Month: May 2008

Mangled Resumes

Many of the resumes I receive on a daily basis are a disaster – so bad that they are painful to read. Unfortunately, many come from job seekers that put a lot of work into making their resume look good.

How can this be? Simple, they format the resume in word processing program with advanced formatting features and upload it into a text editor. The text editor replaces all of the formatting.

Here’s an actual example (with dates, names, locations, titles and other identifying information changed):

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Mo. Year-Present: Company1 Inc, City, ST Job Title
� Co-Owner in local retail establishment
� Coordinated financial details with building manager for the
location.
� Ordered and purchased supplies for startup and continuation of
business.
� Hired and supervised crew of 4 employees.
� Reconcile bank statements and make decisions on future purchases of
inventory.
Mo. Year � Mo. Year: Company2 Inc, City, ST Job Title
� Played an integral role in the 100% inventory of over $## mil of
property at Company Name.
� Maintained automated and manual accounting records on over $## mil
of property.
� Assisted in the transfer of original inventory from the original
record keeping system to the new record keeping system.
� Processed requests, documents and transfers at direct support level
through warehousing.
� Performed inventory and financial management procedures, including
ordering, receiving and storing supplies.
� Maintained the stock locator system and administered document
control procedures.
� Performed or supervised inventory management, storage and
preservation.
� Responsible for initial inventory and cataloging of two computer
rooms with over $# mil of equipment, and $## million of special
equipment.

You can see how the bullets that were in this resume were changed to �. Although this example doesn’t show other problems, single quotes, double quotes and dashes may be replaced by other characters, often a question mark. This makes it very difficult to read.

This is how many of the resumes posted on the job boards look. This is also how many company systems handle a resume submitted online.

What You Can Do

If you are going to submit a resume into a text editor, Do Not Copy the text straight from MS Word or another word processing program. Save the file as a plain text file first, then copy it. You will see how the

Provide formatting queues in plain text. You can’t vary font size or use bolding to call attention to what is important, but you can provide some guides to the reader.

Separate key information with a blank line. This will make it much easier to see where sections start and stop. The use of All Caps is a good way to identify section headings, but be careful. Over use of this will make it much tough to read.

Use a simple character for bullets. A dash or asterisk is a good choice. This identifies for the reader where a new bullet starts and stops well, while not looking terrible.

Here’s a revised presentation of the same resume. It still isn’t pretty, but it is readable.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Job Title
Company1 Inc
Mo. Year to Present
City, ST

– Co-Owner in local retail establishment
– Coordinated financial details with building manager for the
location.
– Ordered and purchased supplies for startup and continuation of
business.
– Hired and supervised crew of 4 employees.
– Reconcile bank statements and make decisions on future purchases of
inventory.

Job Title
Company2 Inc
Mo. Year to Mo. Year
City, ST

– Played an integral role in the 100% inventory of over $## mil of
property at Company Name.
– Maintained automated and manual accounting records on over $## mil
of property.
– Assisted in the transfer of original inventory from the original
record keeping system to the new record keeping system.
– Processed requests, documents and transfers at direct support level
through warehousing.
– Performed inventory and financial management procedures, including
ordering, receiving and storing supplies.
– Maintained the stock locator system and administered document
control procedures.
– Performed or supervised inventory management, storage and
preservation.
– Responsible for initial inventory and cataloging of two computer
rooms with over $# mil of equipment, and $## million of special
equipment.

Hiring managers and recruiters are used to seeing resumes that are mangled. By putting a little thought into how your resume is going to look in a plain text editor, you can vastly improve the readability.

Tell Me About Yourself

Almost every interview starts with a question similar to “Tell Me About Yourself.” Although this is asked as an ice breaker, it is often the most difficult question of the interview. Failing to answer this successfully can doom an interview.

Fortunately, this can be an easy question to answer and a question you can be certain you are prepared to answer. The key to this question is being brief and articulate. You control the information that you provide and you control how long you talk. You want to show that you can talk about your background and summarize it clearly. This provides the interviewer an insight into why you are qualified for the position. It also demonstrates your communications skills.

To be successful here, avoid following your resume exactly. Although walking through your background in chronological order can provide a good structure for this, you don’t want to just repeat your resume. Listing dates is usually a mistake here since they should be clearly displayed on your resume.

WWWWWH – Who, What, Where, When, Why and How are questions you need to answer when telling a story or writing a news article. When you are considered for a job, these are the same questions that need to be answered. Your resume answers the Who, What, Where and When, but rarely touches on Why and How your career progression developed. The Tell Me About Yourself question gives you the opportunity to fill in this detail.

The Gaps – Addressing the transitions and gaps in your resume is a good way to make an impression. Why did you take each position? What did you learn in each role? How do the positions you have had link together?

Providing these details allows you to turn your individual career steps into a cohesive story. Showing how you have developed professionally is the key.

Accomplishments – When discussing an experience, focus on your accomplishments, not your responsibilities. This is a good time to highlight the sizzle – why you will make a difference for the employer.

Wrapping up your answer so tie in directly to why you are interested in the position. Discuss how your progression has let to this point and this opportunity is right step for you and for the company.

Your answer should be between 2 and 5 minutes. I find that candidates that do not prepare for this question often say little of value, leading to overly short answers. Individuals that prepare find that keeping the answer under 5 minutes is tough. They script so much into this question, that it runs too long. Remember, you have an entire interview to illustrate your background.

Your Resume’s Purpose

I see resumes every day that fail to accomplish their most basic purpose – introduce and convey a clear picture of the job seeker.

How do they miss this? Typically, there are two primary mistakes. Job seekers leave out critical information and they fail to provide a clear structure that will make finding information easy.

A resume is an introduction. It is the first impression that an employer gets. A typical hiring manager might receive several hundred resumes each week. With so many resumes to review, most only get a 15 to 30 second look.

For many candidates, this can be frustrating to hear. You have just spent weeks deliberating over every word in your resume. You revised the content and developed witty or creative descriptions for what you have done. Then the resume hits the desk of an employer and gets little more than a quick glance.

Resumes don’t get hired. The introduction your resume provides is not designed to get you a job. Interviews, assessment tests, reference checks and other screening mechanisms do that. What the resume can do – what it’s supposed to do – is get you a shot at talking to someone. Do you make it easy for the reader to see why they should keep reading, and then set up a call?

A good resume will present the key pieces of information that an employer needs. Poor formatting can keep you out of the running for jobs that are a match. If it’s not clear in the first 15 seconds that you meet some of the basic requirements, you risk being passed by. The key to getting past this initial screen is making it easy for the reader to assess your background. By organizing your resume so that it is easy to digest, it will get a more thorough look.

Introducing the PalladianCR Blog

I would like to welcome you to our blog!

I am Gary W. Capone, co-owner of Palladian International, LLC.  Palladian is an executive recruiting firm and our Career Resources Blog will provide advice to job seekers. In particular, my focus will be:

  • Resume Writing
  • Interview Skills
  • Job Search Strategies

We’re going to post three times per week initially.

  • Monday’s and Wednesday’s – Articles with advice for job seekers
  • Friday’s – Real world examples. We’re going to share resume and interview examples from actual job seekers with specific advice.  (Any job seeker profile will be done anonymously)

If you have an interest in being reviewed in one of our Friday posts, please email me!

About the Blog

 

The Palladian Career Resources Blog provides career advice to job seekers and is written by Gary W. Capone, Vice President of Palladian International.

The blog focuses on Resume Writing, Interview Preparation and Job Search Strategies.

Palladian, founded in 2005, is an executive recruiting firm, specializing in manufacturing, distribution, transportation, logistics sales, marketing and defense industries.  Our niche is finding, assessing and attracting exceptional managers and executives to an exclusive client base.  This blog makes our expertise and experience in assessing and evaluating job seekers publicly available.  If you have ever wanted to know what a recruiter or hiring manager thinks – we’re going to provide the answer.

In 2008, Palladian began offering career coaching services.  We now offer resume writing and interview coaching to job seekers. Visit www.palladiancr.com to learn more about these services.

Comments/Questions

I encourage anyone reading the blog to post comments or to Email Me me directly.  In particular, I’m interested in:

 

  • Advice for improving the blog
  • Feedback on the content
  • Topics that interest you
  • Specific career questions that I can answer in an article or demonstrate in the weekly Friday posting

 

Update on Comments:  I continue to receive emails from readers, but the comments posted to articles were almost exclusively spam.  I disabled comments on the blog as a result.  I’m still interested in hearing from any job seekers.


 

About Palladian

 

Palladian International, LLC

 

About the Author

Gary W. Capone

I am co-founder of Palladian International, an executive recruiting firm specializing in Manufacturing, Distribution and Defense Industries.  Prior to starting Palladian, I held positions with Target Corporation, Raymond James, Kforce, Newell-Rubbermaid and PriceWaterhouseCoopers.  I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with two degrees, one in Mechanical Engineering and the other from the Wharton School of Business in Accounting.

Since we started Palladian in 2005, we have provided our candidates with resume writing and interviewing advice.  At the start of 2008, we decided to expand on this and offer more resources, a suite of services and more comprehensive advice, while making these resources available to anyone – not just candidates we represent.  This led me to start the Palladian Career Resources Blog.  I write daily and am focused on providing advice, tips and tools that will make a job seeker more successful in their search.

As a recruiter at Kforce and Palladian, I have watched candidates continue to make the same mistakes and sabotage their career searches.  My goal for the blog is to provide specific action-oriented advice that will help a person avoid these mistakes.

I currently reside in Waynesboro, VA with my wife and daughter.

 

Books By Gary: