Job Seekers Helping Job Seekers - The Value of the CMS Résumé Examples Database

Why reinvent the wheel? Within the Résumé Writing chapter of our Canadian Career Management System is a strategically developed résumé writing database designed to help our job seekers to articulate just what they have done over the course of their careers.  Of course, they innately know what they have done but sometimes recalling the details and explaining them to their CMS program coach and assigned résumé writer, can be challenging.

The ideas found in our online Résumé Writing Database help our candidates to describe their skills and experience incorporating them into their unique career histories.  They are also valuable in helping to jog one’s memory about past skills they may have developed but have forgotten about.

Our Résumé Writing Database includes hundreds of examples of résumé headlines (job search objectives), lists of major strengths and typical job responsibilities that our previous job seekers have used in their résumés. They are sorted by occupational theme, making it easy to find the keywords that relate to them.

An example story of how it can be so very useful:

We first met Peter during a group meeting, as his former employer delivered the news that they were closing their textile plant by the end of the year.  The news came as a shock for most at the plant who had been long tenured employees.

As we met with each employee individually following the announcement, it became apparent that not too many of them had written a résumé in a number of years, if ever!  Many had found their roles within the plant years ago simply by completing an employment application form.

Peter’s own résumé was a one-page document written before he joined his employer at least 25 years earlier. The style of his résumé reflected the time of writing and started off indicating his date of birth and marital status.  Clearly, it needed an overhaul!

But when it came to the time for Peter to put pen to paper, he had a difficult time articulating the great set of skills and experiences he had developed over the last two and half decades.  Of course, he knew exactly what his daily duties were as a Team Lead of a Production Line but communicating them was a difficult and frustrating process.  Writing, especially when it comes to writing about oneself, is a difficult process for many people. Peter is not alone in that fact!

To help, the CMS résumé writer who worked with Peter, guided him to our online database of Résumé Writing Examples. This database is a compilation of completed résumé examples, hundreds of career goal statements, lists of example strengths and real-life daily work responsibilities one may have developed and experienced over the course of their career - all categorized by various occupational themes.

By reading through the examples and subsequently focusing in on the Manufacturing and General Labour categories, Peter was not only able to see what type of information was expected in a modern-day résumé, but he could also copy, paste and edit the examples into his own résumé template, adding to his list of skills and experiences as his memory was jogged during the exercise. This meant that his CMS résumé writer had the pertinent details to work with, in order to build a strong, marketable résumé for him – one that gave his broad career the credence it deserved.

The CMS Résumé Examples Database is a powerful tool, especially when it comes to job seekers like Peter. It helps to change those feelings of confusion and frustration into empowering thoughts, as they begin to see all of skills and experience they have to offer to a new employer written down on paper, in the form of a résumé document.