Book Review: Unbeatable Resumes
Unbeatable Résumés: America's Top Recruiter Reveals What REALLY Gets You Hired by Tony Beshara
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Unbeatable Resumes: America's Top Recruiter Reveals What Really Gets You Hired
By Tony Beshara with a forward by Dr. Phil McGraw
Publisher: AMACOM
Publication Date: 06/30/2011
Pages: 304
ISBN: 9780814417621
List Price: $16.95
According to the marketing copy, “[r]eaders will learn:
• The critical components of well-written résumé
• How to ensure their résumé actually gets read... by the right people •What employers look for, and what turns them off
• How to customize a résumé for a particular job
• The truth about video résumés, job-search websites, and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace
• And much more.
Unbeatable Résumés shows job seekers of all types how to present themselves in the best possible light…for the best possible position.”
I am extremely picky about resume books, and I had my doubts about this one. Dr. Phil McGraw writing the forward wasn’t a selling point for me, but Tony Beshara was a guest on his show, so at least there’s a reasonable connection there. The other thing that kind of scared me was Beshara’s insistence that what he presented in the book is the “truth” about resumes. Thank goodness he didn’t write it as Truth with a capital T. I think I would have stopped reading right there.
Overall, Beshara’s book contains a lot of sound advice for job seekers on how to write a resume as well as how to use a resume in the job search. Beshara bases his suggestions on questionnaires he has sent to hiring managers and recruiters as well as his own experience as a recruiter. He also tapped the expertise of other established career management professionals including Joyce Layne Kennedy and Kathryn K. Troutman.
Beshara covers a range of resume types and appropriate conventions for each including resumes for new graduates, former military personnel entering the civilian workforce, healthcare careers, Information Technology careers, and academia. In addition to covering the conventions of marketing yourself in various professions, Beshara also addresses common concerns job seekers may have about re-entering the workforce after an extended absence, job hopping, etc.
I also appreciated his honesty in response to all the hoopla about video resumes being the future and social media being the magic bullet for troubleshooting a job search.
In a nutshell: I know the advice in this book is good because it’s the same advice I frequently give my clients. A lot of it is often stuff that they aren’t interested in hearing, but for candidates seriously interested in learning about what it takes to get a job, this is an excellent resource.