Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Resume Writing the Black Art of Job Hunting

So far, I have had 3 separate and dissimilar groups of people say the same thing, my resume sucks. I answer, “This format got me a job 20 years ago, what could be wrong with it now?”, they smirk at me knowingly.

I am being facetious, maybe, however the science and acumen to write the “killer” resume is not currently in my writing capabilities (but it will be very soon). The resume is the key to the front door of any job you apply to (unless you have amazing contacts) and it needs to capture the interest of someone who is going to spend no more than a minute reading it (unless this is an electronic system, like Workopolis or Monster, which has other parameters to keep in mind). A resume must catch the reader’s attention quickly (not like a blog, which can ramble on and on, mindlessly about singing horses, or why you hate the banks or whatever else is on the mind of the blogger). Writing punchy, short and catchy phrases is important, this is one of the reasons your resume sucks.

Why Does Your Resume Suck?

Well for the obvious reasons given, that most folks never take a course on how to write a resume.  I will be attending a seminar on this exact skill tomorrow, so I might know more soon, however, a lot of folks that will review your resume, tell you your resume sucks, because, they want to rewrite it for you and charge you $600 for this service (at least).  Another reason they say that your resume sucks, is because they want you to buy their book on how to write a resume, or attend their seminar on how to write an effective resume.

Does your resume suck ? I have no idea, however, remember that if someone tells you that and then wants to offer you an expensive service to fix it, you should wonder what their motives are.

I do know that my resume sucks .

Bank Fees Back

As I have ranted in the past, I love Free Banking (i.e. no fee banking) and my year of “Bank fee vacation” has ended with TD, and I haven’t had time to go in and argue for another year’s grace period. I got nailed to pay $12.95 again, and I am not very happy.

I may have a new angle of attack, which is that there is a new bank branch opening of RBC right near my house, and I may ask them, “How long can I have free banking with you?”, and then simply dump TD, we shall, see, but I will keep you all posted on that as well.

So now we have run down my two major purchases which are both houses that I have lived in (I think owned is a bit presumptuous, since the bank OWNED most of both houses really). The way I tend to remember things is by cost, so what is the next major purchases by cost in my life?

University tuition kind of counts in there, however, I was fortunate enough not to have had to foot that bill, so I will not be counting that on my resume. I do think that the cost of Education is always a good thing, and is a positive investment, even though you never get any tangible assets out of it. So I must rephrase that last sentence: you get a better job, you get more self-esteem, and you get knowledge which are tangible assets, but not easily “price tagged”. If you are doing a Financial Resume, then make sure you include your education costs, however, remember that as long as you didn’t borrow from a loan shark, this “investment in yourself” is a success no matter what. Give yourself a gold star!

What did I blow lots of cash on next? You guessed it, the money pit cars I have purchased in my life. I would dearly love to live in a city where having a car is not a necessity, unfortunately where I live in Ottawa means the mass transit system is not a usable option for my family (although we do use it to get the kids to school, but that is another expense area). I did try for a while to have only 1 car, and take the bus and that worked somewhat, but the amount of time I was spending on the bus was driving me crazy, knowing that my journey in a car was only 12 minutes (it was 60 minutes on the bus). We’ll discuss this point later.

Let’s start at the current money pit. The current Van I have I bought new (I try not to mention it by brand and type, mostly out of fear of being sued), which I decided I was going to do, given I had bought my previous Van used, and had some issues with it (read later for that story). However, I got fooled into spending too much money on my new van and I got pressured into buying earlier than I wanted with a threat of “… 0% financing is going to go away soon…”, bull poop, it stayed around for another year (but I still bought the van earlier than I wanted). I didn’t buy the extended warranty when I bought the van (another mistake, since I ended up buying that later for more than the initial offer). The Van itself is still under warranty, so it’s major costs so far are Snow Tires, Oil Changes and 1 brake job. So far I would grade this purchase as a “wash”, I have enjoyed having a new car, but I paid too much for it, and I suspect this car is going to turn into a money pit, after it goes off extended warranty.

I should have bought a used Honda Van, but then again, I might have had to pay as much as I did for my North American product. I would view this as a lesson learned, and will put it on my resume as an important learning experience.

Previously I bought a used Plymouth Voyager. It actually was quite good for most of the time, but it had it’s “peccadilloes” and odd behavior, and I was foolish enough to have it serviced at the dealership (which is a HUGE mistake, given I have a very reliable and honest mechanic who I was dealing with at the time). The Van itself was reliable for about 3 years, but after that it started to go “downhill” quickly (that made the van 5 or 6 years old, which is about when Voyagers fall off a cliff, metaphorically speaking, in terms of service costs, in my experience). Head gasket jobs, brake jobs, paint problems, air conditioning failing. All of this convinced me to purchase the new van that I currently own. I kept the voyager around for a while, as a second car, but it guzzled gas too much, so I donated it to a friend who’s daughter’s van had died. Evidently the Voyager stayed on the road for a long time after I got rid of it, so maybe I was paranoid as well (once I lose confidence in a car, I cannot drive it).

Overall I’d mark this purchase as a good buy. I bought it used, I paid it off quickly, I managed to get a lot of big stuff fixed out of what was left on the warranty, and I got rid of it when it became a big burden financially. Maybe not a gold star for this one, maybe just a blue star.

Now when I disposed of my Voyager, a dear friend was getting rid of her 9 year old Honda Accord (trading it in for a nice Toyota car), and they offered her $2500 as trade in. I offered to pay that for that car, since I knew it was economical and well maintained. The friend was gracious enough not to harrass me about paying off the car either (which is embarassing, since you should always pay friends and family FIRST). The car is still on the road. I have had to put about $2000 worth of radiators, tires, windshields and brakes into it, but that is over 3 years, and it has been very reliable. This car purchase I do view as a Gold Star on my Financial Resume. It was a good price, and it has been a reliable second car for almost 3 years.

Moral of that is to buy used, and know who you are buying it from.

What goes on the resume next? –C8j

I have been bashing around my Resume at work, since that is something you should do at the start of every year (at least) to keep it up to date (since you never really know when you might be in need of a resume), and I got to thinking, what would my Financial Resume look like?

What do I mean by a financial resume? Well I have been “managing” my money for over 25 years now (actually all my life, but for real since I was about 21), and if someone asked me, “Do you think you did a good job?”, I’d say, “No”, but I’d never be able to give them a reason as to why I think I have done a sub-par job.

So how would I write my financial resume? The hard part is trying to remember all of the financial “decisions” that you actually have made in your life time (significant ones, let’s not get down to the minutia of how many coffees you bought at work and such).

The easiest ones to remember for me are the purchases of my two homes:

Buy house #1, already had 1 child and another on the way. I was positive I couldn’t afford a house, but I gave my Agents a “can’t go any higher than this” price, and then naturally ended up purchasing a home $10,000 more than that. In hindsight, I was being far too conservative, and could afford the home (with some help from family). The house itself didn’t appreciate in value, but I did manage to sell it for what I bought it for.

• I ended up out the cost of moving out (I paid for movers), the commission on selling the house, and the cost of the new roof and furnace I put in the house.

Overall I would say that this financial decision was a good one, even with a small “loss”. The money I would have been spending on renting would have been “lost”, whereas the equity I paid down on my house went into my pocket (with 0% interest, unfortunately), but still it was worthwhile, and my family needed more space.

Tomorrow, more houses bought and odd decisions on investing that worked in spite of the bad reasons behind it.