Job Search Aid

On most job sites, national as well as niche you can post your resume at no charge. Many of these sites, especially the major general sites offer a number of other free career services for job seekers in addition to the opportunity to post their resume.

Let’s look at one major career and job search site and see what they offer for resume post and other job applicant services.

The fastest way to post your resume on this site is to simply upload it from whatever program you have it stored in, whether Word or Claris or WordPerfect or HTML.

For this upload method of posting your resume you give it a title and can either do a cut and paste or straight upload. The site’s system offers a spell check when you post your resume before it goes live.

If you don’t have a resume ready to post you can use the career site’s build a resume assistance. It simply walks you through the various fields. First it asks you to indicate your contact information - name, phone and e-mail address. You must confirm your e-mail address, to make sure that once you post your resume the employer will always be able to reach you. You then choose a password and give address. As you post your resume you also indicate if you are a citizen and authorized to work.

The next part of this build a resume opportunity to post asks for your total years of work experience and then lets you choose up to three job categories and indicate the number of years of experience in each category. When you post your experience on your resume the categories aren’t necessarily going to total your work experience years. You will probably have some duplication.

If for instance, you were to post your resume, stating 12 years total work experience, and had worked as an advertising sales representative for three different newspapers your customer service experience could be listed as 12 years, as could your media experience and your sales experience. If, however, you spent four of those years overseeing the printing of the newspaper you might only list your sales experience as 8 years total.

The next thing you will note as you post your resume from this template is the number of employees you managed (if you ever did) and your most recent wage. Here you also indicate the languages you speak proficiently, whether you have a government security clearance or have ever been convicted of a felony.

The next step in building and posting your resume is entering your work history, starting with the most recent. The build a resume form asks company name, job title and start and end dates of employment. Unfortunately with this build a resume form you have no opportunity to explain duties and responsibilities or any achievements, so you’d always want to emphasize these in your cover letter when applying for each particular position. Ideally when you post your resume you are given the opportunity to clarify these.

Once you’ve listed your experience, you post your education on your resume. You list your college majors and the degrees you’ve earned as well as any specialized training and certification.

Each site will have variations on this post a resume process, but your most effective method of posting your resume is to write your own and then upload it to each site.

Technorati Tags: careers, finding employment