Career Support Club Proves Valuable to Job Seekers

A new club at the Sayville Library, run by a job career expert, is helping local residents get tips and insight on employment opportunities as well as offering support to those striving to move forward in their careers.

The first meeting of the Job Search Club, run by Donna Galan, lured five attendees and the big topic of discussion was developing an effective and relevant resume.

"Each attendee was given individual advice to improve their resume content and their visibility to applicant tracking systems for on-line job applications," said Galan. "Everyone has the same comment: I sent my resume and didn’t hear anything so should I follow up? So we discussed when and how to follow up, the appropriate language to use and how often."

, who writes a about career issues for Sayville-Bayport Patch, is a professional career consultant and coach who has developing resumes for 20-plus years and coaching individuals in career transition for more than 10 years.

During the session the group also participated in an exercise to review experience, identify and develop accomplishment stories and related skills using an easy, methodical approach.

"From these stories the group was then shown how to develop appropriate and well written bullet points on their resume," said Galan. " Additionally, they were able to clearly and concisely articulate not only their accomplishments, but their strengths as well. 

Let Patch save you time. Get great local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone everyday with our free newsletter. Simple, fast sign-up here.

As Galan explained, a well written resume is also a way for the job seeker to lead the interview from the selected, relevant stories (bullet points) on the resume. 

"We discussed the resume format and the best way to highlight and showcase strong skills in the first half of the first page as well as the need to tailor the resume to the job," she said.

Galan also was able to provide coaching to each individual regarding their own unique job strategy and she introduced the group to career related materials available at the Sayville Library.

"Everyone was very attentive, respectfully listened to others and offered advice and support," she said.