Your resume is your first interview. Most personnel directors will look at your resume before they meet you. They will form an opinion of your competency and your personality based on your resume. Based on our work helping clients prepare resumes, we have created a list of 8 words your resume needs, words that will create a favorable impression of you.

1. Successfully
Companies want to hire winners. Use this word to describe your accomplishments in a prior responsibility.
Example: I successfully negotiated a new contract for services.

2. Leadership
Companies want to hire leaders. Use this word to describe your involvement with task and project teams.
Example: Under my leadership, the customer service unit managed all client records.

3. Team
Companies want to hire people who can cooperate with others to accomplish company goals. Use this word to describe your involvement with colleagues.
Example: Our team was responsible for answering customers’ questions about products.

4. Created
Companies want to hire innovators. Use this word to describe new ideas and processes you developed.
Example: I created a checklist to track daily service tasks.

5. Expanded/Increased (the verb, not the adjective)
Companies want to hire people that will help them grow. Use this word to describe your participation in company growth.
Example: During this time, the company expanded the product line to include 2 new models.

6. Support (the verb, not the noun)
Companies want to hire people who will assist the management team. Use this word to describe your relationship with your former supervisors.
Example: I supported the division director by compiling financial data.

7. Will
Companies want to hire people who are confident about their ability to deliver what they promise. Use this word to describe what you will do if hired.
Example: I will solve customer software and hardware problems.

Some of these words may not apply to your resume. However, if you think carefully about your prior experiences, you will find that you can use most of them. Using these words does not guarantee that you will get the job you want, but they will help you make a good impression.

Effective writing and the correct use of writing mechanics are very important. Once you have developed the draft of your resume and cover letter, you will need to edit it carefully. Editing guides will help, as will daily writing instruction.

Good luck in your job search. [link “Editing guides” to the training manual page. Link “daily writing instruction” to the writing tips page.] Read Precise Edit's new article and optimize your resume.

Hi all - just took the opportunity to post an interview by Patrizia Hayashi with Kikuko Otake. On a recent trip to California, she had the chance to speak with the author of Masako's Story. They spoke of her book and her plans for the future. Check out the interview at it original location here.

Patrizia Hayashi is a freelance writer and author. On a recent trip to California, she had the opportunity to speak with Kikuko Otake, author of Masako's Story. They spoke of her book and her plans for the future.

PH: Describe the journey that led you to this place.

KO: Originally, I wanted to write an autobiography in haiku and tanka. Without talking about the atomic bomb, though, it would not be an autobiography. I thought I couldn't describe it in haiku or tanka. They were too short. It was impossible. Overwhelming.

I didn't remember much I remember seeing a perfect skeleton and a burned person I thought was an Egyptian mummy. He turned out to be a naked soldier with grayish white burns all over his body.

In 1991, I knew if my mother were gone, I wouldn't know what happened. I needed to know for me what happened. Me and my family.

I spoke with my mother some and after, tucked my notes away. I myself had rejected it. So-so knowledge was fine. I didn't want to know more.

Finally, when I wanted to write about it, my mother's mind was gone. I thought about if I write what my mother told me. Prose seemed more interesting. Part I is a poem but not. Every line is where she took a breath. I don't enjoy reading a book packed with words and letters, which are hard on the eyes.

I self-published in Japan and gave it away. Friends said it should be in English. Most such stories only rely on Japanese. People of the world don't know.

I translated the entire book, chapters one through four. My son corrected it. I ended up eliminating chapter three. I don't want to be a political person and don't want to be an advocate. I wanted to show facts and describe what happened. I wanted to have each reader think about what they do.

PH: In your Letter to the Reader, you discuss the difficulty of translating your work from Japanese to English. Do you feel you captured the nuances you were looking for in these poems?

KO: The Japanese edition is very effective because it's in Hiroshima dialect. In English, we can't do it.

I gave a speech before Middlebury College students and spoke of not being able to get the feeling of my mother's speaking. What about using a Southern accent? But why? The dialect or accent would take away from the impact

The English is a version. An adaptation. Not a translation. It doesn't sound like the spoken language. The purpose and story, though, are the same.

PH: What kind of reaction have you received so far?

KO: Not much from American people. I gave the book to college and alumni friends. I'm expecting a review to come out with Rafu Shimpo, the Japanese-American newspaper, here in the US. Donald Ritchie posted a review in The Japan Times on August 5^th, 2007.

PH: Which poem best expresses the message you wish to send?

KO: In the Japanese version, the worst poem is the one I described on the day of the bomb. I couldn't describe it at all and convey the horror. Impossible.

PH: Which poem touches you the most personally?

KO: The last one in part I. We never never cry. Singing it, we started to cry. Beautiful.

The Hibaku-sha group encouraged us to publish and leave a record. Reading out only the one chapter, I think human beings don't die very easily.

PH: Have you found a sense of closure by publishing this work or has it furthered your desire to do more with respect to the bombing?

KO: I wasn't interested in what happened to others. I wanted to know what happened to me. I wasn't interested in publishing. I laid out the facts and it's up to you what you do with them.

Hiroshima city plans a fifty-state exhibition and I will visit some of them and talk about the book only. I'm not political. I don't want to make more of it. I want to educate people on what happens.

PH: What are your writing plans after this?

KO: Writing my autobiography in haiku and tanka for my own pleasure.