proudly).

But in today’s fast-paced job market your resume can be a make or break it factor in your possible employment. You don’t want a design element or phrasing to be the reason your resume gets tossed to the side and Smarty-pants Susan gets your job instead because she took the time to carefully craft her resume (and she probably reads ThinkTalk’s career advice blog everyday).

So before you send out the next batch of resumes to potential employers, I’d suggest checking out this article from The Savvy Networker blog. Career advice specialist Liz Ryan tackles the 10 phrases that can sink your resume. Ryan talks about how most generic resume phrases such as "self-motivated individual" and "results-oriented professional" are out of date today but provides you with suggestions for alternative phrasing. The 10 anchor-like phrases are as follows:

Kill this: Results-oriented professional

Replace with your own version of this: I love to solve thorny supply-chain problems

Kill this: Excellent team player

Replace with your own version of this: At Acme Dynamite, I partnered with Engineering to cut our product cost in half


Kill this: Bottom-line orientation

Replace with your own version of this: My accounting-process overhaul saved the company $10M in its first year

Kill this: Superior communication skills

Replace with your own version of this: I led a two-day offsite that yielded our 2010 product lineup and a $40K cost savings

Kill this: Possess organizational skills

Replace with your own version of this: Reduced customer-complaint resolution time from three weeks to one by revamping the process

Kill this: Savvy business professional

Replace with your own version of this: I'm a PR manager who's gotten his employers covered by Yahoo! and Time magazine

Kill this: Strong work ethic

Replace with your own version of this: I taught myself HTML over a weekend in order to grab a marketing opportunity


Kill this: Meets or exceeds expectations

Replace with your own version of this: Invited to join our executive staff at a strategy summit during my first year at the company

Kill this: Strong presentation skills

Replace with your own version of this: Was recruited to join Acme Dynamite after my boss heard me speak at a conference

Kill this: Seeking a challenging opportunity

Replace with your own version of this: I'm looking for a midsize manufacturer primed to grow its business in the Pacific Rim

There you have it. If you have any of these overused phrases in your resume I suggest taking Ryan’s advice and updating them to a more personalized and descriptive wording.

Stay strong job hunters; your endless work on resumes and cover letters will pay off in the end!

"Resume t-shirt" courtesy SOCIALisBETTER via Flickr Creative Commons

Resumes are essential. If you want to have any kind of professional working experience, then you need to prove that you deserve it. More often than not, you prove yourself with a single sheet of paper--a single sheet that shall determine your destiny. Or, at the very least, help you to make a good first impression!

Resume advice is practically a dime a dozen. I mean, they really aren't that complicated. And if you need help, you can always turn to trusty old Google. But a post over at Mashable gives resume advice a twist, with their own unique infusion of social media. David Spinks lists five key tweaks to your life that will help you construct a resume that potential employers will notice come the Spring and graduation.

It’s never too early to find a mentor. They can be extremely valuable for a young professional. They can provide everything from tips, to networking opportunities, to a friend that you can turn to with professional problems.

Is there a professional that you’ve been following for a while? If a mentorship isn’t developing naturally for you, here’s a good strategy.

a. Choose five professionals that you look up to.

b. Follow them on Twitter, read their blog and start to comment on all of their posts with as much value as you can gather.

c. Start to connect. Send them messages on Twitter and anywhere else you follow them. Just be yourself and be friendly.

d. If they’re close, ask them if they’d like to grab coffee or lunch. If they agree, continue to build on that relationship and you’ve got yourself a mentor. If they’re not close, send an e-mail. Explain your goals and ask them if they’d be interested in being your mentor.

The post has a lot more usefule advice too, so head over to Mashable and check it out.

Lifehacker is featuring a cool profile of super-slick resume web app CeeVee. CeeVee has a bunch of very novel extensions that make the application extremely usable and convenient. For example you can import information from Facebook and use FB Connect to send the resume out to your contacts.

Probably the best feature (beside being free - but what isn't these days) is that it will assign you your own url to store the resume publicly. In conjunction with other social apps for your job hunt, like LinkedIn, CeeVee looks like it could be a great way to utilize your social network to score a job.

On to the Links ...

Penelope Trunk Chimes on on Obama's Gold: Well, it seems to be all anybody wants to talk about (especially me!) so I figured I might as well find a link that ties it into careers and job hunting and all this good stuff. That's the cue for Penelope, who sums up what a lot of people are thinking with in her post title: Wow. And since that seems to be all anyone is talking about today, I'm going to let you go home early. Have a good weekend.

Heather Huhman Has 5 tips for Video Resumes: Heather thinks (and I agree) that we'll be seeing more and more of interviews on video over the web. Heather's advice for these include knowing when to smile, making sure your appearance is as proper as it would be in a face-to-face, and keeping the scene behind you clean and professional.

The Wall Street Journal Looks at the Hot Cities for the Young to Find Work: "Big cities dominate our panelists' forecasts. Where trendy smaller cities might have captivated youth in the past, today's recession-scarred young people are more pragmatic, placing "greater emphasis on where high-quality, high-paying jobs are created," says Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the nonprofit Milken Institute. Northeastern and West Coast cities are ascendant, eclipsing former Sunbelt favorites such as Atlanta." Click through for some city names.

TechCrunch Wants to Turn Universities in Businesses: "Researchers in university labs find vast numbers of breakthroughs which can better the world. Most of their work never sees the light of day. Hardly 0.1% of all funded basic science research results in a commercial venture. To boost our economy, we need to bridge this gap and improve the university research commercialization system." The author has some interesting suggestions for bridging that gap.

Forbes Advises on How to Capitalize Your Interest in the Arts: "Joseph Du Pont, the head of the career development office at Brandeis University, suggests you think in terms of two "buckets" of possible employment. One is all the possible careers associated with your own particular field of fine art. For an actor, that could mean working for a casting director or as a booking agent. For a visual artist, there is design work. All manner of artists also teach their skills."

Blue Skys Resume Blog Explains Why She Advocates Professional Resume Writers: Some people give professional resume writers a bad rap. Louise Fletcher doesn't get it. "I have 15 years of senior-level HR experience, so I’ve hired at all levels of companies across a number of industries. And I’ve always been good at taking a massive amount of information and seeing clear themes. That combination of skills makes me exceptionally good at what I do, and over the years I have helped thousands of people to find better jobs and make more money than they would have been able to do without me."

This video is from the good people at the Career Center of University of California, Irvine about job fairs (in case you missed my last life-changing post, check it out for more career fair tips). They interviewed recruiters to see what they would tell students approaching their tables.There's common-sense advice in here if you have a career fair in your future.

I thought today would be a good time to get back to our roots at the ThinkTalk Career Blog, which means a lot of good, old-fashioned career advice. Read and learn, my friends.

The Good Old Fashioned Links:

Allison's Job Searching Blog Warns You Should Know Where Your Interview Pants Are: You have the perfect resume, the perfect answer to the dreaded Strengths and Weaknesses Question, and the perfect interview handshake. But if you can't find your suit, you could be out of luck. "Don't wait to be sure that all your interview attire is in order. The college student who (good thinking) decided to get his clothes ready for a career fair at the end of the week got an unpleasant surprise yesterday. He couldn't find his one and only good suit. It wasn't in his dorm. It wasn't at home. It wasn't anywhere." No fun- plan ahead.

BullsEyeResumes Says to Read Beyond the Job Titles: Think there aren't any jobs out there for you? You may not be reading the job descriptions closely enough. "Many people get attached to their job titles and their current job descriptions, they may actually be overlooking the actual day-to-day assignments involved in a particular job... Online job boards today, do a pretty incredible job of making it easy for people to find job opportunities just by using keywords. However, job seekers should keep in mind though that although keywords can help us really narrow the scope quickly, reading the job descriptions carefully is still a good idea. As we read the job description, think about the skills, behaviors and experiences that are transferable from one industry to the next and one job to the next."

Quintessential Resumes and Cover Letters Interviews Job Search Strategist: Laura Labovich's job is to find other people jobs. She did a Q&A session to share some of her "secrets" for making resumes that HR professionals will notice. She says one characteristic of an attention-grabbing resume is "relevant keywords found by analyzing a job posting and sprinkling them throughout the resume (I distinctly remember a hiring manager counting the number of times an applicant listed java and c++ in his resume)."

Lindsey Pollak Helps You Inventory All Your Professional Experience: When writing your resume, cover letter or even LinkedIn profile, it's important that you take inventory of all your relevant experiences to showcase for employers. Lindsey says you probably have more than you think you do- jobs and internships aren't the only things you can put on your resume. In this first post of a series, she breaks down your education to point out all the relevant skills you could use. "How far back should you go in your analysis? As a general rule, resume-relevant experience goes back four years for students and recent grads."

Secrets of the Job Hunt Says to Practice Your Interviews Out Loud: I guess this makes sense. Rehearse out loud to make sure you've got it down. To be honest, I never practice my questions out loud before going on air but it may help you out to try. To each his/her own, I suppose.

My Global Career Lists 5 Ways to Be Happier at Work: Hmm, apparently, loyalty has a lot to do with it. The author cites research that points out that employees with the highest level of loyalty are also the ones that report they are the happiest with their job. I dunno, that sounds like a case of correlation being mistake for causation to me. But, hey, being loyal may help ... check out the article for how and why to be a loyal employee.

Jason Seiden Gives Advice to Interns: One of the things I like about Jason is that he is not afraid to be opinionated. He isn't always right, but his advice always offers an alternative way of thinking. Here's a clip:

The Wall Street Journal Shows How to Use Humor at Work: "It may seem like a mistake, or at least in poor taste, to find humor in such dark times. Some co-workers may disprove. But psychologists say that gallows humor can be an important way to relieve stress." The key is knowing when and how to use it.

Brazen Careerist The Writer Doesn't Think You Have Enough Resumes: "Having one resume means that you’re most likely to apply to just one type of job, and going to limit how many open jobs you apply to. Which means you probably won’t find a job as quickly as someone who has four or five." This is true, you will need to alter and adapt your resume for each job you apply to.

Modite Shows How to Give Your Career Some Innovation: The always insightful Rebecca Thorman delves into today's career path. The traditional career hierarchy is gone; salary and rank are less important; experience is the product: "Smart workers are building their careers in the same way innovators build businesses. For example, trendy Barcelona shoe company Camper diversified it’s offerings by plunging into the hotel business. People rightfully asked, “Why?” To which Camper replied, “You misunderstood what we’re all about. We don’t produce shoes. We produce comfort.”

The Creative Career Wonders If Big Cities Are Good For Your Career: I've never worked anywhere but a big city (unless you count high school), so I cannot offer much in the way of help here. Allie Osmar seems to be on the side of Yes, citing the only real con as "barriers to entry." I would throw cost of living in there. Sometimes working in a city necessitates living there, and I have had more than a few friends eventually abandon cities as just too expensive.

Cheezhead Finds Government Jobs For Tech Geeks: "The government is seeking out 10,000 tech-savvy young Americans to take part in the U.S. Cyber Challenge, a program to encourage and train those interested in cybersecurity and set them on the right track toward a permanent job in the field." Cybersecurity! If it's anything like this, sign me up!