I should probably acquire some sort of job skill

[MikeH]

Why aren't you working your way up catering management food chain? You have experience. You have the business degree. Get another catering management job and work your way up to area or regional management and beyond. If you are keen, intelligent, hard working and produce good financial results people will notice and you'll get promoted.

[Asher]

Physically ... tested leadership ability and potential in adverse situations and conditions
Injuries prematurely ended training

Really Alby?

[DaShi]

We've been doing a lot of hiring recently. I've read a lot of CVs.

These days almost all of them have a paragraph at the top labelled "Objective" or something similar that describes what kind of person they are and what kind of role they want.

I've gotten mixed responses concerning "Objectives." Some say do it, others say they are a waste of space because you should be saying all of this in your cover letter anyway. I simply don't use "objectives" because I want to keep my resume to one page, and adding my summer language course took a feat of Word engineering to squeeze in decently.

Alpert, we do need to see what your generally put in cover letters. MikeH is right. Just looking at this resume, we wonder why you aren't applying for positions outside of the food industry.

[MikeH]

Yes, a fair point.

We are getting a lot of CVs through agencies, and they typically don't get the applicants to write a cover letter, so the applicant putting their objectives in a CV to agencies is a very good thing in that case.

[Al B. Sure!]

Physically ... tested leadership ability and potential in adverse situations and conditions
Injuries prematurely ended training

Really Alby?

What does this mean? You know nothing about how OCS works. Don't laugh and make smart comments when you know nothing.

[DaShi]

Your resume says that you failed at your leadership training, or at least the physical part of it.

[Al B. Sure!]

Your resume says that you failed at your leadership training, or at least the physical part of it.

Should I take it out? I use it to explain gaps in employment... I have a second resume that I've applied for jobs with that doesn't include that OCS stuff.

[DaShi]

What did you accomplish at the OCS?

[Al B. Sure!]

What did you accomplish at the OCS?

Signing up is more than 99% of Americans have the guts to do.

[DaShi]

Yeah, that's not going to impress employers. They want to see what you can bring to them. Show some concrete results.

While Asher was laughing at the comedy of the physical leadership training and then demonstrating that you failed it, the real issue is, if you didn't complete the training, what did you get out of it? What from it makes you a better applicant?

This is for your other positions as well. They have a nice list of duties, but what was the result of that work?

More stuff like this: • Regularly maintained labor costs lower than 15% of sales through scheduling, hiring, and my direct involvement in food production.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah, that's not going to impress employers.

Minimums of 1250 SAT, 3.0 GPA, and the fact that it takes dedication and hard-work to be in shape... plus, it also means I have no criminal history and am psychologically stable. And I also place value in things greater than myself and I'm willing to take whatever you can possibly throw at me.

[DaShi]

1st, those GPA and SAT scores are not impressive.
2nd, a can-do attitude is great, but it is not enough to land a job in this market. You need demonstrable skills, and ideally a proven track record of those skills.
3rd, you're actually not in a bad position given your experience and education. I'd say it's your attitude toward finding a job that is holding you back.

[Asher]

What does this mean? You know nothing about how OCS works. Don't laugh and make smart comments when you know nothing.

It's the little things here.

The top line says you were "physically tested", the next line says you were injured, which implies you failed the physical test. It's the first thing that jumps out at me.

[Asher]

Yeah, that's not going to impress employers. They want to see what you can bring to them. Show some concrete results.

While Asher was laughing at the comedy of the physical leadership training and then demonstrating that you failed it, the real issue is, if you didn't complete the training, what did you get out of it? What from it makes you a better applicant?

This is for your other positions as well. They have a nice list of duties, but what was the result of that work?

More stuff like this: • Regularly maintained labor costs lower than 15% of sales through scheduling, hiring, and my direct involvement in food production.

Exactly. Successful resumes are supposed to be about what you gained out of positions and what you have demonstrated during the positions, not a list of various things you did.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yeah but how meaningful is it to put a bunch of metrics? And the Sodexo job, I don't really have any performance milestones to note. I was promoted but I can't say anything like I came up with a marketing plan that increased revenues by 5% (hypothetical). Things didn't work like that for me to be able to say something like that.