Month: June 2008

Chronological or Functional

The structure of your resume can play a big role in determining how effective it is. In our 2008 Benchmarking Survey, we found that approximately one third of all job seekers make the wrong choice.

There are four main questions you need to answer to select the right structure:

  1. Are you new to the workforce?

  2. Are you changing careers or staying in the same career field?

  3. How many different jobs have you had?

  4. Are you in a highly technical field?

If you are just entering the workforce, a chronological resume isn’t an option. You don’t have a history to detail chronologically. What you can do is provide information on you education and experience. This could include school activities, volunteer work and internships. Organizing this experience around key skills (or functions) will highlight your potential.

If you are staying in the same career field, a chronological resume is usually the best bet. Your background should show a natural progression towards the position you are seeking. You want to highlight this progression.

If you are changing career fields, your progression will not as strong a selling point. Instead, your skills and potential will make you stand out. This is where a functional resume can really help.

The number of jobs you have held can play a role in your choice. Individuals with long careers, independent consultants, and individuals that move from project to project may find that there are too many positions to do each justice. In this case, a functional resume can highlight your career achievements.

Finally, individuals, in highly technical fields where technical proficiency is more important than anything else, may find a functional resume highlights their experience best.

Industries in Demand

National Unemployment and State Unemployment is only one facet of our employment picture.  Each industry faces a slightly different situation and the unemployment characteristics reflect this.

Manufacturing:  5.3% unemployment.  Looking at the data a little closer, unemployment in Petroleum and Coal Products is 0.2%.  Given the price of oil, it’s not surprise that anyone in that industry can find a job as oil companies try to expand production.  Furniture and Fixtures is a different story with 8.5% unemployment.

Unemployment is the health care field is also low, with 1.4% unemployment in hospital professionals.

Beverage and Tobacco production has a 9.7% unemployment rate, and Food Services professions are at 8.6%. 

Finally, the financial industry has an unemployment level of 3.7%.  That sounds great, and it is for many, but a loan officer or mortgage broker will probably find it tough to get a job right now.

Each industry has a different situation, and the situation varies by geography.  Smaller communities are more dependent on a small group of employers.  If one of these runs into trouble, it can hurt the entire community. 

* Statistics from U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Where Are The Jobs

The national unemployment rate has been climbing.  Despite this, some parts of the country have very low unemployment.

In April 2008, there were 16 states with unemployment under 4%:

State

Unemployment Rate

South Dakota

2.6

Wyoming

2.6

Idaho

3.1

Nebraska

3.1

North Dakota

3.1

Utah

3.1

Oklahoma

3.2

Hawaii

3.3

Iowa

3.5

New Mexico

3.5

Virginia

3.5

Delaware

3.7

Maryland

3.7

Montana

3.8

New Hampshire

3.8

Arizona

3.9

U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics

Accomplishment Examples

I pulled four accomplishments from resumes I’ve received recently.

Example 1:  Director of Real Estate Acquisitions

Research and negotiate real estate acquisitions totaling approximately $#M per year.

This accomplishment clear, concise and specific. The role of the job seeker is also clear. What’s missing is something that quantifies whether this is figure is good. Did the job seeker meet expectations? Including the number of deals completed would help. It would also be good

Example 2:  Facilities/Engineering Manager

Champion use of Six Sigma/Lean tools to develop and implement strategic initiatives relative to managing facility construction and maintenance, capacity utilization.

Six Sigma and Lean are two skills that receive a lot of attention and are in demand. Implemented properly, they can have a huge impact on a company. A lot of job seekers try to work them into their resume, whether they are skilled are not.

In this accomplishment, the job seeker is saying they are a champion for using six sigma and lean tools. They do not say anything about whether they were successful in driving change or if the results of the change were significant.

Remember that many hiring mangers are going to be skeptical of anything you claim. Is this job seeker a six sigma expert? The education section of the resume lists training in six sigma, but no details of what the training was, and no listing of certifications. Did the job seeker sit through a 60 minute class on the basics of six sigma or spend weeks in classes? There were no specific projects listed that were completed, so the a hiring manager will probably assume the job seeker does not have much skill is this area.

Example 3:  Director Supply Chain

Exceeded all objectives for the fiscal year, including average AP days and freight as a percent of sales.

This accomplishment is clear and concise. The role is assumed from the title and the benefit to the company is also assumed. It isn’t very specific and it doesn’t say anything about how the job seeker achieved these results. Despite this, it actually a pretty good accomplishment. It shows the job seeker was successful in each area they were accountable for. A little more detail would improve it. The main thing this accomplishment will do is to prompt questions in an interview. In particular, what were the objectives and metrics that the job seeker was measured on and how did they achieve the results.

Example 4:  Division President

Increased company revenues from $#.# million in 200# to $##.# million in 200# by opening new locations, rebuilding sales teams, and improving operations; grew from ## locations to ## locations.

This is a good example of an accomplishment. The accomplishment is clear and concise. The result is specific, along with the time frame to achieve it. The method to achieve the result is also clear. As an added clarification, the job seeker included the number of locations at the start and end. Although I left out the figures, they clearly showed a significant increase in the number of locations and a growth in revenues per location (locations doubled and revenues quadrupled). This is the type of accomplishment that make me want to learn more about how this individual accomplished this.

 

Six Elements of a Strong Accomplishment

On Monday, I said that an accomplishment is an activity that demonstrates your skill, performance, aptitude or potential. The key is showing a hiring manager what you can accomplish for them.

A strong accomplishment has six elements that need to be present:

  • Clear – The reader needs to be able to understand what the accomplishment is

  • Concise – As we everything else in a resume, don’t expect the reader to read lengthy text

  • Specific – The more specific the accomplishment, the better

  • Your Role – What responsibility and authority did you have

  • How – What were the activities you did

  • Benefit – What was the benefit to your employer

The key to presenting an impressive accomplishment is meeting all six of these requirements. To do this, you need to include a little more information than is usually provided.

Most people provide accomplishments that are clear and concise. Although still common, being specific is an area of opportunity for some. Listing what the role of the person and the activities that they performed is usually missing. Finally, the benefit to the employer is often left since it is assumed to be clear. For some accomplishments, this is easy to see – saving a lot of money through process re-engineering implies you could save a lot of money for the company you are applying to. Other accomplishments may be less obvious and need more of an explanation.

Your Role and Activities

I see resumes all the time that make the mistake of not providing enough information with the accomplished. Delivering a dollar amount of cost savings, even if the amount is very large, doesn’t mean much in isolation. What did you do to achieve the results? Did commodity prices drop due to nothing you did and you’re taking credit? Expect the reader of your resume to be a little skeptical of any claims you make. Give enough detail that they want to learn the specifics.

Check back Friday for real examples of accomplishments with an assessment of each.

How to Recognize Accomplishment

The first step in recognizing your accomplishments. To do this, you need to know the expectations of your position. Meeting or Exceeding an expectation is an accomplishment, as is providing a contribution outside your area of responsibility.

Meeting Expectations

The first step in remembering your accomplishments is reviewing the expectations of your job. What were you expected to do on a daily basis? Did you meet these expectations on a consistent basis? Consistency is an accomplishment often overlooked. In sports, we see a lot of accomplishments that receive incredible respect that illustrate consistent performance, even if the performance in isolation isn’t impressive. For example, consecutive games started is a stat that is often highlighted. Starting a game isn’t unusual and only becomes impressive when it is done over time on a consistent basis. Have you met an expectation consistently over time?

Exceeding Expectations

Have you exceeded expectations? Review the times when you beat your goals. These could be budget goals, time to completion for projects or simply performing better than you peers on a metric. This is easier in organizations that track metrics closely.

Unusual Responsibilities

What have you done outside your normal responsibilities? It common for companies to develop special committees or project teams to address issues. Any results that come from your activities outside your normal responsibilities should be reviewed.

Check back tomorrow for the Six Elements of a Strong Accomplishment

Your Accomplishments

Have you ever struggled to think of accomplishments to put on a resume or on your annual self-review? It’s a terrible feeling not be able to recall anything that shows you were successful. Most, if not all of us, have run into this.

In our 2008 Resume Benchmarking Survey, we found that a quarter of job seekers do not list any accomplishments on their resume, and only 40% listed three or more accomplishments for each position they held. Of the resumes that have accomplishments, many were poorly written or incomplete. This offers you an opportunity to stand out from your competition by having strong, well written accomplishments on your resume.

The problem isn’t that there are tons of people that have never accomplished anything. It’s that they don’t track their accomplishments, they can’t remember them later and they don’t recognize accomplishments at the time they have them.

What is an Accomplishment

Accomplishments are activities that demonstrate your skill, performance, aptitude or potential. They can be isolated events or a pattern of activity over time. What they don’t need to be is something that is earth shattering.

Check back tomorrow for a look at how to Recognize Your Accomplishments.

A Resume Without Substance

I recently assessed a job seeker that had provided a resume that told very little. Fortunately, we had been referred to this individual and knew they were talented. Otherwise, their resume would probably have been discarded. The reason: there’s nothing in the resume that sells the job seekers.

Here’s the background of the candidate: 10 years experience in a field with very good job stability and a good progression of promotions. Bachelor’s degree and MBA. The candidate is in a competitive field and has a great track record of success.

That’s what we know from the interview and references we did. The resume tells a different story – or rather, it doesn’t tell the story at all.

The resume is one page. The top quarter of the page has the job seekers name, contact information and the objective statement. The objective statement doesn’t give an objective. Here’s how it reads:

Objective: A position that will utilize the accumulated skills and business expertise that has been gained from my experience as a <job title>.

Now, I have to assume the candidate would be interested in the same job they have been doing, at a similar company, in a similar industry. If they want anything different from what they are doing know, there’s nothing to tell me this.

Next is the Work Experience section. The job seeker has less than 10 bullets covering all the jobs they have held. Of these, all but the last is a basic responsibility. In fact, the first bullet under their current job says essentially:

Responsible for day-to-day operations of my department.

Now the actual bullet is more detailed regarding the actual responsibilities, but this is an accurate rewording of the meaning.

Now, how excited would you be to hire someone that describe their work history as “I was responsible for doing my job?” Although including responsibilities is important, there has to be more in a resume.

The job seeker had their only accomplishment as the last bullet of the work experience section, and this bullet was very weak, saying only that they have met their goals in one position. The natural question a hiring manager would ask is:

Have you done anything successfully in the last 10 years.

If you knew the candidate, you would answer with a resounding yes. If you only saw the resume, you would answer absolutely not.

Bottom Line: This job seeker failed to present their pattern of success or their potential for growth. Their resume will slow or stop their job search before they get an chance to interview. The first steps to fixing this are to add specific accomplishments and improve their objective statement (or remove it).

What to Take to An Interview

When you go for an interview, there are a few things you need to take, and a few others you should.

The Must Haves:

  • Directions to the location – Print out directions the night before an interview and make sure you take them. There’s nothing worse than realizing that you’re running late and your printer just ran out of ink.
  • Copies of your resume – Most of the interviewers you meet with will already have a copy of your resume. On the slight possibility that an interviewer does not have your resume on hand, you will appear very prepared by having one to provide. A more likely situation is when the interviewer has a copy but it is a low quality copy of the original. It’s common for resumes to get copied and recopied each time it’s passed on to another manager to review. If you see the copy of your resume is poor quality at the start of an interview, you may want to provide a clean copy.
  • A list of references – At some point in the hiring process, you will need to provide references. You should prepare this list at the start of your search and have it available. Usually, you will not be asked for references during an interview, but it can make a positive impression if you are prepared should the question come up.
  • A notepad – You will want to write down the name and title of everyone you meet with. Getting a business card is a good idea, since it will have the correct spelling and full contact information. If you can’t the notepad will be invaluable. There may also be details about the opportunity that you want to write down.
  • A pen – A notepad without a pen isn’t very useful.
  • A portfolio – A folder or portfolio is good to have in order to carry the copies of your resume, your references, the notepad and your pen. You can get a portfolio inexpensively at an office supply store, but may want to spend a little more on a high quality leather portfolio.
  • Your notes – It’s a good idea to review your interview prep notes, your resume and information you have gathered on the company just before you go in for the interview.
  • Documents the company requested – Some companies will ask you to bring a completed employment application or other documents.  If they ask for it, they’re going to expect you to have it.

The Should Haves:

  • A watch – You don’t want to run late. Try to be early. Make sure you know you are on time.
  • Your cell phone – If you get lost or end up running late, you will want to be able to contact the hiring manager.
  • Breath mints, a handkerchief and a comb – You don’t want your appearance to throw off your game. Having your hair a little messed up may not hurt the impression you make, but if it throws off your confidence, you’re toast.