Action 9: Career Program Helps Unemployed Find Jobs

Jens Mueller, an engineer who got laid off, goes to the professional career center uptown to learn how to improve his chances of getting hired.

ProNet was established last year with the aim of helping the unemployed land jobs.

Mueller turned to the program after he said his job search had become fruitless. He said he was firing off resumes on the Internet from home, but not getting results.

“It’s like a black hole,” he said. “Everything disappears. You never hear back. You don't hear from the recruiters.”

ProNet's volunteer career coach Gwen Furguson told Mueller and others in her free class that they may not be getting hired because their resumes don’t stand out enough.

“The mistake that most people make is they tend to talk about what they did, as opposed to what they accomplished,” she said.

Take, for example, revamping a department. If doing so increased productivity by 10 percent, that should be mentioned.

Ferguson said job-seekers should also get rid of lists of references.

“You don't do that anymore,” she said. “It’s expected you'll have them if they need them.”

Ferguson added that resumes shouldn't be more than two pages and should be typed in a font size that's easy to read, with ample spacing.

The most important things should be listed at the top, she said, and time on the job should be written in terms of years, not months.

Ferguson said doing those things will make resumes psychologically appealing.

“With all the resumes they're looking at, spending 30 or 40 seconds (on each) -- first thing you have to do is get them to pick it up,” she said.

Ferguson also said it’s OK to customize a resume to make it fit the job. If, for example, someone is applying for a job that requires client relations skills but the person previously worked in customer service, it’s OK to customize the wording to fit the job.

“Go down in that resume and change that terminology in your resume to say client relations,” Ferguson said.

Mueller said he thinks his resume will be stronger now. That combined with ProNet’s networking opportunities, he said, will soon land him a job.