Equine Employment: A Professional Resume.

Ready for a job working with horses?

You need a professional resume that stands out from all the other applications for the same job. There are a number of standards you need to apply to your resume to ensure it goes to the top of the pile, rather than directly to the nearest bin. Just a few simple actions during the planning of your resume will give you a greater opportunity to secure your next position.

 

What you need for a Professional Resume

Presentation is paramount: Your presentation needs to stand out, but for the right reasons – the content and layout of your resume. If you wanted horse trailer insurance you would search for horse trailer insurance online, not life assurance policies. Thinking out of the box might send your resume to the returns pile.

Use white paper of the standard size so potential HR managers won’t return your CV without looking at it. If you are in the Australia or UK you will use A4 paper, but if you are applying for a position in the USA then you will need to use US letter size. With the internet being so easily available, it’s easy to check paper information for your application.

Use standard fonts like Times Roman. If you choose to use a fancy font to show off your artistic skills, you are going to stand out for the wrong reasons and your application may not be easily read. Use size 12 for your font as this is easily readable. If you try to reduce to font size 9 to pack in more information your resume will just look too busy and potentially become unreadable – and maybe even unread.

Present your skills: Whether you are applying for farm work, groom work or office work, you should begin your resume by showing off your skills. This is what sets you apart from the other applicants. Some positions, like stable lads or lasses, receive hundreds of applications. If HR managers have little time to read a couple of hundred resumes completely, they will at least scan the first few lines. That’s where you have the opportunity to impress so that they will read through your entire resume.

Spell checking is vital: Make spell checker and grammar checker your friends, but don’t rely on them. Make sure they are switched on when you write your resume, but check each suggestion as they are not always 100% right. Sometimes your spellchecker will say a word is right when clearly it isn’t, but the word is right in another context.

Once your professional resume is finished, read it out aloud. This is a good way to show you spelling or grammar that is incorrect. You may hear a spelling mistake that you have become blind to because you have read your resume so many times while trying to make it the best in the world.

Ask close friends or family to read your resume to have them check it for spelling or grammar. They might be able to make suggestions to improve your resume. You don’t have to approve all suggestions, but any that do improve your resume may take you a step nearer to your new position.

If you are looking for an office position such as marketing at an equine centre, then use correct industry jargon to show you know what you’re writing about and can prove your ability. If you stumble over the wrong term it might be ignored if it’s for your first job on a farm, but for a farm manager you had better choose the right words.

Ensure your references are up to date: Some HR managers check references before inviting you for an interview. Some believe it’s better to spend a couple of minutes on the telephone checking your claims rather than potentially waste an hour in an interview.

Make sure the names, addresses, emails and telephone numbers of your references are correct. People do change jobs, like you, so you might need to update reference information from time to time.

Final checks: Check that time line holes don’t appear because you were out of work looking after a relative or completing volunteer work. Explain away time loss as HR managers will always believe the worst until proven otherwise. Take the time to check your resume is the best it can be, for that next breeding, estate management or racing position might be that much closer if you take the time to perfect your resume.

You should now have a Professional Resume. If you need help check out our resume packages.

Equine Staff Employment Services. We provide an effective ‘personal’ recruitment service which meets with individual client needs as well as a Job board Advertising Service for the Horse Industry.

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