Category Archives: Resumes

The Importance of Honesty in the Job Search Process

January 31, 2023

When it comes to finding a job, it can be tempting to stretch the truth about your qualifications, experience, or skills to make yourself seem more appealing to potential employers. However, lying about your background can have serious consequences and can harm your reputation and future job prospects.

Examples of people who have lied about their background or experience and were later caught include:

A marketing executive who claimed to have a degree from an Ivy League university, but was later found to have lied about his education. He was fired from his job and faced difficulty finding future employment.
A job candidate who inflated their previous job title and responsibilities, but was caught when their former employer was contacted for a reference. They were not offered the job and their reputation was tarnished among potential employers.

These examples highlight the importance of being honest in the job search process. Lying about your background can lead to immediate consequences such as being fired or not being offered the job, as well as long-term consequences such as a tarnished reputation and difficulty finding future employment.

So, what can you do to present your background in an honest way even if there may be shortcomings in your work experience or skills?

Emphasize your strengths: Focus on the skills and experiences you have that are relevant to the job you’re applying for and highlight your accomplishments in those areas.
Be transparent: If there are gaps in your work history or if you have limited experience in a certain area, be upfront about it and explain why.
Highlight your potential: If you’re looking to transition into a new career or industry, emphasize your transferable skills and your desire to learn and grow in your new role.
Get references: Having a solid network of professional references can help potential employers feel more confident in your abilities and experiences.
Practice honesty: Always be truthful about your qualifications, experience, and skills, even if it means not getting the job. In the long run, honesty will serve you better than dishonesty.

Being honest about your background and experiences is crucial in the job search process. Not only does it demonstrate integrity, but it also protects your reputation and future job prospects. Emphasize your strengths, be transparent about any shortcomings, and practice honesty to present your background in the best light possible.

Struggling with your resume? Allied can help! Apply today and our experienced recruiters can help you put your best self forward with the Lehigh Valley’s leading companies!

Resume Must-Have: Soft Skills

August 29, 2022

Source: CNBC

Employers are looking for soft skills. In fact, more and more are listing them as part of the job requirements for open roles. More than 6 million job listings included “communication skills,” 5.5 million included “customer service” and 5 million included “scheduling” as a requirement on jobsite ZipRecruiter in May.

“Even without looking at a specific job listing, we can probably imagine that every job is going to require the same set of soft skills: teamwork skills, communication skills, problem solving skills, time management skills,” says Gorick Ng, Harvard career adviser and author of “The Unspoken Rules.”

If you’re on the market for a job, “your resume is a really, really, really important platform for you to use to embody” these skills, says Octavia Goredema, career coach and author of “Prep Push, Pivot.”

Here’s how to illustrate soft skills on your resume, according to career experts.

Use descriptive titles

The anatomy of a resume features multiple facets. One of them is the various job titles under your “experience” section. These present an opportunity to convey some of your soft skills.

“The key here is to be truthful but also be descriptive,” says Ng.

“There’s a big difference between calling myself an intern and a social media intern,” he says as an example. “There’s a big difference between calling myself an analyst and a project manager, if I was, in fact, doing that. There’s a difference between me calling myself a manager and a communications manager.”

Each of these titles illustrates another facet of the job that proves you have certain experience. “Even just one word like ‘communications’ or ‘social media’ or ‘project’ or ‘product’ or ‘department’ can go a long way in giving people a mental image of what it is that you’re actually accountable for,” he says.

Think back on your work experience for each role you’re outlining and consider one or two additional and accurate words that describe what you did and what you can do.

Bullet points can give examples of your skills

Another piece of resume real estate that could be used to illustrate your soft skills are the bullets under each job title giving concrete examples of what you achieved. Each bullet could speak to a soft skill an employer specifically mentioned in the job description or one you think is relevant for the role.

Consider some of your accomplishments in previous roles, then, when writing these, “think about it being really a Mad Lib exercise consisting of impactful verbs, impactful nouns and impactful numbers,” says Ng.

Say you want to highlight your communication skills, for example, and you work in search engine optimization. One bullet could say something like, “I led a presentation to 30 of our clients outlining effective ways to use keywords, resulting in an average 30% increase in traffic for each of their websites.” “Led,” “increase” and “30%” are a verb, noun and number that give a visceral sense of the kind of impact you had on your company.

The bullet serves to highlight an impressive achievement. Inherently, because it takes strong communication skills to give a good presentation, and because your presentation was clearly successful in helping your clients grow their traffic, you’re proving you’re a good communicator.

“It’s almost implied that I would have had to have the skills to make this impact,” says Ng.

‘What language are you using to talk about work?’

When it comes to communication, specifically, the way your resume is written as a whole can go a long way to proving you’re a good communicator. “You want to be as concise and impactful as possible,” says Goredema.

“What language are you using to talk about work?” she says. “Is it repetitive? Is it flat? Is it really long convoluted sentences? Really take a look at how you are bringing your career to life on paper and how you’re communicating what you do best.”

A resume with strong work examples free of excessive language can show potential employers that, at the very least, you’ve honed your written skills, which are critical for multiple forms of day-to-day communication.

Still struggling with your resume? Apply with Allied and our experienced recruiters will review your resume and help you improve it!

Job Fairs Are Back! Here’s How To Get the Most Out Of Them

April 29, 2022

In-person job fairs are one of the many things that haven’t happened much in the past 2 years, thanks to COVID. 2022 marks the return of one of the largest job fairs in the Lehigh Valley: The Morning Call Career Fair.

Attending a job fair can be an excellent way to get your job search started, or to re-energize a search that may feel stalled. It’s a great chance to get in front of many employers in a single day and see what companies are hiring. But in order to make the most of a job fair, it’s important to be prepared.

1) Research. Find out what companies will be there. Most job fairs include a list of employers in advertisements for the event. Visit the websites of those companies to check out current job openings. If there are opportunities you are interested in, take a minute to learn more about the company. Then when you speak with a recruiter at the job fair, you are able to talk about a specific opening or about their company’s business and really stand out from the crowd.

2) Prepare. This is the one time you won’t be able to customize your resume. Since you will be presenting it to multiple employers for various opportunities, make your objective specific to the way you’d like your skills to be used and to the type of work environment you prefer. For this occasion, this is better than trying to specify a position or an industry.

3) Practice. Do you have your 30-second commercial ready? This is one tool you absolutely must have ready for a job fair. Prepare it and practice it. A job fair is a great opportunity to end your commercial with a question; this will help you start a dialogue with the recruiter.

4) Attire. Going to a job fair is a lot like going to a bunch of mini-interviews, so dress as you would for an interview. Often the setting for a job fair is casual, but don’t dress for the venue. Workplace dress codes also have become much more casual in the past 2 years, so a full business suit may not be necessary, but it is still important to dress to make a great first impression.

5) Prioritize. Rather than start at one end of the job fair and visit every single booth, determine your game plan before you arrive. Because you’ve done your research, you will know the employers you are most interested in visiting. Start with those. If the recruiters are tied up with a line of people waiting, it may be best to stop back. For some very popular employers, there may be no downtime for the recruiters, and waiting in line may be your only option.

6) Respect. At a busy job fair, you need to be respectful of the recruiter’s time. If there are a large number of job seekers, you may not get a chance to do much more than introduce yourself and drop off your resume. Don’t monopolize a recruiter’s time with excessive explanations about your work history or with multiple questions about their openings. You want to be remembered but not as the person who talked excessively.

7) Follow-up. Get business cards and contact information for the companies you are interested in and follow up with them. A short, hand-written thank you note reconfirming your interest in the company or in a particular opening is a simple way to give a recruiter a reason to pull your resume out of the stack they have from the job fair.

Don’t be intimidated by long lines at job fairs or by the volume of resumes you see stacked on a recruiter’s table. If you play your cards right, you’ll be on the “first call back pile” and a new employment opportunity may find its way to you.

Planing on attending The Morning Call Career Fair on May 3rd? Be sure to stop by and say hello to the Allied team!

How to Keep the Job Search Moving Forward—Even if Recruiters Ignore You

October 25, 2021

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Career coaches say these interviewing and résumé tips can help you stand out and land a new role.

There are more than 10 million job openings in the U.S., so why do so many job seekers remain frustrated by hiring managers who ignore them and online application portals that delete them?

There are a lot of jobs out there, but a lot of rejection, too. It’s easier than ever to apply for roles, so companies are swamped, leaving applicants—even ones who have been courted by recruiters—either facing a void or never hearing back again. Hiring experts at Tuesday’s WSJ Jobs Summit said candidates can take steps to build relationships with the humans overseeing the hiring process—and bounce back faster when they are rejected.

“Job searching’s probably not easy for anybody,” said Brie Reynolds, a career coach and career-development manager at FlexJobs, an online site that lists flexible and remote job opportunities. “There’s always a confidence piece there that you want to make sure you’re building up.”

Here are more tips from career coaches.

You’re going to be ignored. Persist anyway.

Maintain reasonable expectations, and don’t expect a reaction from every hiring manager you reach out to, said Christine Cruzvergara, chief education strategy officer at Handshake, a careers site for college students and recent grads.

“Sometimes you might not be the right candidate at that certain time,” she said.

Knowing when to follow up after applying or interviewing for a job can be one of the toughest challenges for applicants—especially if early conversations seemed promising and now you have been left hanging.

“Organizations deeply appreciate persistence, as long as your persistence is generous,” said Keith Ferrazzi, an executive coach and author of “Leading Without Authority.” Sending a flurry of check-in emails is usually a bad idea, he added, but asking thoughtful follow-up questions by email and volunteering your knowledge to a potential boss can be a winning strategy.

“If your persistence is, ‘What about me? What about me? What about me?’ That’s not generous,” he said. “If your persistence is, ‘I’ve been thinking about your company, I’ve been researching a little bit more about your company, I’ve had a few ideas about the conversation we had,’ those are generous acts of reaching out.”

Motivated job seekers should ask if there is anything they can do during the hiring process to demonstrate to the employer that they are right for the role, Mr. Ferrazzi said, and then follow up to prove it.

“Ask the person interviewing, ‘Is there anything you are curious about relative to my ability to perform this job that I can do between now and the next call that could show you how I can perform?’” he said. “Actually start the work.”

Nontraditional methods of communication can sometimes yield a surprise reaction, said Keith Wolf, chief executive of ResumeSpice, an executive and professional résumé-writing service. He advises reaching out to people you are eager to connect with on Twitter or Instagram instead of simply sending an email.

“Twitter—you can have a conversation with someone who will never return your email,” he said.

Don’t worry about beating the bots.

People become obsessed with outsmarting résumé-reading applicant-tracking systems that most companies use to sort through candidates. It is a better bet to focus on the information and keywords provided in a job description and incorporate them into your résumé, Mr. Wolf said.

“It’s almost like you’ve been given the answers to the test,” he said, adding that the skills and demonstrated experience spelled out in a job posting should be reflected in a résumé.

Mr. Wolf recommends using logical headers—such as experience, education and skills—and ditching fancy formats and fonts. “Anything you think is going to get a human’s attention to really stand out can hurt you when it comes to an applicant-tracking system, and they won’t allow your résumé to be read,” he said. “Simple is better.”

Another tip: Eliminate the objective statement. Those few sentences at the top of a résumé, summarizing skills and the type of role a person is seeking, only makes it easier for recruiters to disqualify anybody who is not an exact match, Mr. Wolf said.

“It’s a great excuse just to take you out of the pack,” he said.

Another common mistake is using valuable résumé real estate to describe your companies instead of your work, said Ashley Watkins, a job-search coach at Write Step Resumes LLC. While it is tempting for job seekers who have worked for startups or small businesses to detail what their prior employers have done, a résumé should be all about you, she added.

“If I want to know about the company, I can Google them, as a recruiter,” Ms. Watkins said. “The résumé is about you and the value that you offer, not your company.”

If you want to avoid the bots and have a conversation with a real, live recruiter, contact Allied today! We don’t use algorithms. We make genuine connections with job seekers and work closely with you to find positions that fit. Apply today and see the difference we can make in your job search!

Changing Careers? Here’s Exactly What to Put on Your Resume

August 6, 2021

Source: Fast Company

It’s not that hard to update your resume when you’re applying for the next role up the ladder in your field. You’re an associate operations manager trying to become a senior operations manager? Just show how what you’ve already done qualifies you to do similar things at a higher level.

Things get trickier when you’re trying to change industries. You’ve got to rebrand experiences here as transferable qualifications there. You need to explain why you’re a better hire than the candidate who’s spent their whole career in the field you’re trying to get into. And you’ve got to decide which parts of your experience just aren’t relevant anymore.

Figuring this out is a highly situational challenge–what works for one career changer’s resume might not work for another’s. But Erica Breuer, founder of Cake Resumes, says there are some straightforward dos and don’ts that can point you in the right direction.

DO: INCLUDE GROUP WORK

“I often work with career changers who don’t feel they have the right to include projects on their resume that were a team effort, especially when these projects fell outside of their normal job duties,” Breuer tells Fast Company. But it’s precisely those experiences you’ll want to rely on the most. “Including them, while nodding to the team-based or ‘special projects’ nature of the work is the way to go,” she says. “If it happened, it’s a fact, and it can go on your resume.”

Think of it this way: The tasks that are small, routine, or specialized enough for you to complete on your own may not be that relevant outside your industry. But bigger, collaborative projects tend to involve processes and challenges of a higher order, which draw on skills that just about every employer needs–no matter their field.

DON’T: FUDGE JOB TITLES

“Many career changers get the advice to tweak job titles on their resume to look like the perfect fit. This almost always backfires,” Breuer explains. “It risks looking dishonest or, worse, the self-assigned titles they create add confusion more than they align them with a new path.”

While you can’t control your past job titles, you can control how you describe what you accomplish while you held them. Breuer’s suggestion? “Add a tagline of sorts to the true job title, one that states experience related to the new career direction, for example; ‘Director of Operations—Global Recruitment & Talent Acquisition.’” This way a hiring manager in the HR field, which you’re trying to get into, can spot right away that your operations role had to do with recruiting and talent.

(SOMETIMES) DO: DITCH STRICT CHRONOLOGY IF YOU NEED TO

For job seekers with a lot of experience, it’s common to truncate anything that came before the past 15–20-year period. But Breuer says this rule doesn’t always suit, especially “when you have an early-career experience that applies to an upcoming career change. Drawing this line is important, but so is sharing the details relevant at this very moment. If you’re not doing that, the resume is pointless,” she points out.

So feel free to shake up the chronological approach if you need to. “There are a number of ways to loop early experiences back into a resume without the kitchen sink-style timeline,” says Breuer. For example, you might try breaking your work history into subcategories like “Technical Experience” and “Managerial Experience.”

DON’T: GO TOO BROAD

A final common mistake Breuer sees pretty often among job seekers hoping to change careers is “expecting their resume to do too many things at once,” she says. “They want to capture their career wins, life story, hobbies, and persona as a whole, when a resume actually functions best when it’s a compelling and concise record of your experiences as they pertain to the role at hand.”

When you’re worried about being under-qualified, you might be tempted to overstuff your resume to compensate. Don’t do that. The key is to give recruiters and hiring managers a clear narrative about why you’re the best fit from the role because you’d be coming at it from a nontraditional angle. No, that won’t be the full story of your career, but it will probably be the most effective one for this opportunity.

To take some of the pressure off, Breuer suggests remembering that your resume–while important–is only one piece of the self-portrait you’re presenting to employers. She adds, “It should stack with other branding platforms, such as a personal website, LinkedIn profile, or even a cover letter, in order to tell the whole story of who you are and the value you bring.”

Need some input on your resume? Submit it to Allied and let one of our experienced recruiters help!

Job Search Tools: Wordle

January 9, 2020

Have you ever heard of a wordle? Self-described as a “toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide”, they offer an interesting way to visually represent text. Words that appear more frequently in the source text are displayed larger than other words. It’s an interesting exercise to create a wordle of your blog feed to see if the resulting image accurately represents the message you are hoping to deliver with your posts.

The wordle created from our blog feed is below, and it perfectly captures the goals and message of this blog. (Click to enlarge.)

Wordles aren’t just for blogs. You can cut and paste any text and create an image. Try creating a word cloud from your resume. Are the words that represent your strengths, skills and experience that you want to highlight the largest? If you have multiple resumes that you use for different positions, creating a wordle for each is an easy way to see if they are emphasizing the correct things. And what about your cover letters? A wordle can help you see if the keywords and important points of the job description or posting that you are responding to are prominent enough in your letter.

Wordles are a fun “toy”, but also have some possibilities to help you with your job search, even if only to help you look at it a bit differently. Sometimes being able to take a different perspective can be a big help, especially with something like your resume that you may have looked at over and over. And that new perspective might be the spark your job search needs.

Once you have that resume ready to go, check out our current openings and get it over to our recruiters!

Allied Makes Your Job Search Easy!

July 13, 2018

3 Tips For Successful Interviews

June 27, 2017

Looking for a great job in the Lehigh Valley? Part of the process will almost certainly include interviews. In addition to placing people in career opportunities with some of the leading companies in Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, Allied provides our candidates a crash course in interview preparation. Here are what we consider our top 3 tips to prepare you for an interview.

Always research the company and the position.

The Internet provides the means for gathering extensive information on a company. Visit the company’s website to read up on their history, their product line, and any current news. Many smaller companies also profile members of their management team. A company website will likely also offer a full description of the available job and may even include general information on the benefits offered. LinkedIn is also a great resource to learn more about the company, as well as the person who will be interviewing you. By doing your research ahead of time, you will also be better able to formulate intelligent questions during your interview.

Be courteous to everyone you meet.

We always encourage candidates to be friendly to the first person they meet when they walk in the door of a company. Many interviewers will ask the person at the front desk or at the security desk for a quick first impression. If you were rude, if you were talking on your cell phone, or if you were pacing nervously, they will share that information with the interviewing/hiring manager so it is important to not get off on the wrong foot. Greet everyone with politeness and wish them well when you leave, turn the cell phone off in the car (vibrate isn’t good enough – it needs to be off), and sit calmly while waiting. Consider your interview starting the moment you arrive at the company.

Even if it seems like common sense, think about it.

Most people look at us oddly when we provide this advice but you would be surprised how often simple common sense errors trip up an otherwise decent interview. Before you walk in the building make sure your sunglasses are off of your head and that your suit jacket lapel isn’t folded under. Make sure you’ve left food and drink in the car (this includes gum and mints). Always take at least three extra copies of your resume in case you meet with more than one person, and ensure those resumes are neat and are free of coffee stains, folds, and pen marks. Make sure you have reference information with you including the person’s full name, phone number, and email address. And most of all make sure you know who to ask for when you arrive!

Despite low unemployment rates, the job market in the Lehigh Valley is always competitive and employers will be considering multiple candidates when hiring. If you’ve done your research, remember your manners and pay attention to the common sense details, you will absolutely have a leg up on the competition. Rest assured, we’ve seen enough people stumble to know what gets you noticed in a positive way.

Good luck with your search, and be sure to check out Allied’s available jobs regularly.

2017 Resume Refresh

December 29, 2016

As 2016 winds down, it’s a great time to reflect on the past year and gear up for 2017. It is also the perfect time to give your resume a refresh. If it has been a while since you updated it there may be significant changes in your skills and experience that aren’t reflected. Here are a few tips to help guide you through the process.

Review the past year. Have you completed any significant projects? Do you have any added responsibilities? What new skills have you acquired? Looking through your calendar for the past year is an easy way to remember your accomplishments. If you received a performance review take a look at that also, as it should include some details that might need to be added to your resume.

Update your keywords. Strategically using keywords throughout your resume is essential to ensure that employers find you, and also that your resume makes it through the automated resume screening tools that many companies utilize. Your objective or summary statement at the beginning is an easy place to include keywords, and it’s also an easy area to edit when applying for specific positions.

Consider a redesign. While you are editing the content of your resume you should also think about updating the style. A new format might allow you to better highlight some of your recent achievements, or it can help your resume stand out in a crowd of others. Be careful not to overdo, however; keep it professional and remember that sometimes less is more.

Get an objective opinion. Ask a friend or colleague to look at your resume and give you their honest feedback. It can be helpful to seek the opinion of both a person who knows you well and also of someone who doesn’t know you very well. Comparing the feedback of both can help make sure that you’ve crafted a resume that speaks to who you are and what you’ve accomplished.

Need an objective resume review? Talk to one of the staffing professionals here at Allied. Working with a staffing firm is the perfect way to begin a job search and we would love to help you with your 2017 resume refresh!

Resume Mistakes To Avoid

March 29, 2016

While technology and the internet have dramatically changed the way we search for jobs, one thing still remains constant: the resume. Even if you are conducting your job search entirely online, your resume is still a necessary component in the process. You may have updated it to include all of your career accomplishments, training,awards and certifications, but there are also several things you need to make sure that it doesn’t include.

• Leave overly personal information off your resume: no social security numbers, marital status, family blogs, pictures, or information unrelated to your skills and work experience.

• References and salary requirements should not be included on your resume. If an employer requests this information, references should be presented on a separate page and salary requirements can be included in a cover letter.

• Limit the use of jargon or specific industry terms unless they are directly relevant to the position for which you are applying.

• Limit your use of bolding, italics and underlining – too much of these can clutter the content. Use a standard font like Arial, Calibri or Times New Roman and use that font consistently throughout all documents.

• Your resume should be free of all spelling and grammatical errors. Always have someone read your resume before sending it. Attention to detail can very easily put your resume on the top of the pile; failure to fix errors quickly moves you to the bottom.

• Present yourself accurately at all times. Never lie. Companies have the time and resources to verify your background information including education and employment history.

If you haven’t done it recently, ask a friend or colleague review your resume. Get their honest feedback and make improvements. You can also get constructive feedback on your resume from a staffing service. At Allied we always provide our candidates with tips and advice to help them improve their resumes and their chances of landing the job.