Month: December 2008

Prioritizing Information on Your Resume

I reviewed a resume of a supply chain professional that failed to prioritize the content of their resume. The result was a confusing resume that didn’t create a solid picture of the job seeker.

The problem was not the content. The content was fine. It was the order and presentation of the information that hurt the effectiveness of the resume.

The basic structure looked like this:

Executive Summary: Supply Chain Executive with a strong track record of improving operations and providing leadership. Proven discipline for managing multiple departments and organizations with in excess of 150 employees.

Extensive professional skills and experience, including:

<listing of supply chain skills>

Work Experience

Most Recent Position – held for the last year
Operations Manager

  • Inventory Management Accomplishment

  • Sales Accomplishment

  • Sales Accomplishment

  • Inventory Management Accomplishment

  • Sales Accomplishment

  • Purchasing Accomplishment

Previous Position – held for 3 years
Sales Associate

  • Listing of sales responsibilities and one sales accomplishment


Military Service – 20 year career
Logistics Specialist

  • 7 accomplishments related to logistics and transportation

Education

After reading the executive summary, I expected a typical supply chain/logistics resume. The list of accomplishments under the most recent position started to confuse the issue. Sales and customer service activities were presented on equal footing with the logistics experience. The confusion built with the second position – a pure sales position. Looking at these two positions, the job seeker has split time between logistics and sales for one year out of the last four. It doesn’t present a strong logistics presentation. I could see some hiring managers hitting the delete key at that point.

Now, let’s look at the picture from a different perspective. The job seeker had 20 years of experience in logistics in the military. He tried a sales position for three years after leaving the military. He then moved back into logistics a year ago, managing operations for a wholesaler. In this capacity, due to his success in sales in the previous role, he managed some sales functions in addition to his primary responsibilities for operations and logistics.  In this description, the emphasis is on the twenty-one years of logistics work out of the last twenty-four.

To revise the resume this way, I would change the order of the content to emphasize the logistics experience like this:

Executive Summary: Supply Chain Executive with a strong track record of improving operations and providing leadership. Proven discipline for managing multiple departments and organizations with in excess of 150 employees.

  • Inventory Management Accomplishment from most recent position

  • Logistics Accomplishment from military career

  • Logistics Accomplishment from military career

Work Experience

Most Recent Position – held for the last year
Operations Manager

  • Inventory Management Accomplishment

  • Inventory Management Accomplishment

  • Purchasing Accomplishment

  • Very brief summary of sales accomplishments

Previous Position – held for 3 years
Sales Associate

  • Listing of sales responsibilities and one sales accomplishment

Military Service – 20 year career
Logistics Specialist

  • 5 accomplishments related to logistics and transportation


Skills

<Listing of supply chain skills>


Education

The change in structure is small, but increases the emphasis on logistics and supply chain experience. The sales experience is still listed; it is just deemphasized so that it doesn’t detract from the primary message.

Interview Questions About Former Bosses

One of the types of interview questions that cause job seekers a lot of trouble is about former bosses. Discussing previous supervisors often paints a great picture of the attitude of the job seeker. Unfortunately, this is one area where job seekers tend to lose their professionalism and turn very negative.

A few of the variations of questions about former managers include:

  • Tell me about the worst boss you have had.

  • Tell me about a time when you did not work well with a supervisor.

  • What would you do if you knew that your boss was making a very poor decision?

These questions open the door for you to talk about the aspects of a former boss that you did not like. Usually, this spells disaster.

I’ve interviewed a number of job seekers that interpret these questions as a green light to badmouth a boss. In the worst cases, years of pent up frustrations and resentments boil out.

The problem with answering a question like this is the interviewer may interpret your attitude towards a former boss as the attitude you will have with your future boss. One of the key goals a hiring manager has is to select a candidate that will not be a problem. If you send signals that you had an attitude problem in the past, your chance of getting hired goes way down. This is the pitfall many fall into.

You don’t have the option of avoiding this question. You have to give an answer. The best approach is to honestly assess the strengths and weaknesses of your previous supervisors.

Let’s look at two examples of how to answer the “worst boss” question.  We’ll start with a poor answer:

There’s no contest when it comes to the worst boss. I worked for a guy that was abusive and offensive. This manager routine screamed obscenities at all of his subordinates. One of the games he would play was to find the nickname that would make each person the maddest. He was absolutely terrible and got sued a few times by employees for harassment. The verbal harassment was bad, but his guy didn’t stop there. He routinely brought handguns into his office and would show them off to threaten employees.

Now this answer could be interpreted in one of two ways. It could generate sympathy from the interviewer. This may help build rapport but will do little to get you hired. The second effect it could have is to cause the interviewer to question the credibility of the job seeker. The accusations in the answer are pretty severe and many people may not believe them. If this is the case, the interviewer will conclude that they cannot trust the statements of the job seeker. Even worse, the interviewer may believe that the job seeker is prone to telling lies about their boss.

This story is completely true and the reality is actually worse than described. Despite being true, this would be a terrible answer in an interview. The following example would do much better:

I’ve worked for a variety of bosses with a mix of strengths and weaknesses. One in particular comes to mind. This individual managed the facility where I worked. As a manager, he was very good bringing the team together and motivated cooperation to get things done. The one weakness this individual had was in creating sustainability. He was very good at creating rapid change but rarely implemented performance metrics and follow up procedures that would sustain the change. In working for this manager, I learned how important it is to build systems that will sustain and continue to build on improvements.

This example details a very specific weakness of a former manager, along with the manager’s strengths. It is a much more balanced approach. The most important part of this answer was the lesson learned – the importance of building systems to sustain change. An even better answer would incorporate an example of how the job seeker implemented a system that helped maintain performance improvements.

Hopefully, you have assessed the managers you have work for and understand their strengths and weaknesses. If you have done this, developing a strong answer about a former boss should be easy.

Sentence Structure

I updated some of my social media accounts this weekend. My motivation was twofold. First, some of accounts badly needed an update to the design and content.  I had not updated some of the information in the last couple years and it showed.  The second reason was motivated by one of the blog readers.  She pointed out that the writing style and sentence structure of my LinkedIn account wasn’t consistent.  When I reviewed, I realized this was a generous assessment – my LinkedIn profile was awful.

I had setup my LinkedIn account a couple years ago and used my bio from my website. My bio is written in a 3rd person style and this is suitable to a corporate website. On LinkedIn, the style should be more personal, and written in the first person. The same goes for other social media sites. I’m still working on updating and improving – these are going to be a work in progress. That’s a lot better than what they were, though… stale and out-of-date.

So, what does this have to do with a job search? The sentence structure of a cover letter and resume need to be written professionally and in a suitable style.

A cover letter is a business letter from you to another individual. As a result, it should be written directly in the 1st person. Do not refer to yourself in the 3rd person. It makes a very poor impression.

The resume should have a different style. It should be written in an implied first person. This structure starts with the personal pronoun “I” but this word is omitted. For example, “Managed the production department” is a sentence that has an implied subject – the “I” is left off the beginning of the sentence. This style is appropriate for a resume.

Write your resume in the 1st person but avoid using “I” or your name in your resume.

I’m still working on improving my profiles online. On LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/garycapone), I accept all invitations to connect and have over 2,500 connections. You can invite me to connect at gcapone@palladianinternational.com. I setup a Twitter account this weekend (www.twitter.com/garycapone). The other account I updated was Facebook. This is the one account I don’t accept every invitation. I’m limiting it to people I know and have established personal relationship.

Interview Questions About Deadlines

One of the interview questions that is very common relates to working under tight deadlines. It is important to be able to meet deadlines in many careers. There are very few companies where the speed and urgency are not important.
Over the years, I’ve asked about deadlines in interviews very frequently. This is one of the questions where job seekers usually react exactly the same way.

One of the interview questions that is very common relates to working under tight deadlines. It is important to be able to meet deadlines in many careers. There are very few companies where the speed and urgency are not important.

Over the years, I’ve asked about deadlines in interviews very frequently. This is one of the questions where job seekers usually react exactly the same way. It doesn’t matter what type of personality the job seeker has, their job type or the industry. The answer that almost everyone gives is a variation of this:

Question: Tell me about a time when you worked under a tight deadline.

Answer: All the time. Everything we do has a tight deadline. Meeting customer needs requires responding quickly. We never have much warning when we get a special project and have to get the project done quickly.

This answer is very general. Job seekers usually include specific industry terms in their answer, but the overall message is the same. Everything the job seeker does has a deadline.

I’m sure you can see that this answer tells the interviewer nothing. The goal of a question about deadlines is to understand the sense of urgency of the job seeker and to get an idea of how the individual will perform. Generalizing the answer provides nothing noteworthy.

To effectively answer a question about deadlines, you need to give an example. Starting out with a statement that deadlines are common in your field is ok. The interviewer probably hears this every time they ask the question, so you’re not going to make a bad impression with it.

The key to making a good impression is what you do next. Give an example of a specific deadline and how you were able to meet it. This will demonstrate the value you provided in the past and help create an impression of success.

This is an example of a better answer to this question:

We work under tight deadlines all the time. For example, we recently had a customer place an order for one of our products with several custom modifications. The customer needed the product in a week, and our typical lead time with the modifications was 10 days. I was able to cut a couple of days off the production schedule by coordinating with the manufacturing department to run the product on a different line than normal and then cut another day by working with quality so that they would inspect the product as it was produced. We shipped the product on time. These type of deadlines are commonplace and I work very well with other department to ensure that we meet every schedule no matter how tight.

This is very basic example of expediting production of a product. Despite this, it shows the type of deadlines the job seeker encounters, how they approach the deadline and gives an example of a success. Even though this is a basic example, it is a much better answer than the original general answer.

One reason this example is effective is the emphasis on working with other departments.  The anser address the sense of urgency of the job seeker but also uses the example to demonstrate how effective they are at influencing others in their company.

Look for ways to give examples of what you have done. Examples create a picture in the mind of the interviewer and make a much stronger impression.

The Two Ways a Resume is Assessed

The basic purpose of a resume is get you an interview. This is a simple goal, but one many job seekers struggle to reach.  The problem stems from how a resume is assessed.  A resume is usually assessed in two very different ways, but few job seekers design their resume to make the best impression during both of these assessment.

The first assessment your resume needs to pass is the initial screen. During this screen, the goal of the hiring manager is eliminate as many resumes as possible in a very short time. A hiring manager might receive a hundred or more resumes for a position. The goal at this stage is to reduce this stack of resumes down to a manageable number, perhaps the top 10 or 20.

In this review, the hiring manager will often have a few criteria that are critical to the position. These critical elements could be educational, work experience or skill requirements. Usually, two or three criteria are sufficient to reduce the resumes down to the top 20.

As a hiring manager does this initial screen, they may only give a resume a 15 to 30 second look. That’s all that is needed to look for two or three main elements. For example, if a hiring manager requires an MBA for a position, it only takes a few seconds to see if the resume lists an MBA.

The common pitfall many job seekers fall into is not making their qualifications with critical elements of the job very prominent on their resume. The education of a job seeker is usually easy to find, since it is in a section of its own. Work experience and skills are not always as clearly identifiable. For this reason, it is extremely important to look at the requirements for a position and make sure you show how you meet these requirements.

If you have the experience that a company wants, it should be clear and easy to find. With hiring managers only spending 15 to 30 seconds on your resume initially, they can only do a quick scan. They will not read every word. Important details of your background need to be prominent. If they are buried in large blocks of text, there is little chance they will be read.

The second assessment is a detailed look at your resume where the hiring manager attempts to learn as much about you as they can. All of the resumes in this group meet the minimum basic requirements for the job. The goal now is to identify the best of the group.

In this detailed assessment, demonstrating qualifications isn’t sufficient. All of the candidates at this stage will satisfy the basics and many will have a background very close to the target of the hiring manager. The candidates that rise to the top and get interviews demonstrate a pattern of success. The key is showing how the job seeker contributed significant value to their employers.

Most job seekers focus on experience. This focus leads to an emphasis on the responsibilities they held. Because their competition for a position held the same responsibilities, this does not differentiate them. Usually, it only gets them past the first screen – the 15 second look. When they are looked at in the second assessment, they get passed over. There will be candidates that emphasize the value they have provided in their careers. By doing these, these individuals rise to the top of the pile and get invited to interview.

When you write your resume, you need to work to make your resume standout in both assessments. Ensure that your resume demonstrates your basic capabilities very clearly and includes detailed examples of your contributions to your employers. If you do both of these things, you will have more success than most of your competition.

Your Resume’s Executive Summary

I’m a big fan of starting a resume with a summary statement. A summary statement gives a job seeker the opportunity to create a very strong positive impression in just a few lines. The summary statement is also the grabber that motivates the hiring manager to read your resume closely, rather than just skim it fast.  Developing a good impression and grabbing the reader can make a huge difference in the overall effectiveness of the resume.

Today, I read an article on resume writing that offered some great advice but differed on the importance of a summary statement. The article gave three reasons to avoid an objective or summary statement:

  • You don’t want one

  • You don’t need one

  • You don’t have room for one

All three of these statements sound good.  Unfortunately, they are misleading.

You don’t want one:  If you don’t want to include a summary, you don’t have to have one. This goes for anything on your resume. The problem with this is that a good summary statement will make your resume more effective. Deciding you don’t want one is tantamount to saying you don’t want to maximize the effectiveness of your resume.

You don’t need one:  As I said, you don’t have to include a summary. It’s not a required element of resume. The basics that are essential to a resume are your name, contact info, education and work experience. Everything else that you may include is designed to help sell your potential to an employer. The resume police won’t hunt you done if you don’t have a good summary statement, but your odds of landing an interview may be lower without one.

You don’t have room:  The third point is the one that I really have trouble with. The more information on your resume, the more important it is to have a summary. If you have no experience to write about, there’s nothing to summarize. On the other hand, if you have 30 years of experience, a summary can help frame your potential and build interest in reader to look closely at your resume.

A good summary statement is similar to an eye catching headline in a newspaper or an action packed opening scene of a movie. Both of these are designed to grab the attention of the audience quickly with the most exciting information.

The key to an effective summary statement is to present a summary of the most important information to the hiring manager. You want to get the hiring manager excited and interested.

The term objective statement is misleading for many job seekers. Hiring managers want to know what type of position you will consider accepting – not what your goals, wants and desires are. Focus on the elements of your background that help sell you to an employer. This short sales pitch should generate interest in reading your resume closely. If you do this, you will be far ahead of most job seekers.

Failing to Customize

I read a cover letter of IT professional that was one of the most general I have every seen. It was over 300 words long but didn’t say anything of substance. In the IT field, technical skills and experience with those skills are the critical factors. Despite this, the candidate failed to specify anything about their technical skill.

The first sentence of the cover letter illustrates how general and unimpressive the cover letter was:

I am writing to express my interest in the position of [Network Administrator / Help Desk], advertised as being open with your company at this time.

Now, you need to understand that I haven’t advertised a network administrator or help desk position in a very long time. In fact, my firm doesn’t advertise positions much any more. We are very proactive in our sourcing of candidates for our recruiting clients. This resume was completely unsolicited.

Here is what I think happened. The job seeker had a template for their cover letter that they customized.  Over time, they grew frustrated with the lack of success and moved towards a mass mailing strategy, deciding to send their resume to hundreds of recruiters. They attempted to write a very general cover letter that would appeal to the greatest number. By doing this, they minimize their odds of impressing each recruiter.

In particular, putting the job title in brackets leads me to believe that the job seeker wrote this cover letter with the intention of replacing the actual job title each time they sent it out. When they decided to send out resumes to recruiters that didn’t advertise a position, they took the short cut and just sent the template without any changes. Not a great first impression.

The cover letter goes on with very general statements. When I finished the cover letter, my expectations were very low. I planned to read the first few lines of the resume to confirm my assessment of the cover letter.  The resume turned out to be much stronger the cover letter.

The start of the resume highlighted specific skills and experiences.  The job seeker had a number of impressive accomplishments, good skills and several certifications. Overall, I would say a pretty good network administration candidate. This was completely opposite to the impression the cover letter made.

Fortunately, the resume led off with several details that helped make a strong impression. If it had not, there is a good chance a hiring manager would read only the first few lines and discarded the resume.  The cover letter made such a poor impression the resume would only get a very quick look.

Cover Letter Mixed Signals

I received a resume with a cover letter that sent mixed signals. It started out well but quickly changed course. Below are the first three sentences:

I am a results oriented leader with a proven track record of success. I have several years of experience in a variety of fields including insurance and product / project management. In addition to my extensive leadership experience, I have strong communication, customer service, and administrative skills.

The first sentence is general but decisive. It makes a statement that emphasizes results, leadership and success. My expectation at this point is to hear specifics about the leadership experience and the track record of success.

The second sentence backs off from the statement of success with a wishy-washy “several years of experience in a variety of fields” statement. It’s difficult to be less impressive than this. In reviewing the resume, the job seeker has more than a dozen years of experience in leadership roles. There was no need to be evasive. A simple statement such as “I have led teams in the <industry> for more than a dozen years.” This isn’t very impressive, but is a lot better than the original line. Another option would be to merge the first two lines: “In more than twelve years leading teams in the , I have a proven track record of success and achieving results.” This combines the statement of experience with the statement of success.

The third sentence again backs off from the first sentence even further. It emphasizes communications, customer service and administrative skills. For a successful leader, these three skills are basics that should have been mastered. Mentioning them in a resume or cover letter isn’t a bad idea, they just shouldn’t be emphasized this early. A much better option would be to list a specific accomplishments that backs up the first sentence.

The cover letter went on for another 250 words with little change from the first three sentences. The job seeker would make a statement of success, and then back off with generic statements. The most compelling statement in the entire letter was the first sentence.

Implementing Company Strategy

The key to an effective resume is demonstrating the value you will provide a company. On a resume I reviewed recently, the job seeker failed in this basic goal.

Below is an outline of the content of the resume:

Education

Bachelor’s Degree (the degree was in a field unrelated to the career of the job seeker)

 

Work Experience

Job Title, Company, Dates (low level management position)

  • Implemented company strategy as a

  • Coordinated client service with <list of industries>

  • Ensure <industry specific regulation> compliance

  • Manage claims resolution

The resume went on to list several additional positions with similar bullets. This resume does nothing to differentiate the job seeker from others in their field.

The one thing that really stood out for me on the resume was first bullet. Remember that a hiring manager will scan a resume the first time they look at it. In that first scan, only the most important content is read. The reader will typically focus on the top half of the first page and the first line or two of each section. This makes the first bullet of the first job one of the most likely elements to be read.

This bullet says that the job seeker implemented the company strategy for their position. This is essentially saying they followed the guidelines for their position. It certainly doesn’t indicate something exceptional. I’ve actually read similar statements on a number of resumes in the past. My best guess as to why someone would put this on their resume is they can’t think of anything specific.

The rest of the bullets are equally unimpressive. The second lists their basic job function. The third lists a standard government regulation everyone in their industry must follow. The last bullet lists another basic responsibility. The overall effect of the four bullets is to emphasize how unexceptional the candidate is.

In a competitive job market, it is very important to show the value you will provide and why you are better than your competition. If you don’t indicate give a reason why you should be hired, the hiring manager won’t try to think of one for you.

The Importance of Self-Confidence in Your Job Search

I’ve worked with many job seekers that lost a job and all their confidence with it. They take a job loss as a definitive statement of their value as a professional. Somehow, they feel that getting fired once more than cancels out every success and achievement they have had in their career.

It should be clear to anyone that being fired does not reverse every success a person has achieved in their career. In speaking with job seekers, virtually all of them will say they understand that a job loss is not the end of their career. Despite this, many act as if they truly believe it.

A loss of self-confidence may be the biggest obstacle to finding a job. Candidates that have little confidence fail to talk about their accomplishments. They also tend to present their limitations much more than other candidates. As you can expect, a candidate that focuses on their limitations and not their accomplishments will rarely win out.

If you can’t get excited about your work experience, you won’t be able to get a hiring manager excited about it. For most people, this is a temporary reaction to losing their job. The key is working through these self-doubts before you interview.

Review your past successes. Focus on the times when you were successful. Work on getting comfortable talking about your successes. This may sound easy, but for many people it can be very difficult. Often, talking with past co-workers can be a huge benefit. They will remember and recognize the successes you have achieved. Getting fired can make a person feel embarrassed and withdraw from their professional relationships. Don’t make this mistake.

Networking is the most effective search strategy.  Withdrawing from relationships makes it impossible to network and will drag out your search.

Some individuals will experience more than just reduced self-confidence. Depression can set in after losing a job. A job loss can be one of the most stressful life events. If you have feel paralyzed with anxiety or despair, talk with a medical professional.