Resumes

I'm sorting through a lot of resumes at the moment. I have had a lot of help from very generous friends in working on my resume and I appreciate it greatly.

Some things I'd like to point out that make a resume much more employer (or weeder) friendly are these;

-IF YOU'RE ATTACHING A RESUME TO AN EMAIL, PUT YOUR NAME IN THE DOCUMENT TITLE! For God's sake!
-Be sure you use proper grammar
-Make it uniform: all dates formatted the same way, all things italic have to do with each other or denote the same kind of thing, all fonts the same, etc
-Let some, but not a lot, of personality show through
-Be sure your email address is legible (font is clear, big enough)
-Have access to email (this may sound evil and mildly classist, but email is the king of communication these days. Get an account at the library if you must, but there are plenty of free email services out there. Gmail being my current favorite.)
UPDATE 4/8: Always put dates on your jobs. It is not helpful to make an employer to wonder how long you were at your last place and why you left. It only makes them wonder.

It's hard to hire people. Plenty of people are good, but if you don't have office experience (what I'm hiring for now is a receptionist position), don't apply. Or get some experience before you apply to a place that is really looking for someone who knows, at least mildly, what customer service, hospitality and phone manner are.

The other issue I come up against is over qualification. If I think you're going to get bored and leave the position in three weeks, I'm not going to hire you. I guess there's a happy medium that we're all looking for. Employer and employee, alike.

Some things that have become apparent to me in this process is that people get unsatisfied in work relatively regularly; that offices with windows are rare in New York; that prejudice extends far beyond gender, race and class; people live on very little money (somehow) in New York.

That's it.