Please critique my SEO resume
-
Hello,
Please critique the SEO resume found here.
I'm looking for a job working 30 hours a week making $30/hour in Idaho.
Looking for advice on creating the best resume possible. It's all honest.
Thanks.
-
An objective based resumé should be for someone just graduating or early in their career. Change that top part to be skills based.
'Bob is a fast learner' - don't talk about yourself in the third person.
Don't say it's been a long time since you used PHP and MySQL. I'm sure you could brush up on it pretty quickly if you needed to.
Don't include 'references available upon request'. If they want them, they'll ask for them.
-
Hi Bob,
- In your list of accomplishments, the second one is not closed with a ".". In general I'm not sure if the second one is really an accomplishment as it's just a list of tools you know how to use. I see accomplishments myself more like goals.
- I agree with Tim, your resume should have your present jobs on top and should read down from your current qualifications.
- "Other languages such as PHP and MySQL were used but it’s been a long time." but it's been a long time is not quite OK to say about yourself. You can say this in an interview but I wouldn't list it like this.
- For you BS I would list the year you started as well, this normally gives some indication if you graduated within the usual nr. of years for a Bsc.
- Cpanels should be cPanel, also the .etc. is useless. Because I probably as a reader have no clue what the other tools are you know. Also Design should not be with a capital earlier in that list.
Just some points I saw by looking quickly.
-
Hi Bob,
Looking pretty good, but there are a couple things I would change. First, move SEO at Current Employer above Web Designer. I usually show my most recent job first and then go back through my employment history in reverse chronological order. However, if you're specifically looking for web design work, it would make sense to keep Web Designer first since it would be more relevant.
Next, I'd try to make your Major Accomplishments sound more...exciting, for lack of a better word, by replacing standard words like "used" or "learned" with strong action verbs. Some examples:
- "Got used to a lot of very useful tools..." could be, "Conducted research and analyzed campaign performance with expert knowledge of various industry tools including..."
- "Bob is a fast learner and kept up to date by being active with Moz" could be, "Maintained and expanded SEO knowledge base through active participation in the Moz community."
- "Learned that content is #1" could be, "Gained valuable insight into the importance of content as part of an overall Internet Marketing strategy."
Here's a good list of resume power words that might give you some ideas. It can be a little cheesy sometimes, but when you're looking for a job, every little bit helps.
I'd be happy to give my input on your other Major Accomplishments if you'd like. Just let me know!
Tim
-
Thanks Kevin,I made the changes and uploaded them to the same above link.
Any other suggestions by anyone are welcome.
-
A few things I would change: 1.) I would change "Self Employed" to "Consultant". 2.) I would take this out: Note that these aren’t very optimized for the search engines. 3.) Move education up
Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is bright edge an SEO platform you would recommend?
Hi mozzers, Has anyone used Bright Edge before? Is this a good platform for a website that carries over 1800 pages and is looking to scale their content? I would like to know the pros and cons of this platform. Thanks for sharing any other valuable information about this platform!
Industry News | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Local SEO issue
Hello, I have a client that is located just outside of Baltimore, MD. Their zip code is 21236, which is seen as sometimes Nottingham and sometimes Overlea. Their competitors come up for Baltimore with the same zip. This client seems to be having some problems, and I think it is because of this geo confusion? Is this so, and if so, how can I make location more clear to Google? Thanks
Industry News | | lfrazer0 -
A suggestion to SEOs that cold call potential clients
Learn some basic salesmanship. Do you realize that business owners are getting 3-4 phone calls and emails a day from other SEOs claiming to be the best? Be polite, ask questions, and don't insult me or yourself through ignorance. Ask questions. You might just discover that we could work together. When you tell me that I'm not ranking for "competitive keywords" it tells me that you don't know what I'm trying to rank for. When you tell me you can get me to the top of Google in 3 months or less, you're still telling me that you don't know my business and what I want from my website. Who said I wanted national ranking anyway? Oh right, not me because you never asked. And if I answer the question "Do you want more business/leads?" with "No." Then politely end the conversation and move on. The rare time that I do get asked about my current efforts, don't insult me by calling me an amateur. I may be one, but talking down to me, or trying to make SEO sound like you're turning lead into gold will get a quick hang up from me. If you want a contract with me, learn to negotiate based on my needs, not your process that you feel married to. There are a lot of business owners out there that would be willing to work with you if you treated you leads with respect rather than iteration 23 of your cold call script. And in response to the person this morning that sent a "free report" of basic SEO fixes for my website, make sure you put that report together using **my website. ** I know you're working from a template, so it should be really easy to remove the info from the wedding company and the lawyer's webpages before you email it to me.
Industry News | | wreevesc0 -
How should I outsource my small business SEO needs?
Fellow MOZers, I run a small ecommerce business called mrpearl11.com, and I need assistance in outsourcing my SEO. A little about us: We sell a variety of import merchandise, but specialize in closeouts (buying merchandise at very low prices) which can translate into some real exceptional value to our customers. The buying part of the business is strong, but our online presence is weak. We have a decent high-level understanding of SEO, but I do not have the in-house skill sets necessary to truly leverage the SEO tactics and strategies that I believe we need to integrate into our processes. Thus we have a very weak SEO presence. Basically starting from scratch. Right now, we are focusing on content. Item-level content. Subcategory and category level content. General website content (about us, contact us, the checkout process, etc...) with the goal to provide a great user experience. We believe we have the right prices on the right merchandise, and that if we can set a strong foundation of content so that the user experience is positive, our future marketing efforts will have a better ROI. However, keyword analysis and targeting, data-mining, A/B testing, link acquisition, etc etc etc, really don't exist as a part of our processes on a professional level. I could try to train my in-house crew, but I think that from time a time and cost perspective, we'd be better served by outsourcing. My question to the MOZ community is how should I address my small business SEO needs? There are probably a lot of ways to go from here, but I want to start with a person or an agency, build a relationship, and move forward taking one step at a time. I don't want to jump into some kind of commitment where we're spending big bucks out of the gate, but on the other hand if we can build a track record of proven results that have a good ROI, I'm not afraid to scale up. Please share your thoughts, and feel welcome to ask questions 🙂 Thanks! Adam
Industry News | | Adam-Perlman0 -
SEO-contests like “hochgeschwindigkeitsSEO” worldwide?
In Germany people out of the SEO industry seem to love SEO contests - the latest one being to bring up the keyword “hochgeschwindigkeitsSEO” on Pos. 1 on Google until a set time (contest entry example here). There obviously is a price (newest iPhone) and a sponsor (Randolf Jorberg), but for the most part it's a contest which holds the Olympic thought: Being there just means most of it 🙂 So I was wondering: are there any other countries where such contests are being held? I have not heard of any examples and I am quite curious if any other SEO communites out there have something similar going on 🙂
Industry News | | blueSummit1 -
SEO Agency Sabotage?
Here's a strange one ... We have a customer that has done remarkably well with organic SEO for the better part of 8 years. We've made them tons of money with our SEO techniques. About a year ago they started to get calls from a certain SEO firm warning that they were losing landing pages and keywords by the hundreds each month. Revenue continued to rise so they did not think much of it. Either did we. My customer finally relented and hired them for some limited SEO activites in Jan/Feb of this year - unbeknownst to me. The "other company" assembled some stats to demonstrate the drop in organic rankings, landing pages, keywords, and traffic going back about year. This data was matched to correlate with variuos Google updates and designed to scare the customer. Long story short and my question - has anyone ever heard of an SEO company sabotaging a potential customer so they would hire them? We ran analysis and turns out our customer actually gained landing pages and keywords while this company was calling on them and claiming impending doom. Turns out, since my customer brought them on, the numbers have gone way south. Now, we look like the incompetent boobs and they will likely "fix something" to look like rock stars. They claimed that the Penguin update is what killed the site, but the slippage started before Penguin, huh? It would make sense to call on a prospect for a while, warn of bad stuff about to happen, make something bad happen and then say, "I told you so, hire me". Has anyone ever hear of this? If so, any particular tactic I should look for?
Industry News | | ChrisInColorado1 -
Starting an SEO Business - Stuff you need - HELP
When you started your SEO Business what software do you use to give information to your clients? How did you decide what to charge for your services? What services do you offer? Best tools to use? Any other information you think might be relevant? Thanks ahead
Industry News | | paulbaguley0 -
SEO hosting (EU/Spanish IP's) any1?
Hello all, I'm currently trying to find a great hosting company which can offer a fast and stable service and more important, with the possibility of geolocalizing IP's of Europe and concretely for Spain. I've found Ixwebhosting but they only offer US Ip's, as their datacenters are there. I don't know if it's the same thing outside spain, but here the hosting companies only use to have a single "C-class" range so even buying them different IP's doesn't help that much, and it isn't cheap (2€/month/ip...). So if you know someone offering what I'm looking for (or really close to it) drop a line, I'll appreciate your help! 🙂
Industry News | | PabloGV0