Palladian Career Resources

Why Your Resume Should Have a Summary Section

A great way to start a resume is with a summary section. This section provides the primary sales pitch to get a hiring manager excited and interested in your resume. Without a summary section, it’s difficult to grab attention fast and keep it.

The resume I read today illustrated how important a summary section is.  The resume was from a sales professional with around five years of experience.  The resume started with candidate’s work experience.  Although work experience is extremely important, you are limited in your presentation if you lead off with a work experience section.

The problem with starting a resume with your work experience results from the order of the information.  You need to put your experience in reverse chronological order.  This puts the most recent position at the top. 

If your most impressive experience is listed under your most recent job, you’re in good shape.  Often, your best selling points will be scattered throughout your career and your resume.  This is where a summary section helps.  You can gather the most important elements and list them separately at the top of your resume.

To illustrate this, look at the top of the resume I received:

<Employer Name>, Account Manager Sept. ’08 to Present

• Manage the relationships with key prospects throughout my region, to ensure that is best placed to win major contracts and associated services
• Coordinate internal resources to respond to RFPs and secure business from both new and existing customers
• Establish and strengthen customer relationships through developing an intimate knowledge of individual accounts and key stakeholders

The candidate has been in this job for less than a year and lists a few responsibilities, but no accomplishments.  In sales, especially a field with large proposals that can take upwards of a year to win, it is difficult to show significant accomplishments in the first few months.  This leads to an unfavorable impression of the candidate at the very beginning.  He is a sales professional who has not had any success – not the kind of sales pitch that is going to get a person hired.

The core problem is how a hiring manager reads a resume.  Hiring managers scan resumes very quickly, focusing on the top of the resume.  They also will not assume a candidate is any better than what is presented, and will not assume a candidate has been more successful than the resume presents.

In the case of the resume excerpt above, a typical reaction will be to assume the candidate has been completely unsuccessful.  Otherwise, the candidate would have listed something about his success.  This leads to an impression in the first 15 seconds that the candidate is an unsuccessful sales professional.  The resume will probably be rejected at this point.

The truth is the candidate does have some impressive accomplishments.  Unfortunately, he is unlikely to get the opportunity to tell a hiring manager about them because his resume will be rejected at the start of the process.

The solution is easy.  Write a short summary section highlighting the key accomplishments and skills of the candidate.  This will get a hiring manager excited and motivated them to give a call. 

Overestimating Your Interview Skills

As a recruiter and recruiting firm owner, I’ve interviewed a lot of job seekers.  I’ve also sent a lot of people on interviews with companies and heard how the hiring managers really felt.  The truth is most job seekers interview poorly.  The same job seekers think they are great at interviewing.  In fact, we estimate that more than 90% of the time, the job seeker thinks they did great on an interview, when only a small percentage really did great.

The result is predictable.  Many job seekers have numerous interviews and keep hearing that they aren’t the right fit.  This is non-committal language for we found someone better.  Often, the difference between getting hired and getting rejected has little to do with the job seeker’s experience or skill.  The job seeker was competitive in these areas, otherwise they wouldn’t have been invited for the interview.  The determining factor is usually the ability of the candidate to sell their potential and ability to contribute to the success of the organization during the interview.  In other words, the interview skill of the candidate often is the deciding factor in who gets hired.

When my firm presents a candidate to a client, we work to prepare the candidate the best we can.  We don’t charge candidates for this.  It’s in our best interest to prepare the candidate and fill the position.  Despite this, I’ve had a number of candidates turn down our offers to help them improve their interview skills.  No matter how many times this happens, it still surprises me. 

More recently, we started offering career advice webinars online teaching resume writing, interviewing and job search techniques.  The resume writing and job search topics have received a lot of interest and have been very successful.  The interview course has yielded almost no interest. 

I know the lack of interest in interview prep topics isn’t related to the needs of the candidates.  Most people desperately need help with their interview skills and are missing out on opportunities as a result.  The problem is a willingness to work on improving their interview skills.  Either job seekers think they are great at interviewing or do not want to work at improving their interview skills.

I’ve asked a number of job seekers why they think so many job seekers avoid interview coaching.  They felt most people are afraid to hear the truth about their interview skills.  They know, deep down, that their interview performance isn’t as good as it should be, but have convinced themselves it’s good enough.  Signing up for coaching, teaching a class or completing a practice interview will force them to give up this illusion. 

We’re going to continue teaching interview techniques and will still offer the interview webinars online. There are few if any other training activities that can have such a significant effect on a person’s career as learning to interview better.  Whether you attend one of our sessions, sign up for coaching or work on your interview skills in another way, commit to becoming great at interviewing.

Turn Your Resume Into a Billboard

A resume is an advertisement for you.  It needs to contain some specific information about your background, but at its core, a resume is designed to make a sales pitch.  Focusing on this aspect of resume writing can greatly improve the effectiveness of the document you produce.

One advertising media that can teach an important lesson about resume writing is a billboard on an interstate.  Billboards can be effective because they are seen by a huge number of people who have little else to read.  They also pose a significant challenge.  Drivers only have a second or two to read the billboard.

Imagine designing a billboard version of your resume.  You would have to shorten the content to a few words.  Adding too much will hurt the overall effectiveness, even if the added content is important and impressive.  The reason for this is simple.  A driver may only have time to read five or ten words.  You can’t count on them starting at the beginning of the message.  This means that any content beyond the most important five or ten words will reduce the chance the most important content will be read.

Your resume faces a similar challenge.  A hiring manager will only look at a resume for a short time.  Often, it will only get a 15 to 30 second look initially.  This prevents the hiring manager from reading more than few a sentences.  If they read content that is of little importance, the odds your resume will be rejected go way up. 

To write the best resume, you should not assess the value of each piece of content in isolation.  This will lead to a resume that is too long.  You need to assess the relative value of the content and delete the elements that may be valuable but distract the reader from the most important elements.

One of the biggest challenges in this process is detaching the emotional ties to specific experiences.  Deleting something from your resume does not reduce the significance of the experience.  It only reflects the lower importance of the element to a specific audience.  For example, billboards for restaurants, hotels and other destinations always list the exit number.  The exit number is a very minor detail in assessing the quality and value of a restaurant in every situation except for a passing driver who doesn’t know where the location is.  In this case, details about the quality of the food, the selection, the cost and the overall attractiveness of the restaurant are less important details and are usually omitted from the billboard. 

Approach your resume from the same perspective of the billboard designer.  Imagine a hiring manager speeding past resumes, only getting a quick glance at the content and deciding in an instant, whether they are going to get off the exit and take a long look, or keep driving.  If you catch their attention quickly, you will greatly improve your odds of getting an interview.

Applying Behavioral Interview Techniques to Your Resume

Behavioral interviews ask situation based questions and focus on getting the job seeker to talk about specific examples of their performance.  The technique was developed because past performance is the best indicator of future performance.  If a hiring manager can assess how you performed in a number of key situations relevant to the job, they will be able to better assess your potential in that job.

The behavior techniques provide a great opportunity for a job seeker to set themselves apart from their competition.  Creating this same impression in your resume can help propel you to the top of the pile.  Right now, companies are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position.  The vast majority of resumes look alike and do nothing to differentiate the job seeker.  You can use the lessons from behavioral interviewing to upgrade your resume and make a powerful impression.

Focus on Accomplishments:  The cornerstone of a successful behavioral interview is showing the hiring manager past successes.  You need to do this on your resume too.  The focus of your resume needs to be your successes and contributions in past positions.

Be Specific:  Behavioral interviews ask questions designed to get the candidate to tell specific stories from their experience.  Be specific on your resume too.  A few very detailed stories of your past success will make the best impression.

Keep it Simple:  The most important aspect of showing your accomplishments is not showing the biggest impact.  The key element is making it easy for the hiring manager to picture what you did.  This requires explaining the basic and providing simple, easy to understand examples.

Detailed Results:  For an accomplishment to be impressive, you need to show the results you achieved.  This requires specific numbers demonstrating the scope of the accomplishment.

Make it memorable:  The accomplishments on your resume are the short highlight film clips that summarize your career.  How are your favorite actors and athletes remembered?  Often, an actor who starred in dozens of movies will be remembered for one movie, and possibly one scene from that movie.  An athlete is often summarized by a single play.  These isolated events create a power memory that makes it easy to remember the person.  Most job seekers have completely forgettable resumes.  A single accomplishment that creates a strong, specific image can make you memorable and give you an edge in your job search.

A few accomplishments explained in detail can set your resume apart from your competition.  Most job seekers fail to show accomplishments on their resume.  Adding a few accomplishments will greatly improve the success of your job search.

As important as it is to include examples of your accomplishments, you also need to tailor them to the position.  List a few accomplishments that directly relate to the job you are applying for.  Ideally, you will provide answers to the top two or three questions a hiring manager would ask in an interview. 

Fast Track Your Career

Markell Steele of Futures In Motion is offering the Fast Track Your Career Teleclass on Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 3pm PST. 

Markell will share her tips for how you can create a career map that reflects your skills, values, interests and desired lifestyle. Your career map will be a planning tool you can use to guide your career in a satisfying direction.  The goal for the teleclass is for you to gain confidence in actively planning your career. Markell will outline the specific steps you can take to discover what’s most important to you and to describe how you can chart your path by creating a career map.

Markell R. Steele, Career Counselor and founder of Futures in Motion, Inc., is a national certified counselor, distance credentialed counselor, author, and speaker. "I help frustrated job seekers find career direction, so they can get the job they want in less time with less stress."

Working directly with clients, Markell helps them gain the confidence they need to create and manage satisfying careers. She is an expert in the career management process and provides her clients with a wealth of knowledge about the world of work and strategies for career success. As a counselor and coach, she facilitates career decision- making, job search action planning, self-marketing campaign development, professional network development, and leadership development.

Markell is passionate about her career and her mission is to help as many people as possible create a career and life they love. She's faced obstacles in her career and has learned from her mistakes and successes. She shares all of that with her clients, so they can avoid the pitfalls that will derail their careers. Her clients appreciate her straightforward, action-oriented approach that is infused with a caring, supportive and understanding attitude.

Markell’s educational background includes a Master of Education degree in Counseling from the University of San Diego (USD) and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She is a National Certified Counselor and has been trained as a Distance Credentialed Counselor. She also serves on the boards of NAWBO-OC and the UCSB Alumni Association.

You can sign up for the class at:  http://www.futures-in-motion.com/teleclass-fast-track.php

Telling Hiring Managers What They Want

I receive cover letters on a regular basis that try to define the hiring criteria for the hiring manager.  Most hiring managers know what they are looking for when hiring.  They might have some flexibility in the criteria, but generally they know what types of skills, experiences and abilities will make someone successful.  As a job seeker, it’s a waste of time to try to persuade them to change their criteria.  Despite this, some job seekers lead off their cover letters with instructions for how to hire. 

The cover letter I read today did just that.  Below are the first few lines of the letter:

Today's market require a sales representative that is versatile, competitive, unrelenting and strategic.  If that set of skills can also harness the new technologies found in the marketplace, then you have a solid member to any organization that is positioning, marketing and selling their product. I am such an individual. 

The qualities mentioned above sound good… versatile, competitive, unrelenting, strategic and able to harness technologies.  They may not be the top priorities for the hiring manager.  An ability to cold call, generate referrals or up sell clients into higher margin products may be the key concerns of the hiring manager. Focusing on a different set of skills will not win the hiring manager over.

This tactic has one other major problem.  There are hiring managers who will read the cover letter and picture the person telling them how to run the department. A manager does not want someone who will question and challenge every decision and assignment. This is too time consuming for a manager. The manager may want input and ideas from time to time, but they also want a person who will follow the systems and processes. 

The job seeker could easily change the cover letter to highlight the same skills but not lecture the hiring manager.  For example:

I am a committed, competitive and unrelenting sales professional, able to adapt quickly and focus on strategic activities that will grow sales.  I have consistently used new and cutting edge technologies to gain an edge over my competition in the marketplace.   

This intro focuses on the job seeker, not the hiring criteria. 

Job Search Webinar Schedule

Next week, I am presenting three webinars, Resume Writing Basics, Job Interview Basics, and Job Search Basics.  I taught these three classes online for the first time a couple weeks ago and the response was great. 

This will be the last time I offer the basics series of webinars for free.  I have been testing the software and getting comfortable presenting online.  Although I’ve presented these topics in person a number times in seminars, I wanted to practice the online presentation a few times and get some feedback on the presentations.  The feedback was great and very helpful, and I'm doing one last set of free sessions.  Next week will be the the last opportunity you will have to attend the sessions for free –  so sign up today!

The schedule for next week is:

• Resume Writing Basics - Monday July 27, 11AM EDT

• Job Interview Basics – Wednesday July 29, 11AM EDT

• Job Search Basics – Friday July 31, 11AM EDT

The three webinars form our Basics series.  We are designing Advanced courses on each of these topics.  Our goal is to complete the Resume Writing Advanced Series within the next couple weeks.  This series will start with the Resume Writing Basics course and includes six other webinars on advanced resume writing topics.  Check out the Resume Writing Advanced Series of Webinars.

If the days and times above don't fit your schedule, check our Career Advice Webinars page for announcements of upcoming events.  You can also register for a special mailing list to receive emails announcing each class.  We plan on presenting webinars during the week with both daytime and evening sessions and are planning a Saturday series offering several webinars back-to-back.

Recordings:  We are currently testing software to record and deliver recordings of the sessions, so job seekers can attend our training sessions on their schedule, not ours.

Accomplishments that Hurt a Resume

I write a lot about how important accomplishments are to a resume.  They provide the sales pitch to get a hiring manager interested and excited about your background.  They also demonstrate your capability in a way that nothing else can.

The resume I read today showed me the rare example of when accomplishments actually hurt the overall impression.  The problem wasn’t the individual accomplishments – each was good and impressive.  The problem was they didn’t fit together.  In fact, they seemed to contradict each other.  Below are the two accomplishments from an operations manager within a distribution company:

Building up staff to eventually build in 2nd shift for production to accommodate increased volume.
Reduced warehouse staff 25% and increased production by 15% in shipping and receiving.

The candidate has been with this employer for around a year.  In this short time, both increasing and decreasing staffing levels seems out of place.  If the candidate had a five year track record with the company, it would be fine.  The business cycle has changed and companies are adjusting.

Do I think the candidate is lying about his accomplishments?  No.  There is probably a good explanation for what he did.  Despite this, I’m focused on whether he is telling the truth, how these two accomplishments could be reconciled and whether the accomplishments are credible.  I’m not thinking about how the accomplishments demonstrate an ability to help an organization. 

If the job seeker is coming for the exact role and type of company than the job being filed, this won’t be too much of a problem.  A hiring manager is like to still give him a call.  More often, a job seeker will be from a different job type or industry.  If this is the case, the job seeker already has a strike against them.  Adding even a little doubt or confusion about the accomplishments can be the deciding factor in rejecting the candidate.

There are a couple of solutions for this job seeker.  The easiest is to delete the bullet related to adding 2nd shift.  In a down economy, more companies are concerned about cutting costs, and few are worried about expanding.  Dropping this will not hurt the resume. 

Another option would be to explain the accomplishments better, so they make sense together.  For example, the staff reduction might be in one department and adding 2nd shift could be in a completely different department.  If this is the case, providing a little more detail would fix the inconsistency. 

One of the greatest challenges when writing your resume is knowing how a reader, who knows nothing about you, will interpret what you write.  You have the benefit of knowing your complete work history.  This makes it difficult to see when key details are omitted.  The solution is to have someone, who knows little to nothing about your review your resume, assess the content.  If you don’t know someone who can review a resume as a hiring manager would, take a look at our Resume Assessment Service where an experienced recruiter will assess your resume and provide specific recommendations for improvement.

Replacing a High Paying Job

In the early 90’s, I worked for an engineering firm who built steel mills.  This company had a new technology that was in great demand.  At the same time, the industry was down and most engineering firms in the steel industry were laying off people.  The department I worked in designed the piping systems for the steel mill.  It was led by an engineering manager, had a team of engineers, a drafting supervisor and team of draftsmen. 

One of the draftsmen had been the engineering manager for a different firm, but had been laid off.  In taking the drafting job, his income was probably cut by sixty or seventy percent.  When I first met him, I felt sorry for him.  He had a couple of kids in college and was having trouble supporting his family.  My sympathy didn’t last long.  The guy was extremely bitter and spent most of his time criticizing everything around him, especially the company.  He blamed everyone he could for his misfortune.  He ended up being a miserable person to work with and most people avoided him.  He didn't last long at the company, despite being extremely qualified, capable and skilled.

It wasn’t the company’s fault that he had lost his job, or that they were paying him so much less than he had been making.  When they hired a draftsman, they hired him despite his being vastly overqualified.  He had a chance to prove his capability and earn promotions quickly.  The company was growing and there was a lot of potential to move up.  His attitude ensured he would not see a promotion, and he didn’t last long with the company.

Although this story is almost 20 years old, it has a lot of similarities today.  I have been running into job seekers who are struggling to find a job that pays as well as their last position.  During their career, they progressed up and received good raises. Recently, they were laid off.  They are now finding it difficult, if not impossible, to find a job that pays as well as the one they lost.

This is a very difficult situation.  Some people are looking at more than a 50% cut to their pay.  Add to this a high mortgage, falling real estate prices and a stock market down significantly from its highs.  Prospects may look bleak.

Despite the tough economy, many of these job seekers feel that they are owed a job at least as good as the one they had.  Employers don't want to hear about a person's hardships or their expectations.  They don't care what you think you deserve.  They want to hire someone that will do a job efficiently and effectively.  They will also minimize costs and will not pay someone more than they have to. 

I would like to give the secret to replacing a great salary, but there is no “do this one thing and you’ll be rich” tip.  The truth is replacing an income at the top end of the range for a job type may not be possible today.  This isn’t what anyone wants to hear, but it is the truth.  So what do you do?

The first thing you need to do is accept that just because a company paid you a lot in the past doesn’t mean you are owed that today.  This is tough to accept – no one wants to take a step backwards. 

Second, look at the long term potential of a position.  If you could take a 50% pay cut, knowing that within two years you would get promotions and replace the lost pay, would situation be more attractive?  Too many people expect to replace their lost income immediately.  This leads to long periods of unemployment and no potential for promotion.

It can be difficult to accept a major cut in pay, but being bitter about it will only hurt your job search and your performance on the job once hired. 

Job Market Update

Career Builder recently released their 3rd Quarter forecast.  It shows some encouraging and discouraging results.  The number of companies reporting plans to reduce staffing levels in the next quarter has declined.  That’s good news.  In the 2nd quarter forecast, 17% of companies planned to cut staff, and now the figure stands at 10%. 

Unfortunately, the report also shows that companies are slow to start to hiring.  The percentage of companies reporting that they plan on increasing staffing levels also declined.  The result is an increase in the number of companies holding staffing levels even.

This is good news if you are employed.  The odds of getting downsized are declining.  Companies made substantial cuts very quickly.  They are now leaner and able to weather a recession.  If you are unemployed, the outlook isn’t as positive.  Companies will replace workers that leave, but won’t add to the workforce.  This will make the competition for jobs high for the foreseeable future. 

Eventually, every recession will naturally come to an end.  People and companies are using up inventory and will need to replace it.  At home, this is putting off repairs to the house or keeping a car for an extra year or two.  In business, this is delaying equipment upgrades and replacements, new product introductions and investments in new product development.  At some point, everything will wear out and need to be replaced.  At that point, we will have tremendous pent up demand and the economy will start to expand. 

This may sound good in theory, but if you’re out of work and need a paycheck, it doesn’t put food on the table tonight.  To land a job, you need to show the value you will provide to the company.  The best way to do this is to show how you contributed in the past above and beyond expectations. 

Check out the full report at http://img.icbdr.com/images/jp/content/pdf/Q3-09-RBU.pdf