Skiilight Blog
Archive for the ‘promotion’ Category
How Monster.com Reformats Your Resume
Skiilight sometimes crawls Monster.com looking for companies that think they need someone in-house for their marketing. In reality, our firm can provide the same solutions with less overhead – so in these cases we say hello and offer our services. Naturally, I have a Monster.com account (and a LinkedIn!). So recently I had just completed a resume overhaul and was proud of my work. I’d spent all evening rearranging information and cutting out what didn’t need to be there. Being in design and communications (and knowing how to manipulate MS Word), I built a resume that conveyed my information beautifully.
So, I uploaded my resume to Monster and like Godzilla to Tokyo, powerlines started falling and I could hear the screams of people running away. Monster ignored a good majority of my formatting, forcing my resume to two pages and destroying my carefully-honed style in the process.
What happened?
Through trial and error, I have decided that the following is what goes on behind the scenes when you upload your Word resume to Monster.com
- Monster does not care that you changed the margins. They will revert to the default margin size.
- Monster has no interest in your bullet styles. It will default to Symbol, size 12.
- Because of this, any line spacing less than single space will be lost on the line with the bullet. Curiously, Monster DOES respect your line spacing setting, but the 12pt type size will force the bulleted line to a miniumum of single space. If that initial bulleted line continues into a second line, the second line will retain the line spacing. In my case, .8.
- Monster will not retain any images that may be in your resume.
- Monster will force any header or footer information into the body area. Don’t even try to gain that little bit of extra space.
Fig. 1 – Original Resume
Fig. 2 – Edited to comply with Monster’s reformatting.
Note line spacing difference. My 0.8 line spacing is retained for first job description,
ignored in second job description because of the size 12 bullet.
Fig. 3 – How Monster displays it in HTML. (note the line spacing and bullets)
Even though the line spacing looks incorrect in Fig. 3, once downloaded from the link above (“Download Job Seeker’s Word Resume”), the Word doc will display correct(er) line spacing, as shown in Fig. 2.
So, I hope this might be an interesting read to anyone who may have wrestled with Monster’s formatting in the past.
A great list
I love lists. They’re all over the internet and quite often find themselves at the top of Digg. This one is from Megan Casey, which I found through Seth Godin’s blog. The original is here (but copied and pasted below): http://blogs.squidoo.com/squidblog/?p=276
“People online are real people.
If you send a nasty email, there’s a real human being on the other end who gets it.
If you flame in a forum, you’re wasting real people’s time.
If you spam someone, you’re really only making yourself look bad.
If you write IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS it sounds like shouting.
If you want something to happen your way, try asking instead of demanding.
If you give, you’ll probably wind up getting, too.
If you blog just to pick fights, don’t be surprised when people don’t trust you.
If you collaborate, say thanks.
If you’re independent, say no thanks.
If you like someone, tell them.
If you don’t, walk away from the computer.
If you’re giving feedback, lead with just one good thing.
If you’re getting feedback, realize that the person must care a lot to have sent it.
If you goof, apologize.
If you apologize, mean it.
If you smile, mean that too.
If you don’t like something, don’t do it.
If you do like something, spread it.
But far far more important:
Give people a break.
The break you probably deserve yourself.
People are out to do good, 99% of the time.
You probably are too.
Say thanks out loud and a lot.
Try making someone’s day.
Chances are they’ll make yours in return.”
Megan’s list seems so simple, but sometimes people forget what they learned in Kindergarten and interaction takes a nose dive. Conducting business and interacting with customers (and friends and family and so on…) in an honest an sincere way is the best way to build a brand people will want to talk about.
The learnings of our childhood, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” don’t apply to business. You’d better give them something nice to say or else they will, without a doubt, tell everyone the bad things. You never get a second chance – well you know the rest.