18/09/04

Summer is over and a lot of us will be exploring new employment opportunities. Rebecca, a recruiter at Google, and Kendall, a software engineer, are sharing general resume tips, and specific advice for business resumes and engineering and technical resumes. Also, some great advice from our Worldwide School vlog about English punctuation to help you write the perfect CV that’ll get noticed.

 

 

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 Watch

Link to the original YouTube “Life at Google” video with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrXZBkYzuZo

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Glossary

  • resume – another term for curriculum vitae
  • cover letter – a letter sent with, and explaining the contents of, another document or a parcel of goods
  • to breathe a sigh of reliefto relax because something one has been worrying about is not a problem or danger anymore
  • to put one’s best foot forward to act or appear at one’s best; to try to make a good impression
  • to break into sth – to start doing something, especiall a new undertaking
  • path – a course of action or way of achieving a specified result
  • pertinent – relevant or applicable to a particular matter
  • a safe bet – a thing in which confidence can be placed regarding a future outcome
  • consistent – acting or done in the same way over time, especially so as to be fair or accurate
  • a typo a small mistake in a text made when it was typed or printed
  • concise – giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive
  • neat/neatly – arranged in a tidy way; in good order
  • applicable – relevant or appropriate
  • to showcase sth a setting, occasion, or medium for exhibiting something or someone especially in an attractive or favorable aspect
  • extracurricular – (of an activity at a school or college) pursued in addition to the normal course of study
  • concise – giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive
  • core – of basic importance, essential
  • internship – the position of a student or trainee who works in an organization, sometimes without pay, in order to gain work experience or satisfy requirements for a qualification
  • query – a question, especially one expressing doubt or requesting information

Watch and listen

Answer the questions below.

  • What, in your opinion, makes for a good resume/CV?
  • What are some general resume tips and how long should your CV be? (01:15)
  • What is Google’s preferred formula for listing job descriptions? (03:05)
  • What is the advice for business resumes and how long should those be? (04:00)
  • What are Google’s tips for engineering job application resumes? (05:30)

 

Practice Makes Perfect

 

Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the word given in bold after the blank. Go to: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/16/google-recruiters-share-the-3-part-formula-for-stronger-resumes.html to find out more.

 

Google is a highly 1)______-after (seek) employer, fielding more than 50,000 applicants a week. Yet just a sliver of those applicants actually get 2)_____ (hire), thanks, in part to poorly-3)_______ (write) resumes.

[…]

While Google automatically rejects resumes with typos, a more critical error won’t get flagged by spellcheck. Most resume job 4)_____________ (describe), according to Google recruiters and hiring experts, are too vague and too lengthy. More 5)__________ (criticize), those descriptions don’t explicitly demonstrate how candidates made big things happen — how they 6)___ (leader) projects, boosted sales or saved the company money.

[…]

To help you avoid making that same error, a Google software engineer and recruiter shared a 7)______ (simplicity) job description formula in a company-sponsored YouTube video designed to make resume-speak easy: “Accomplished X, as measured by Y, by doing Z.”

[…]

In these three examples, Googlers 8)___________ (demonstration) how a simple rewrite can make any resume detail more 9)________ (power) and better help in 10)_______ (tell) a job-hunter’s story.

 

Answers:

1. sought  2. hired  3. written  4. descriptions  5. critically  6. led  7. simple  8. demonstrate  9. powerful  10. telling

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