Top Ten Things You Must Consider When Making Your C.V [TIPS]


1. Understand Attention Spans

Keep in mind that people read resumes about halfway down the page/screen before deciding if they are going to continue reading, save it for later or hit the delete button. Anything marketable about you should be in the top third of the resume.


2. Make It an Appropriate Length


The optimal length of the resume will depend on your experience. A person with a single year’s experience and a four-page resume is in trouble, as is a person with 10 years experience and a one-page resume. Be concise and try to fit your resume into three pages. Need to cut down? You don’t need an objective — it’s a waste of precious space, unless you are a career changer.


3. General Summaries Bad, Technical Summaries Good


General summaries can help if used sparingly and appropriately. Technical summaries are more helpful, because the first person reading your resume could be non-technical and only knowledgeable enough to look for keywords. However, there should not be a laundry list of every technology you have ever heard about.


4. Dates Matter


Be clear about your dates of employment. Most companies want to see months, not just years — especially if you have some jumps or if you are currently unemployed (i.e. they want to see how long you have been out). It’s better to be upfront than to make them guess.


5. Highlight Accomplishments, Not Just Job Functions


The descriptions of your positions should ideally be a mix of a broad overview and specific accomplishments. That way, recruiters will know what you did day-to-day, but also what effect your activities had on the overall company or department.


6. Quality Writing Still Matters


Long-winded paragraphs or bullets are mind numbing, but short choppy sentences can appear simplistic. The ideal resume should have a combination of short paragraphs and bullets — or even just bullets. If you opt for bullets, combine related activities into one bullet where appropriate to save room.


7. Use Action Verbs


The most overused phrases on resumes are “responsible for” or “participated in.” It’s hard to know if you were just a bystander or a true contributor or even a leader on a project. It’s okay to use these terms once or twice, but it’s much better to use something like “managed,” “completed,” “administered,” “developed,” etc. If you are having trouble coming up with action verbs, Thesaurus.com should be your new best friend.


8. There Are No Rules About Education Placement


Education placement is variable. If you went to a particularly good school, have an advanced degree or have a very relevant degree to the types of roles you are pursuing, then it might be worth putting at the top, but it’s okay for education to be at the bottom, too.

The same applies for certifications — but if you have many, then it might consume too much space at the top. Assuming your resume has the experience to back up the certifications, your prospective employer will be intrigued enough to get to them at the end.


9. People are Not That Interested in Interests


The ubiquitous “Interests” section isn’t really necessary; however, if there’s something you are particularly proud of and it’s short, then feel free to include it at the end of your resume. There is always the possibility that when you put “competitive running” on your resume that the person reading your resume is a marathoner and gives you an interview for that reason. However, you should exclude any activities that could be seen as overly political or offensive.


10. Be Prepared With A Versatile Resume Template


Sometimes it’s valuable to have more than one version of your resume. For example, if your background could be applicable to manager or individual contributor positions, you don’t want to scare someone off with a heavy manager resume for a contributor role or vice versa. However, you should not make yourself crazy writing a new resume for every position that comes up (an especially tempting habit if you are unemployed).

Thanks to http://mashable.com/2012/04/01/tech-resume-tip/

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What E-Communication and Internet Snatched from Us [Article]


This is an age of Information Technology and we have faster access to people and Information. We are getting many benefits from electronic communication in many fields of life. It has resulted many changes in our lives, some of which
are harmful as well. Some old trends have been diminished almost. Here I am going to discuss some trends which have replaced older ways and what we have forgotten.

1. Letters

Gone are those days when people used to get excited on getting letters of their near and dear ones. Letter used to be a memory and it was considered “Half Meeting”. Letters were saved carefully sometimes so may be read again in future as memory. Today, letters have been limited to only few official posts. At least still we get happy when postman gives appointment letter to someone. :).

This is an age of Information Technology where people communicated through internet and Mobiles. Although, email facility is a blessing but sometimes we miss letters as letter has its own charm.

2. Greeting Cards

Through e-Communication, we can visit hundred of e-cards websites, but do it gives happiness which you used to have on receiving printed or hand made cards. I remember times when we used to buy eid cards with our pocket money. On different occasions, we used to search fascinating greeting cards. Good poetic verses were chosen to write on cards. Decorated cards with quotation, poetry and sometimes with stickers were sent to friends and relatives. E-Cards could never give me that happiness .Hand written eid cards used to entertain receiver and were saved for years as well. Nowadays, if you re-arrange your book shelf or cup board, do you get old greeting cards? Answer is perhaps “No” because electronic cards are saved in our inbox.

3. Book Reading

We remain all day busy with internet and mobiles. We have left reading books. Books are considered good companions of a person but today we have made mobile our companion. We don’t have enough time to read a long good book rather we can read 50-100 messages per day. Actually our attention has been divided into many things.

4. Peoples Gatherings Now in front of TV

Our grand father used to have gup-shup with friends and people had time for this. Then TV replaced those gatherings and our parents become used of Televisions but to an extent. It still did not affect that much when they did not have many TV channels to browse. Within some years, we got access to world wide channels and internet facility. Now, after returning from offices and universities, people sit in front of TV or Computer for hours.

Male don not want to leave sports channels, women are fond of Morning shows, cooking programs and entertainment channels. Children are eager to watch cartoons and animated movies. All this has become addiction perhaps a bad addiction.

5. Grammar and Spellings

If we are using spelling and Grammar feature of Word formatter software, it sometimes make us much dependent for corrections. In case of any spelling mistake, we quickly select correct option from help or choose some alternative. We don’t try to think ourselves. Result is that sometimes, we forget correct spellings when we are not working on computers.

6. Library Visits

It has been also observed that many students now prefer Internet for search instead of visiting libraries. On internet, sometimes, reliability is not verified.

7. Cut, Copy, Paste

In past, students, used to consult library books for preparing assignments. They used to surf different books and then carefully bookmark relevant information. After this, selected information was typed or written. In this way, students used to know more.  Nowadays, assignments are prepared from Internet material mostly. Just copy from 3-4 sites and paste in MS Word. This has affected quality of work and group discussions to some extent.

8. Unreliable Material/Sites

A student is asked to prepare assignment or to write a research paper. Internet is here, just writing a string and it will give you a list of sites. Are you sure that material you got is reliable?  We can’t judge sometimes.  So, wrong information is communicated if not properly handled.

There should be some check and balance to ensure trusted sites.

9. Moral Values

Parents of today have challenge whether their child is getting good moral values or not. Youngsters nowadays have much exposure. It is very hard to keep them away from all kind of dirty stuff.

Bundle of sms packages, cable channels and internet are badly affecting moral values unfortunately. Media sometimes present bad things as good and present unethical programs stuff in glamorous way that people are captivated.

10. Health Hazards

Much in-touch with mobiles, computers and TV are affecting our health and perhaps acting as slow poison. We are aware to some extent but are addictive. It takes our time which we used to surf for a walk.

Nine to five office jobs sometimes result in health disturbances like affect on eyesight, back pain, mental stress, depression, and affect on digestive system.

11. Misuse of Chat

Internet chat facility has many benefits but it is misused my youngsters mostly. Instead of using for useful purposes, I t is used sometimes for finding friendships with opposite gender. We also listen many stories   of deceiving people on chat.

13. Rumors (Mobiles)

You get an alarming message or a message having some wrong information or propaganda.

Like news channel, you want to spread it as soon as possible. You do not want to even authenticate information. Within few minutes, you send message to a list of contacts and within hours it is spread to thousands of people.  This kind of wrong information sometimes badly portrays an event, a religion, a personality and a concept sometimes.

Here it depends on you that how carefully you handle. Always try to verify such information so it may not cause any kind of damage.

14. Mess of Information

Amount of data on internet is increasing at immense rate. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to search useful information from a heap and we become confused. It is also difficult to judge what is wrong and what is right.

15. Propaganda

Internet is also been used for propaganda against personalities, religions, or countries. Everyone has right to say whatever one wants to convey. There are thousands of discussions forums on internet. It is common that a controversial topic is started as thread and end result is very harsh comments among participants.
It is common among enemy nations to blame each other and to use dirty languages.

16. At Home Away from family, near to Friends/Outer World

Due to Internet, Mobiles and other devices, we are now sometimes present at home but are actually away from our own family members. We spent many hours in chatting, messaging, browsing etc. This affects relationship. Excess of anything is bad.

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Image Courtesy: http://www.jmorganmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/business-problems-social-media-roi.jpg

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Ergonomic Tips for Computer Users – [Free .PDF]


It is very important for Computer Users to know these Ergonomic Tips.

Click here to Download (.pdf)

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Reference: http://umeedthehope.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/tips-for-improving-postures-ergonomics/