Palladian Career Resources

LinkedIn and Your Resume

I read an interesting question on LinkedIn today…

“Would you put a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume?”

There have been a lot of good answers posted by LinkedIn users – some advocating and some discouraging this.  I think it really depends on your resume and your LinkedIn Profile. 

Your Profile

LinkedIn is essentially a social network – except that it focuses on careers.  A profile on LinkedIn is similar to a resume, but the content is slightly different.  You can be much freer about what information you include and how you describe it. 

You can expect that a hiring manager will Google your name while you are being consider, so there’s a good chance they will see your profile anyway.  Just realize that this will be well into the hiring process.  Many hiring managers will only put forth this type of effort once they are seriously considering making an offer.  If you want your profile to be read early in the process, before interviews start, then you need to link to it.

What Value Does the Profile Offer to Your Resume

LinkedIn profiles have several pieces of information that may compliment your resume.  The most obvious are the recommendations.  Users can write recommendations for co-workers.  This allows a hiring manager to read what is essentially a reference check long before they normally would conduct references.

Another benefit is seeing the connections you have.  This can be particularly helpful for business development professionals where the largest rolodex wins. 

The LinkedIn Answers is a place where you can answer questions asked by others.  Having a strong track record of answering questions in a field may demonstrate expertise.  I wouldn’t set out to answer questions just to highlight on your resume, but if you have a passion for participating in the discussion, it may help.

Finally, your profile personalizes your resume.  Profiles usually focus much more on an individual’s interests and motivations than a resume does. 

Why Shouldn’t I Add My Profile

First, if you have an incomplete or poorly written profile, don’t highlight it. 

Second, are you going to leave something off your resume that is more valuable to make room for the link?  If so, skip it.

Third, what message are sending with your profile?  Is it creating a complimentary message to your resume and cover letter?  Make sure it’s helping you in your search.

Bottom Line: Don’t add your profile unless it’s a really big selling point for the position you are pursuing.  If you’re not sure, leave it off. 

How Should I List It?

I see several ways of putting a Linked In profile on your resume.  You can place the link in your contact information at the top of your resume.

Your could place it at the end of the resume under a heading indicating what you want to highlight.  For example, after the last section of your resume, add a section titled “Recommendations” and place the link under it. 

You could put the link in your cover letter, highlighting the information on your profile that you want the hiring manager to read.  For example, you could call attention to the recommendations and provide the link.

Finally, you could imbed the link within another section in your resume.  For example, if you had a great recommendation from a former boss on your profile, you might attach the link under that job. 

Conclusion

For some job seekers, adding a link to their resume could be beneficial.  For most, I wouldn’t do it.  Make sure your profile is really good before doing this and have a clear plan for why you want to include it.

Check out the discussion on Linked In:  http://www.linkedin.com/answers/using-linkedIn/ULI/299873-11341068

I have close to 2000 direct connections on LinkedIn.  Feel free to send an invitation to me (gcapone@palladianinternational.com) if you want to link.

Falsifying Education

A resume of very strong manufacturing job seeker came to my attention recently.  The candidate looked great, but I didn't recognize the school they attended.  I'm not an expert on every school out there, so I use several research tools.  In a few minutes, it was clear this school was not reputable.  First, it's not accredited, and second it awards degrees without requiring any course work.  Just write a check and they mail a transcript and degree.

With an explosion of educational opportunities, it's no surprise that a number of diploma mills have cropped up.  If you're not familiar with diploma mills, they are companies that issue degrees without requiring a single class.  Some go so far as to offer overnight delivery of a degree – someone that didn't graduate from high school can obtain degrees all the way through to a PhD in a matter of days. 

Many of these programs market themselves as life experience degrees – degrees awarded solely based on the life experience of the individual.  The requirements are less than stringent.  Colby Nolan is a cat that received a Bachelor's degree and an MBA from a diploma mill.

The job seeker I was assessing had a resume that looked great.  With the complete fabrication of their education, there is no way to trust the job seeker.  Unfortunately, if they are lying about their education, I have to assume they could be lying about everything in their background.

Now it may sound tempting to go from a high school grad to an MBA overnight, but it's a fraud.  States are cracking down on this, with a number having already passed legislation criminalizing the use of an unaccredited degree to obtain employment (or even a promotion in some cases).  Additionally, the tools to check the validity of a degree are getting better and faster - it's only takes a minute or two to check. 

If you are looking to enhance your education, check the reputation and accreditation of the program.  This isn't difficult to do, but you do need to know where to look.  The diploma mills often claim accreditation, but from accrediting bodies that either don't exist or have standards as low as the diploma mills. 

There are a lot of resources you can check.  Two that I like are: 

Council for Higher Education Accreditation:  www.chea.org
State of Michigan: list of schools the state will not recognize - http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf

I've run into a number of job seekers that made the mistake of getting a fake degree.  A few were able to use the degree to get a better job (although the odds of this go down as background checks get easier).  This didn't help in the long run though.  With the lie, they end up stuck, unable to leave because the lie continues to be uncovered – and very bitter every time they are discovered.

Seven Things You Need to do Before Submitting Your Resume

Before you send out your next resume, there are seven things you need to do:

1. Check the content

Do you have all the information on your resume that you need?  Is the important information easy to find?  Need more information: Read my post on resume content

2. Customize your resume to the job

Make sure you customize your resume to the job requirements.  The first screening step companies go through is to reject job seekers that don’t have all the skills they consider critical.  If you fail to list a skill or experience that is critically important, the odds are that the hiring manager will assume you don’t have what they are looking for.  The next step for your resume is the trash bin.  Make sure your resume clearly shows your experience with each job requirement.  Need more information:  Check out my post on how to customize a resume

3. Spell check

Too many job seekers shortcut this step.  Make sure you spell check your resume before sending it.  Often, job seekers spell check a resume after the write their first version, but fail to do this after every revision.

4. Have your resume assess by a professional

Do you know how your resume is perceived by hiring managers?  Hire an expert to review your resume.  Many job seekers spend so much time on their resume that they can’t step back and assess it objectively.  An impartial expert can help you fine tune your resume and give you a competitive advantage over other job seekers.  There are a variety of services that provide resume assessments – some are free, while others require are fee based.

Palladian offers a thorough resume assessment service, where we examine 61 resume attributes and provide specific written feedback that will help you improve your resume.  Learn more about the Palladian Resume Assessment

5. Write a quality cover letter

A strong cover letter will help make a good impression.  Spend the time to develop a good cover letter, or if you aren’t a great writer, hire someone to write a cover letter for you.  There are a number of services that do this.  Check out my research report on cover letter best practices to learn now to write a cover letter that is better than the ones your competition uses.  Get the report

6. Check your voice mail message

Make sure you have a professional sounding voice mail message.  If you’re successful and the company calls you, you do not want to have an unprofessional or offensive message that you recorded for your friends.

7. Check your MySpace page

Do you have a public social networking profile?  If so, review the content.  It’s common for hiring managers to google the name of a candidate.  If you publish information about yourself in a social networking site, make sure the information won’t hurt your career.  You can either edit the site, or restrict access to only your accepted friends.   

Resume Length

Usually, when I talk about resume length, I focus on the number of pages.  Keeping a resume under two pages is a good rule of thumb, but this is only part of the story.  The other thing to consider is the number of words in a resume. 

Reading Rate

The average adult reads approximately 250 words per minute.  This estimate is based on easy to comprehend material.  More difficult, technical material requires a slower rate, with some estimates as low as 50 words per minute for extremely technical material when the reader wants 100% comprehension.

How your resume is written will affect how a person reads it.  If it is very technical in nature, with very long complex sentences, the reader will have to read slower.  If your resume is very long, you put the reader in a bind.  Slow down to comprehend everything, or save time by reading fast and only skim the material. 

Let's say your resume is written so that it can be read  fairly easily - say at 200 words per minute.  This means that a 400 word resume (a fairly typical length) will require two minutes of concentration to read thoroughly. 

The problem with many resumes is that they are not easy, light reading.  Additionally, most hiring managers can only afford 15, 30 or maybe 60 seconds per resume. In that time, they may only comprehend a few sentences before determining if they are going to discard the resume or continue reading.

Long Resumes

I've seen very long resumes.  We looked at one recently that was five pages and 1,600 words.  It was full of technical terms and acronyms.  It was work to comprehend and understand each detail.  If I wanted to truly understand this job seeker's resume, it might take ten or fifteen minutes (possibly longer, I can't be sure since I quit reading early on). 

Recommendations

• Keep your resume short and concise. 
• Write in easy to read sentences and paragraphs. 
• Target a length of 250-400 words.
• Use bullets, indents, bold, italics and other formatting cues to direct the reader to the most important information. 

Top 6 Situations to Use a Functional Resume

A functional resume is a great format to use for some job seekers. Unfortunately, many people use it in the wrong situation, and others fail to use it when they should. If you are in one of these six situations, you should consider a functional resume:

1. Recent Graduates: If you are just graduating from school, you don't have work experience to put in a chronological format. This makes a functional format a great choice.

2. Individuals Changing Careers: Moving into a new field presents several challenges. One of the most significant is showing that your prior experience is transferable to the new career. A functional resume can help demonstrate this.

3. Senior Executives: Many senior executives have extensive careers that can be difficult to summarize in two pages. Organizing information in a functional format can help in prioritizing the most important information without letting the resume get too long.

4. Project Specialists: Some careers, such as construction and consulting, are focused on completing projects. It can be difficult to write about each project in sufficient detail to highlight important accomplishments without having the resume get too long. A functional resume can make this much easier to do.

5. Stay at Home Mom's Returning to the Workforce: Returning to the workforce after taking significant time off can be very challenging. A chronological resume focuses the readers attention on your career progression. With a large gap in your employment you want to focus on your skills and abilities, and a functional resume can help do this.

6. Transitioning Military Officers: Moving from a military to a civilian career is a very big change. Civilian employers rarely understand all the details of a military career. This makes highlighting your skills and abilities very important.

The important thing to remember when you select the format for your resume is to highlight why you will be successful. For some, this is their career progression and a chronological resume will work well. For others, their skills and accomplishments are a bigger selling point and a functional resume works better.

How to Customize Your Resume For Each Job

It is important to customize your resume for each position you pursue. Every application should be tailored to best present your background. Although most job seekers know this, few understand how to go about it. Fortunately, it's not that tough once you know what to do.

Cover Letter

Write a new cover letter for each application. The basic form will be the same. The main thing that will change is your explanation why you are interested in the position. So few job seekers customize their cover letters, and almost none include information that clearly shows they did some research. Doing this will make you stand out.

Objective Statement

If you have an objective statement, make sure it matches the opportunity. If it doesn't match, the odds are that you will be rejected based on this.  A hiring manager doesn't want to waste time on a job seeker that isn't interested in the job.

Accomplishments

If you have a job description, pull out the three or four most important requirements. Then, make sure you have an accomplishment demonstrating each requirement somewhere in the last two or three jobs you have held.

Skills

Look at the key technical skills for the position and detail your experience with each. You don't need a lot of information on each skill, a few words may be sufficient. The key is showing you possess the skills and creating the interest with the hiring manager to want to learn more in an interview.

How to Assess an Objective

Yesterday, we looked at several of the elements of an objective statement.  First, the length should be one line, possibly two.  Second, the statement should be clear and specific.

Tomorrow and Friday, I'm going to provide 50 objective statements.  Each is from a resume I received from a job seeker.  I selected the objective statements at random, so they are not examples of what to do, or what not to do.  They're just a selection of what's out there. 

When you look at your objective statement, or the ones that I'm going list, ask the following questions:

• Is the statement sufficiently specific?
• Do you know what the job seeker is looking for?
• Is the statement short and concise?
• Would you read the entire statement if you had to screen 200 resumes?
• Does the statement create a professional image?
• Do you want to learn more about the job seeker?

The key to an effective objective:  It must provide information important to a hiring manager and it must create a strong positive impressive. 

Objective Statements: Elements of a Good Objective

The key to a good objective is to write a statement that adds value to the hiring manager.  Too many objectives are just fluff - nothing specific and nothing of value.  If you are going to have an objective statement, describe the position you are seeking.  Failing to do this will only make a poor impression on the reader. 

In our 2008 Resume Benchmarking Survey, we found the average length of an Objective Statement was between one and two lines, with the majority limited to one sentence. Although it is important to provide a specific objective with sufficient detail, an objective should also be clear and concise. With many hiring managers spending less than a minute reviewing each resume, a lengthy paragraph in an objective statement section is unlikely to be read.

For resumes with Objective Statements, only 29% described the industries preferred by the job seeker and only 54% described the specific job being pursued. This led to only 14% of all objective statements describing both the job and industry being pursued.

Objective Statements: Giving Your Job Search a Purpose

Many resumes start with an objective statement.  This can be a great way to start your resume, or it can make a very bad impression.  It all depends on what you write.  This week, I'm going to look at Objective Statements in detail.  Today and tomorrow, I'll have a couple articles on how to write an objective, and later in the week, I'll provide examples of actual resumes. 

Do You Need an Objective

The first question regarding objective statements is whether you need one.  Objective statements are not a required element on a resume.  In our 2008 Resume Benchmarking Survey, we found that 56% of resumes have an objective statement.

If you are seeking a position similar to your current role, an objective isn't important.  Most hiring managers will assume you want to do what you are already doing. 

If you want to make a shift into a different role or industry, an objective will help.  The bigger the change you want to make, the more important an objective statement is.  If you want to change careers but don't have an objective, it's very unlikely that a hiring manager will see your background as a fit in a different field.  You need to get them thinking about suitability in the different role. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to look at what makes a good objective statement.

 

Resume Language

An often overlooked element of every resume is the choice of verbs. Although most job seekers try to write a resume that will make an impact and have a strong impression, a large number fail at this. To maximize the effectiveness of your resume, you need to choose verbs with impact.

The typical bullets in the work experience section falls into one of three categories: No Verb, Weak Verbs, or Strong Verbs.

No Verbs

Some job seekers put bullets under their work experience that don't have a verb. Typically, these are general responsibilities. Having responsibility for something says nothing about an individual's success or potential in that role. Use of these should be minimized.

Examples:

• Responsible for...

• Ability to...

• Strong experience with...

• Accomplished at...

Weak Verbs

Passive voice and low impact verbs are slight step up from not having a verb, but they're still not great. Typically, they focus on responsibilities and not accomplishments. The main problem with these is that they do little to differentiate one job seeker from another. Use of these should be limited.

Examples:

• Charged with...

• Reported to...

• Interacted with...

• Provided...

• Monitored...

• Oversaw...

• Managed...

• Assisted with...

Strong Verbs

Writing with strong verbs will do several things for your resume. First, it will sound better and less wishy-washy. Second, it will focus the reader on what you did, not what you were responsible for. Finally, it will force you to include examples of your accomplishments. Where possible, you should use strong verbs.

Examples:

• Achieved...

• Sold...

• Designed...

• Exceeded...

• Implemented...

• Streamlined...

• Improved...

• Saved...

• Grew sales...

• Reduced costs...

Try to use strong verbs and language that makes an impact. It will help your resume stand out. Just remember one thing, the choice of verb is only a component of writing an effective resume. Using a strong verb doesn't guarantee that a bullet will make an impact. The key is providing examples of your success.