JangChoe.name

Recently, I’ve been helping out a friend on her resume. I’ve been out of the job loop for over a year, and I was a bit rusty. But with the recession firing on full cylinders, this helped me to focus on my resume as well. And it helped me to get in the groove of the job hunt again—even though I’m not looking for a new job. It just helps to be prepared. I remember the last recession¹, and it was not fun. I don’t want to be caught with my pants down again.

When I used to help people with their resume, I actually rewrote some of the stuff they wrote in the resume. It took a long time to rewrite their resume. Now, I just reformat their resume so it’s easier to read. That’s pretty much all I do. I may make a wording change here and there, but nothing major. I make them most of the writing. Also I usually charged $50/hr for the resume service.

So to the friend I helped: expect an invoice soon.

What Makes Me Such an Expert?

I’m not an expert actually, but there was a time where I thought I cracked the code of getting a job. I came up with all sorts of hacks to get me a job. I even had a whole blog devoted to it. The blog was interesting because I broke traditional rules on finding a job. I also encouraged committing some job search faux pas. I had some good material for over a year, but I stopped writing that blog for a few reasons:

• Slowly, it was getting popular. This resulted in me trying to link bait every time. Essentially, I was writing for my audience than for myself. So it became less enjoyable. I usually write blogs to self amuse, but if I stop doing that, it becomes not so amusing.
• Near the end, I had a hard time updating it every week. I was running out of things to write. Other blogs just rehash their past material, but I tried writing fresh posts every time. That only lasted a year or so. Trying to think of new stuff to write was challenging and stressful. Sometimes, to meet my deadline, I wrote things that wasn’t completely flushed out in my head. Those posts look like someone wrote it tripping on acid.
• Even though I thought I was immune to the flames in my comments, I guess the haters still affected me. I guess I have a thinner skin than I thought.
• The methods I wrote was only tested during good economic times. I have no idea if these will work in a bad job market.

I haven’t touched that blog in many months. But I miss feeling like a know-it-all and giving smug advices on a blog. So that’s what I’m going to do.

ZOMG! 1000 Tips to Make Your Resume Better!

So, this post might be another, “ZMOG! 1000 tips to make your resume better!” posts. But it won’t be. Actually it will be, but it won’t be. Yes it’s a paradoxical post. Kinda like how the sentence, “this statement is false” is paradoxical.²

Anyway, when I help someone with their resume, I usually don’t change a thing. Not because it’s perfect but because I’m lazy. And I learned that most changes aren’t necessary.

But when I do give changes, I mainly change 2 things:

1. Grammar mistakes.
2. Making sure the resume is easy to scan.

That’s about it. Everything else is secondary.

I read a billion sites regarding how to write resumes. Most of those sites had conflicting advices. When I was a college graduate, those conflicting tips drove me mad. I was freaking out, not knowing what to do.

Well, it don’t matter what you do. How do I know? Because I’ve been on both sides. I’ve read a lot of resumes and gave interviews, and I wrote a lot of resumes and went to many interviews.

Although from interacting with experts, pseudo-experts, and just plain old idiots on resume writing, some of them are quite zealous about certain things. Well, let us go over some of them.

The Personal Objective or Summary of Skills

These usually go on the top. They say who you are, what position you’re looking for, and why you’re good for that position. Do you need to write this? Well, it can’t hurt. I usually ignore these when I’m deciding where to bring someone for the interview. Why? Because they all say the same thing.

I mean, we’re all professional, highly motivated, customer focused, detail oriented, eager to learn, a quick learner, skilled, pro-active, accomplished, results oriented, highly competent, passionate, successful, and super experienced people who can get things done, proficient in many things, has bunch of leadership qualities, and a good worker.

Not only that, we’re also looking for a position that is challenging, stimulating, can use our awesome skills, to be a value member of that company, and so on.

Okay, so do we really need them? Yes, it helps with scanning. No, because some people don’t read them and most times everything on there is irrelevant.  So if you need more content, just add it. If you need to remove content, just take it out.

The only time I can think of to absolutely have a summary of skills is if you did something extraordinary. For instance, “A Nobel prize winner seeking a position in…” or “…created the Java programming language…”³ or “… former Alaskan Governor and former beauty pageant contestant seeks a…” and so on.

So what do you do? Put it there if you want. I don’t care.

How Many Pages?

It doesn’t matter; it just has to be at least one full page. I read 10 page resumes before and 1 page resumes before. They both got interviews. So it doesn’t matter. Just make it one full page. I mean, I hope you have at least one page worth of information.

Chronological or Functional?

This is simple. If you have no experience, do a functional resume. If you do, do a chronological resume. But if you’re applying for a non-entry level position, do a chronological.

Bullet Points are Bad Mmm Kay? Or Are They?

I read somewhere where it said that bullet points in resume are bad. Their argument was that bullet points were over used. They wanted us to write in prose.

Well, they’re wrong. It doesn’t matter. I’ve seen resume with no bullet points. I’ve seen resumes with bullet points. I’ve seen resume that combine bullet points and prose. So it doesn’t matter.

Personally, I prefer bullet points. It makes things easier to scan. Just remember to have more than one bullet point per list though. Otherwise, it’s not a list. It’s just a point.

Why Should I Trust You?

You don’t have to trust me. These are just my experiences, and it worked for me. I also have my method of scanning resumes. And my way of deciding whether to interview someone. I’m sure other people have their methods, and it’s probably different from mine.

So don’t worry about it. Just make sure you have no errors in your resume, and it’s easy to read. If you’re super qualified but didn’t get the interview just because you didn’t have your resume in a bullet point format, then you’re lucky you’re not working for that person.

Hmmm, maybe I should descriminate against non-bullet point resume writers next time….

1. It was actually not a real recession, but everyone in the tech industry would call it a recession [↩]
2. Can you guess what book I’ve been reading lately? [↩]
3. I’m sure James Gosling wouldn’t put that on there. Or would he? [↩]

My Progression Seemed to Get Better

I was reading my old workout journals. I noticed that I worked out only 15-30 minutes every day for the past year and a half. Slowly my recent efforts have been ramped up to about 45 minutes every other day. Does this mean I’m getting fitter?

I used to dread doing 15 minutes of workout. Now I’m blowing by them no problem. It was probably a mental thing. A year ago, I was so lazy that 15 minutes seemed like a long time. Recently, I was getting angry at my unmotivated self. So I told myself that 15 minutes is such a short amount of time that I should be able to do at least 15 minutes. Then that 15 minutes blew by quick, and I was able to keep going. So I think it’s just a mental paradigm shift.

Older, Wiser, Stronger, Faster, Harder, Better?

Even though I’m 30 now, I feel like I’m fit as ever. Although when I was 24-26 years old, I was in pretty good shape. Back then, I even had a six pack going. I also weighed 180lbs, and it was mostly muscle.

At that tender age of 24-26, I had a pretty sexy body. But my cholesterol was high, my blood pressure was super high, I got sick almost every other month, and I couldn’t run more than a few feet without wheezing.

Now I’m at a skinny 170lbs, and it’s not mostly muscle. But I feel like my overall health is better. My recent checkup shows that I have lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol. I also don’t get sick as much, and my cardiovascular endurance seems to have improved.

In terms of strength, it feels like I have more coordinated strength than local strength. For instance, my bicep curls and squats has probably gotten weaker. But I’ll probably feel heavier and stronger overall when doing physical activities.

Why Am I So Strong Now?

All these could be attributed to a lot of things. I’m eating more healthy now. I also wash my hands obsessively before every meal. This is in addition to working out almost every day.

I think the only thing that I’m worse off now than 5 years ago is that I look skinnier and my joints are getting worse. But I think that’s due to over training than anything else. Also, being skinny is better than having a beer belly like most people I know in their 30’s.

So what does all this mean? “Girly” exercises such as yoga and qigong FTW! Seriously, those exercsies are epic win. If done right they condition your muscles, fascia, connective tissues, skin, bone, internal organs, etc. Not only that, your cardiovascular endurace also shoots up. If you don’t believe me, try doing 1 hour of sumo squats or maho. You’ll be sweating and panting in no time.

I love Twitter. It’s good to my lazy nature. I’m more inclined to write short, random thoughts that pop into my head instead of writing gigantic posts. Anyway, I added a Twitter Tool to the sidebar so my blog actually seems like it’s getting updated.

For those of you that are stalking me, you can now follow my every move in my facebook, blog, and twitter since I synched all of them up. Or it’s just my way of being an attention whore.

Office Max sells these boxes to recycle your old computer and electronics. They sell the boxes for a hefty price, but they are providing a service to get rid of your old electronics. Since I have so many ancient computers laying around the house (I’m a programmer-that’s required), I decided to get some of those boxes so I can recycle my old computer hardware.

So I paid $20 for 2 big boxes. As I was coming out of Office Max, Hannah asked me, “why don’t you just throw away the computers?” Then it hit me. She’s absolutely right! Why don’t I just throw them away?

Think about it, I’m paying $20 to allow Office Max throw away my thrash. I can do that for free. I think working for The Weather Channel brainwashed me into being green. I guess it’s working, since I’m already thinking like an irrational, enviromental hippy.