Forget about brevity, forget about personal achievements. If you want to get hired in today`s tight job market, says Marilyn Moats Kennedy, editor of a monthly newsletter for career planners, your resume must prove you can lead and work with others.
As far as personnel managers are concerned, Kennedy says, personal accomplishments, hobbies and group affiliations are out and skills in group leadership are in.
Also in are lengthy descriptions of job responsibilities, even if they string your resume out to two or three pages. Job titles are cheap, Kennedy says. Employers want specifics, as in ”With two subordinates, I executed a successful plan that saved the company from losses in its manufacturing division by refining quality control procedures and substantially reducing customer complaints.”
Kennedy also recommends typed resumes, rather than those mass-produced by professional printers. She says the personal touch impresses prospective employers and allows the applicant to tailor each resume to a particular job. MARKETABLE MANAGERS
Speaking of getting hired, James E. Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a Chicago personnel consulting firm, says that the white collar manager in most demand today is a 44-year-old male who earns about $47,000 a year and has held at least two prior jobs. These people have enough experience to fit in and contribute quickly.
PAC MEN
In a recent study of the impact of placing personal computers in dormitories, researchers at the University of Illinois-Champaign-Urbana found that college men played computer games 16 times as much as college women.
On the whole, however, neither group played very much. The IBM computers installed in students` rooms and residence hall lounges were most often used for writing papers, followed by personal correspondence, such as letters to friends or resumes. Computer games ran a distant third.
When game-playing was discounted, women used the computers more often than men.
A DOG`S LIFE
What`s so bad about a dog`s life? Statistics from the American Veterinary Medical Association reveal that 74 percent of dog owners take their pets to the veterinarian, while just 47 percent of cat owners do. Furthermore, dogs are routinely vaccinated against rabies, while only 4 percent of cats are.
OPEN AND SHUT CASE
Automatic garage door openers operate an estimated 12 million of this country`s 48.4 million garage doors. Homeowners purchased 1.7 million automatic openers in 1985, according to Philips Home Products Inc., and installed 80 percent of them themselves.