These are all basic rules, but they all seem to get broken constantly. All of these should be obvious to anyone who’s conscious (maybe even the lightly sleeping), but they must not be. On to the rules!
- Proofread your resume. This is the most basic rule I can imagine, and yet it has been violated so many times that it’s threatening to press charges. I’ve gotten applications for the Administratvie Assistant position from people living in Memhpis. Spellcheck, and fix your grammar. I’m not interested in your “too years of experience”. And proofread your cover letter and/or email, too. Misspelling the name of our company is not helping your cause.
- Remember to attach your resume. This one really hurts. Don’t send a wonderful email and forget to attach your resume. I know, I know, people make mistakes. People who make mistakes during the application process don’t get hired. Remember, this is your first (and probably only, if you don’t attach your resume) chance to impress a prospective employer.
- Don’t dump your resume into an email. I don’t know what fool has been giving out resume advice lately (aside from myself), but apparently, lots of people apparently think I’d prefer a resume dumped in an email to a nicely formatted PDF or DOC file. Trust me, I don’t. Unless your prospective employer specifically asks for this, don’t do it. Your resume looks horrible and sloppy when you do this. I did have one industrious applicant who actually submitted her application as an email, but took great care to format it with lots of HTML and tables. Unfortunately, when I printed it, the right side of her resume was cut off. It ended up in the “no interest” pile, along with the rest of the email-as-resume group.
- Microsoft Works is not your friend. I know, you’ve got Works already and Microsoft Office is expensive. I don’t care. Someone you know has a copy of Microsoft Word. Put your resume together on their computer. Why? Because I use Linux at work and OpenOffice has no idea what to do with a Works file. Even my laptop with Microsoft Office couldn’t open those files without installing a new plugin. Rich Text Format files are likewise not your friend, but a PDF will get you bonus points. (OpenOffice files would have been fine for us, too, but probably not for most employers.)
- Follow standard resume guidelines. Your resume doesn’t make you look different or clever, and it’s not supposed to. Your resume should make you look professional. That is your primary goal. Your “special” colors are not helping. That cute divider you used is not impressing me. Your resume cannot, and should not attempt to, convey your personality. You can show us your personality when you come in for an interview, after we select you based on your professional resume.
- Don’t use an embarassing account on a lame email provider. I know hotmail and yahoo are free, but your cutegurl56xx username just isn’t cool. I’m also not interested in trying out the new game advertised on the bottom of your hotmail account. If you must use a free provider, make sure that they aren’t tacking ads on the bottom of your emails. And please, get a better username.
- Don’t have a resume objective. This goes contrary to a great deal of resume advice out there, but it needs to be said. Raise your hand if you know what the “objective” on a resume is for. If your hand is up, put it down. You’re lying. About eighty percent of the resumes we received for this latest position listed an objective. Out of those, zero percent had an objective that said anything good. Every single one was either generic (“To obtain a job in which my skills will be useful”), irrelevant (“To join a fast-growing company”), or flat out wrong (“To obtain a graphic design position”). At best, an objective wastes space on your resume. At worst, it shows you as boring, lazy, or misinformed. I’d rather read that you were in 4-H than read your objective.
- Don’t put friends as references. This one was kind of fun. We actually had some applicants naming each other as references. Did they think we just wouldn’t notice? You should never list as a reference a person who would list you as a reference. You should list bosses, professors, etc. If you can’t fill your references without listing friends, you need to figure out why that is, and make some changes.
- Include a cover letter. There’s some disagreement about this one, but I think a cover letter is a definite plus. I’d prefer a nicely formatted document as the cover letter, but I will settle for a well-written email. What I will not settle for is a one-line email with no cover letter attached. “Please see attached resume.” Okay, please see trash folder. I want something other than just the resume. The letter (or email) is somewhere that you can actually speak to me. If you can’t manage that, I’m not interested.
These nine rules are all fairly simple and straightforward. Following them will go a long way toward impressing a prospective employer. Remember, your resume is your first impression. It should sparkle, or at the very least, glimmer a little bit.
Update: I’ve put up four more Bonus Resume Tips.
Our emotions drive us, whether we like it or not. Logic and reason always seem to take a back seat to anger, resentment, or jealousy. Unfortunately, we often fail to realize this, and never to good effect.
About a year ago, I bought a brand new stainless steel grill. I absolutely love it. It makes wonderful burgers, grills chicken like a champ, and cooks steaks good enough to may Bobby Flay jealous. Well, it does all those things when I don’t mess up.
A couple of weeks after buying the grill, I opened the refrigerator to find a plastic tub full of raw, marinating chicken. My roommate at the time had bought this chicken, and was clearly planning on grilling it. I gave it a sniff, and thought it smelled a bit off. Whether it was really the chicken, or just the marinade, I couldn’t say. But I knew I had to let him know. How would I feel if I let him eat bad chicken? What if he got salmonella? Or e. coli? Or a cold sore? I could have prevented that!
So, out of only the most genuine concern for my roommate’s health and safety, I asked him how long the chicken had been marinading. “A few days.” I told him that I didn’t think it would really be safe to eat chicken that had been sitting uncooked for that long, even in the refrigerator. He blew me off, but then checked online, where other people also told him that three days is a bit too long. (Everyone knows that random Internet sites are trustworthy sources of information.) He ended up throwing the chicken out and eating something else.
This isn’t the story of how I saved him from certain salmonella, though. I don’t honestly know whether or not the chicken was safe to eat. As long as he cooked it thoroughly, it probably would have been fine. Upon later reflection, I realized that my concern for his health was not the primary reason I asked about the chicken, not by a long shot. The real reason was that I knew he was planning on using my grill. How dare he?! If he’d asked, I wouldn’t have minded, at least not much. He was going to use without asking, though, the bastard.
My roommate using my grill, even without permission, would not have been the end of the world. But I let my emotions get the better of me, and I did so without even realizing. Rather than recognizing that I felt insulted by him neglecting to ask for permission, and acting properly, I turned to a passive-aggressive technique to get him to not use my grill. The appropriate thing to do would have been to let him use my grill, but to tell him that in the future, he should ask before planning to use it. By not recognizing my own emotions and how they were affecting me, I let myself act in a way I normally wouldn’t. By neglecting to step back and evaluate the situation, I allowed myself to ignore the real issue.
Acting the way I did didn’t cause any massive problems. I don’t know if my roommate ever even realized the real reason I asked him about the chicken. It’s not the end of the world if he did. It could have caused problems, though, if he’d seen through it and he’d gotten upset. Two passive-aggressive people do not a happy home make. Acting the way I did is fairly transparent. Behaving that way repeatedly will eventually be noticed, and it can’t possibly breed anything but bad feelings.
What would have happened if it had been a boss that had slighted me? Would I have started neglecting my duties at work? Would I have become passive-aggressive there? That could have been a problem.
Inevitably, everyone we know is going to hurt our feelings at some point. If we don’t step back, and realize what the problem is, we greatly increase the chances of the situation escalating, perhaps immediately, perhaps over the long term. How many friends have you drifted apart from because some minor, possibly even unintentional insult turned into a big deal? (Hint: If you have bad feelings toward someone you drifted apart from, and can’t fully explain the feeling, that might be what happened.)
How many couples split because tiny issues built until they were driven apart? Sally feels that John just doesn’t care anymore, and John thinks that Sally’s turned into a nag. Likely, neither of them has really changed much. Instead, they’ve let the little things build up. They’ve let the feelings of resentment build. John has been shirking his part of the household work and he doesn’t take Sally out much anymore. Sally has been acting distant because John hasn’t been doing his housework, and she doesn’t realize her tactics are not helping the situation. Neither of them are showing much affection. Both Sally and John need to step back and realize that there’s no critical problem. They’ve simply let tiny things build until they’ve convince themselves that the problems are huge.
However, if we take the time and put forth the effort to just step back and really figure out why we are acting the way we are, we can often fix the underlying problem. We don’t have to compound minor issues. Sometimes we need to work through the problem with the others involved. Sometimes we just need to understand why we’re upset, or why we’re acting the way we are, and just stop. Once we understand the problem, it can more often than not be easily solved. We just have to try. We have to pay attention, look past the superficial issue, to find out what’s really underneath.
In our attempts to tame our expenses, we put ourselves through a lot of hoops. We try only paying cash. We go through the hassles of writing down every expense, or saving every receipt. But why? Why do we continually do this to ourselves? We know it’s a hassle. We know it goes against our nature. That inner slacker is fighting to get out.
Why not just stop? Instead of writing down every expense, or saving every receipt, or always paying cash, why not stop trying so hard to keep up with all our expenses? What happens if we stop watching our expenses constantly? So, we overdraft a bit. So what? So we find ourselves forced to dip into emergency savings regularly. Who cares? Maybe we go into a bit of consumer debt. Is that really so bad?
Okay, that really is bad, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Why? Because someone else is already watching your expenses for you. Your bank is watching every time you buy a CD with your debit card. Visa is watching when you charge that new stereo system. They are already keeping up with every transaction you make, so you don’t have to. If you put everything on a card, you’ll already have records of your transactions.
So, just charge everything and hope it works out at the end of the month, huh? Well, not exactly. I charge or debit pretty much everything I can. However, every few days, I sit down at my computer and tally up how much I owe American Express, and how much is left in my checking account. I always have a very good idea about exactly how much money is available to me. I don’t keep my receipts, and I definitely don’t try to pay cash. My cards track my expenses for me. All I have to do is tally them up and divide my expenses into the right categories for my budget. It takes no more time to tally this way than if I were tracking via receipts, and I don’t have to carry a wallet full of worthless paper.
This isn’t for everyone. There are some people who simply cannot trust themselves with a card, and if that’s you, I understand. Pay cash.
But if you can be responsible with a card, there’s no reason to put yourself through unnecessary hassle. You can do this with a debit card or a credit card. It really doesn’t matter. You need to spend a little bit of time every so often making sure your expenses match your budget (they do line up, right?), but that’s all. So save yourself the trouble of keeping a fistful of receipts, and the danger of carrying large amounts of cash. Let Mr. Mastercard and Mr. Chase watch your expenses for you.
(Okay, so the title isn’t completely accurate, but “Track Your Money without Obsessing Over Every Single Purchase, Every Single Day” just didn’t have the same ring.)
Last time, I wrote about only paying in cash as a part of personal finance tracking, and why I think it’s unrealistic. This time, I want to talk about the other much-touted method for tracking personal expenses: Write down every expense.
The Good
Unlike only paying in cash, I feel that writing down every expense is somewhat reasonable. The benefits are obvious. Since you’re writing down every expense, every single penny that you spend is accounted for, whether you are paying with cash, credit, check, or debit. There’s no question of where your money is going, and if you also keep a running expense total, you should be able to state, at any moment, how much money you have available.
The Bad (or at least The Bothersome)
However, I feel that writing down every expense is also less than optimal. Let’s face it, writing down every single expense is inconvenient. You have to constantly carry a pad of paper and a pen. If you already do this, then writing down every expense might not be such a problem. However, I’ve never managed to follow this rule for more than a few weeks. It’s just too much trouble. I never carry a pen or paper, and don’t want to. I feel my pockets are crowded enough.
The Other
A slight variation on this theme is to keep every receipt. The basic idea is the same, and so are most of the benefits. However, saving receipts allows you to avoid the need to carry a pen and paper. Unfortunately, saving receipts has a tendency to thicken the wallet, and not in a good way. Some weeks, I barely spend anything, and during those weeks, savings receipts is easy. Other weeks, I have tons of purchases, and carrying a dozen receipts becomes tedious. The wallet I carry is tiny, and barely has room for what’s already in it. Stuffing twenty reciepts inside doesn’t exactly serve to lighten the load.
To be honest, there’s no extremely compelling reason not to save receipts or to write down expenses. Doing either of those things carries some obvious benefits, and the drawbacks aren’t nearly as severe as only carrying cash. It’s just not the most convenient thing to do. Next time, I’ll explain what I do instead, which I think carries most of the benefits of saving receipts, but without all the hassle.
The topic of watching one’s expenses has been harped on by every finance blogger in the world. I happen to agree with them, sort of. It’s vital to watch one’s expenses, but the methods chosen often seem less than optimal.
Much of what I’ve read about tracking expenses falls into one of two categories: Always pay cash or Write down every expense. Today I’ll just give my thoughts about cash, leaving the rest for later.
Does it hurt more to pay cash?
The idea behind always paying cash is that it hurts to hand someone else your money, and therefore, you’ll spend less. I agree that it hurts to hand someone money, but it doesn’t matter much whether it’s paper or plastic. If I’m going to have to stub my toe, I don’t really care whether I stub it on the door or the table. It hurts the same either way. If spending paper money hurts more, it’s only because we are more accustomed to credit and debit, so paying large sums of cash has become unfamiliar. If we paid cash all the time, handing cash to strangers would quickly become familiar.
The other premise of always paying cash is that if you don’t have the money, you won’t spend it. This is a particularly poor argument. Keeping track of my finances means I already know how much I have, whether it’s in the bank or in my wallet. I can choose not to spend the money if I don’t have it, regardless of the payment method in question.
Is it safe?
Refusing to pay with anything but cash seems to carry some intrinsic danger, as well. It implies that you will not be carrying any kind of card. If you were carrying a card, you’d be in the same situation as if you were carrying no cash. If you have the willpower to not use a card when you run out of cash, then you should also have the ability to summon the willpower to not overspend with a card at all. The cash argument is moot. And if you are not going to be carrying a card, you’re either going to have to start carrying more cash, or you’re going to be in a potentially serious problem if you run into any kind of unexpected situation.
Let’s say you go to the movies one night and come back to find that your car has died. What are you going to do if you don’t have any more cash on hand? Tow truck and cab drivers don’t generally accept kind wishes as payment, and your bank isn’t exactly likely to be open late at night. If you aren’t carrying a card, you can’t even go to an ATM.
It’s true that you can get along without ever carrying a card. People did it for most of human history. It is not, however, the most convenient way to live, and the slacker in me is always looking for the simplest way.
Can’t you just carry larger amounts of cash?
You could also just carry large amounts of cash, but I don’t care for that. Have you ever dropped a bill only to realize it when someone handed it back to you, or maybe after someone didn’t hand it back to you? Why increase the chances of that happening on a regular basis? Waving around a wallet full of green when you pay for your latte also makes you a better target than even the guy wearing two thousand dollars worth of chains. Stealing your wallet is easier than stealing someone’s necklace, and avoids the entire trip to the pawn shop.
Besides, if you’re carrying large amounts of cash, you’re no better off than just carrying a card, as far as overspending goes. I find that I am terrible about not spending the money in my wallet. Friends have told me they have the same problem. I’ll nickel and dime myself to death if I carry large amounts of cash. I’m going to buy that DVD, and eat lunch out, and I’m going to buy those gummy bears, too, because I’ve got the money right here. Any money in my wallet is by definition spending money, so I’m going to spend it.
I see no practical way to get away from carrying a card, whether credit or debit. Refusing to carry a card is going to put you in jeopardy if you run out of cash and find yourself in a situation where you need more money. Carrying large amounts of cash carries risks of its own. Carrying a card is by far the simplest way to avoid both of these issues. Pay cash if you really want, but carry a card. Always paying with the card might very well simplify your life, but I’ll talk about that later.
