eBook Resumes For Dummies download

I reviewed the 6th Edition of Resumes for Dummies by Joyce Lain Kennedy on Kindle to evaluate its usefulness as a resource for college students and recent college graduates who are preparing to enter the workforce. The book is designed to teach job seekers to create resumes and search for jobs in today's job market. In my assessment, the book has benefits and drawbacks for students and recent graduates.

The main benefits of this book for college students are the general resume writing information and the general job searching information provided for the new environment of today's job market. According to the author, the Internet and current technologies such as smartphones and social networking have significantly changed the way job seekers must interact with potential employers. The author provides a wealth of information for finding employment in this new environment that would benefit any job seeker.

The author devotes a subsection of the book to specifically address the needs of recent graduates. This area offers specific advice to recent college graduate. For example, the author advises recent graduates who lack direct work experience to "thicken your work experience by including all unpaid positions - internships, special projects, and volunteer jobs."

Another feature of the book that I found to be especially beneficial was its information for job seekers lacking experience outside of their education. While job seekers who gains experience during college are in a much better position than job seekers who do not, those without experience do exist and they need to know how to create a resume that showcases the knowledge they have gained through their education. The author includes an example of a resume written by a job seeker with only education-related experience.

The greatest drawback of this book is that only a small portion of the book is devoted to recent graduates. The book focuses mostly on mid-career professionals who are seeking changes.

Another drawback of the book is the presumption that the job seeker knows the basics of resume preparation. While the book does review some of the basics of resume writing, the information is obscured within the other topics of the book. Students and recent graduates who need help with the basics of resume writing might have an easier time if they begin with a different resource.

A drawback of the Kindle version of this book is that the resume examples are difficult to read. This is a significant drawback because examples are necessary for a resume book. Having the examples helps readers understand the author's explanations. Also, the examples serve as models job seekers can use to develop ideas when creating their own resumes.

Despite drawbacks of the book, I found it to be a beneficial resource for job seekers entering the job market after college. Students and recent college graduates will likely gain an advantage in the job market by follow this author's advice.

As a career transition coach with more than 20 years experience assisting mid-career professionals and executives with their job transitions, I can appreciate the difficulty in keeping up with the changes in how jobs are found and what needs to go into a resume and other job search documents, how they are distributed, etc. This book demonstrates how quickly things change. I am reading the 6th edition, copyright 2011, and in the 2nd chapter found 7 websites that were recommended had already (2014) had gone away! Also there is some very bad advice, on page 57, Ms. Kennedy quotes "a leading expert" in online testing giving advice to fake results on pre-employment personality assessments because "Employers rarely conduct studies of personality test scores...so it really does not make much difference." Employers have become much more savvy about using pre-employment assessments and if you, the employee, turn out not to be the person you claimed to be on your assessment, you may not make it through the next step of the interview process or not last very long on the job! My advice, think longer term than the next interview, when taking these assessments, because job fit is more important than getting any offer. I am only a fifth of the way through the book and have found it desperately needing updating.

Buying this book is a no-brainer, whether starting your resume from scratch, or updating it after many years. I purchased 3 of the Dummies job's books together. I used them, along with some internet sites, and built a resume for my son. After I handed them out to some potential business owners at a business expo (not a job fair), I was able to assist him in procuring a job in his chosen field of computers. I wouldn't recommend only using this one book, but it gives you some basic information regarding resume styles depending on your job experience, and the type of work you are looking for, and also the key words that are needed to be used in today's world (what HR picks up on depending on what type of job you are looking for). I would highly recommend getting this book.

I really didn't use it like that. I can't say that I will use it in the future, but I will probably reference to it.

I already had an older copy of this book. I really like the examples in it, so I decide to get the current version for my kindle. It's a little difficult to read the examples on the kindle because you can't adjust their size for some reason. Oh well. If you can manage it's still a good reference.

Very helpful especially when used together with the book Knock'em Dead Resumes by Martin Yate. These two books when used together are very helpful in understanding the does and don'ts of resumes so long as they are the most recent editions of both books.

Excellent book

Extremely well written with lots of examples for many different fields and situations. Updated my 17 year old resume into a first class modern resume.