5 big mistakes Googles head of HR sees on resumes

5 big mistakes Googles head of HR sees on resumes It’s a real truism in life: We often learn best from mistakes- both our mistakes and those that others have made. Humans are creatures of â€Å"trial and error†- we bravely take risks and try out new things. Sometimes we meet success; other times we hit unexpected obstacles and find failure. This tendency to make mistakes impacts all facets of life- including our search for a new job. Talk with any HR professional or hiring manager and ask them if they have any stories of folks who have absolutely fumbled the opportunity to get a new job, and chances are you’ll hear a bunch of them. Some are funny, others odd, and some will be downright sad but they’ll all have something in common- the person likely made a bad choice or neglected to do something they should have, and it wound up wrecking their chances for success.The unfortunate truth is that some people make mistakes at the very beginning of the job hunt- on their resumes- and take themselves out of conte ntion before even getting started. It happens more than you realize, and in countless ways!In fact, resume gaffes are such a pervasive problem that Laszlo Bock, former Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, wrote a LinkedIn article about it, entitled â€Å"The Biggest Mistakes I see on Resumes and How to Correct Them.† Bock estimates that he’s personally reviewed over 20,000 resumes, so he certainly knows what he’s talking about.Let’s take a look at what he says are five of the biggest mistakes that he’s seen on resumes so you can avoid them on your job hunt.1. Bad formattingWhen it comes to foolish resume formatting Bock has seen it all, from wildly â€Å"creative† designs and outlandish fonts to splashes of color and crazy margins, all done in an effort to try and stand out from other resumes and grab the reader’s attention. Unfortunately- what you may earn in attention grabbing could cost you in another key area- eff ectively, clearly, and professionally conveying your background, experience, and skill set.Artistic bells and whistles simply don’t work on resumes. A clean, legible, and professional looking document is what works best. If you want to be taken seriously in the job market, save the creativity for your next arts and crafts project.2. Careless typosIt’s a real shame that such an avoidable problem like resume typos is such a pervasive issue, but Bock reports that a surprisingly high percentage of the resumes he’s reviewed, for positions at all levels, contain pesky typos. And good luck being taken seriously during the job hiring process if the first impression you make is someone who can’t be bothered to put in the extra effort to get such an important document correct. Typos are absolute resume killers, so be completely sure that yours is error free and in perfect shape before sending it out.3. Excessive lengthThis is a trickier problem, because the longer you’re in the job market the more things you’ll have to say about yourself. However if your document reads more like a novel then a resume, chances are it’ll either get ignored or glossed over and key parts will get overlooked. Bock has a great rule of thumb for resume length- 1 page for every 10 years of experience. Do your best to stick to this guideline, and remember that you’ll have an opportunity to say more about yourself on interviews- if you make it that far.4. Leaking confidential informationThis doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it raises big red flags. If you’ve worked with a company that handles sensitive information or have had jobs with which you’ve had confidentiality agreements, be very careful about what you put on your resume. If you cross the line and the hiring manager figures it out, your chances of moving to the next stage of the hiring process are slim to none.5. LiesHopefully this one’s obvious ! Despite what you may have heard, there are no such things as â€Å"good lies† when it comes to your resume. If you get caught making something up on your resume, there’s just no way to explain it away or cover up for it. Your chances of getting a job with a resume built on lies- no matter how small or insignificant- are effectively obliterated. Even if you wind up getting the job, if your lie is figured out sometime later you could even lose your job. Bottom line- lying is just not a good way to search for your next job.There you have it: Five of the biggest resume mistakes according to a real industry veteran and insider. Make sure you’re not committing any of these gaffes before you send out your next resume, and you’ll be one step ahead of the job-hunting crowd.

Ten Tips for Coding Excel VBA Macros

Ten Tips for Coding Excel VBA Macros Ten commonsense suggestions to make coding Excel VBA faster and easier. These tips are based on Excel 2010 (but they work in nearly all versions) and many were inspired by the OReilly book Excel 2010 - The Missing Manual by Matthew MacDonald. 1 - Always test your macros in a throwaway test spreadsheet, usually a copy of one that its designed to work with. Undo doesnt work with macros, so if you code a macro that folds, spindles, and mutilates your spreadsheet, youre outta luck unless you have followed this tip. 2 - Using shortcut keys can be dangerous because Excel doesn’t warn you if you choose a shortcut key that Excel is already using. If this happens, Excel uses the shortcut key for the macro, not the built-in shortcut key. Think about how surprised your boss will be when he loads your macro and then Ctrl-C adds a random number to half the cells in his spreadsheet. Matthew MacDonald makes this suggestion in Excel 2010 - The Missing Manual. Here are some common key combinations that you should never assign to macro shortcuts because people use them too frequently: CtrlS (Save)CtrlP (Print)CtrlO (Open)CtrlN (New)CtrlX (Exit)CtrlZ (Undo)CtrlY (Redo/Repeat)CtrlC (Copy)CtrlX (Cut)CtrlV (Paste) To avoid problems, always use CtrlShiftletter macro key combinations, because these combinations are much less common than the Ctrlletter shortcut keys. And if you’re in doubt, don’t assign a shortcut key when you create a new, untested macro. 3 - Cant remember Alt-F8 (the default macro shortcut)? Do the names mean nothing to you? Since Excel will make macros in any opened workbook available to every other workbook that’s currently open, the easy way is to build your own macro library with all of your macros in a separate workbook. Open that workbook along with your other spreadsheets. As Matthew puts it, Imagine you’re editing a workbook named SalesReport.xlsx, and you open another workbook named MyMacroCollection.xlsm, which contains a few useful macros. You can use the macros contained in MyMacroCollection.xlsm with SalesReport.xlsx without a hitch. Matthew says this design makes it easy to share and reuse macros across workbooks (and between different people). 4 - And consider adding buttons to link to the macros in the worksheet that contains your macro library. You can arrange the buttons in any functional groupings that make sense to you and add text to the worksheet to explain what they do. Youll never wonder what a cryptically named macro actually does again. 5 - Microsofts new macro security architecture has been improved a lot, but its even more convenient to tell Excel to trust the files in certain folders on your computer (or on other computers). Pick a specific folder on your hard drive as a trusted location. If you open a workbook stored in this location, it’s automatically trusted. 6 - When youre coding a macro, dont try to build cell selection into the macro. Instead, assume that the cells that the macro will use have been pre-selected. Its easy for you to drag the mouse over the cells to select them. Coding a macro that is flexible enough to do the same thing is likely to be full of bugs and hard to program. If you want to program anything, try to figure out how to write validation code to check whether an appropriate selection has been made in the macro instead. 7 - You might think that Excel runs a macro against the workbook that contains the macro code, but this isn’t always true. Excel runs the macro in the active workbook. Thats the workbook that you looked at most recently. As Matthew explains it, If you have two workbooks open and you use the Windows taskbar to switch to the second workbook, and then back to the Visual Basic editor, Excel runs the macro on the second workbook. 8 - Matthew suggests that, For easier macro coding, try to arrange your windows so you can see the Excel window and the Visual Basic editor window at the same time, side-by-side. But Excel wont do it, (Arrange All on the View menu only arranges the Workbooks. Visual Basic is considered a different application window by Excel.) But Windows will. In Vista, close all but the two you want to arrange and right-click the Taskbar; select Show Windows Side by Side. In Windows 7, use the Snap feature. (Search online for Windows 7 features Snap for instructions.) 9 - Matthews top tip: Many programmers find long walks on the beach or guzzling a jug of Mountain Dew a helpful way to clear their heads. And of course, the mother of all VBA tips: 10 - The first thing to try when you cant think of the statements or keywords you need in your program code is to turn on the macro recorder and do a bunch of operations that seem to be similar. Then examine the generated code. It wont always point you to the right thing, but it often does. At a minimum, it will give you a place to start looking. Source MacDonald, Matthew. Excel 2010: The Missing Manual. 1 edition, OReilly Media, July 4, 2010.