Author: gcapone

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.

Superhuman

Thursday night, I watch “The Real Superhumans and the Quest for the Future Fantastic” on the Science Channel. The show profiled individuals with abilities that are incredible and verge on superpowers. It was very interesting. When the show started, several of the people profiled in the show were presented in 30 second teasers. The purpose of the teasers was to get the viewer excited about the show and motivate them to keep watching. It obviously worked with me.

The teasers were very similar to a cover letter, the executive summary on a resume, or the tell me about yourself answer in an interview. The first person the show presented was the Iceman. The teaser showed the Iceman running on a snow covered road wearing only shorts. He didn't have shoes, a shirt or a hat – just running shorts.

The teaser explained that the Iceman was running in Lapland, a location above the arctic circle. Let's look at the initial statement of the narrator:

It is January and the temperature is -26 degrees Celsius. This man has been running on ice and snow, barefoot, for over one hour. He does not have frostbite. He does not have hypothermia and he feels no pain. He has the power to live in the cold. To withstand temperatures so frigid others would die. He does this by willing himself to heat up.

Looking at this, the Iceman is positioned very clearly. The teaser leads off with an accomplishment. Running in freezing temperatures barefoot for an hour. This was presented to get attention fast. The teaser then explains the significance of the accomplishment – no frostbite, hypothermia or death. Finally, it gives an explanation of how he achieves these results – he wills himself to warm up.

When you write a cover letter or resume, you want to grab the hiring manager's attention quickly. Most people provide facts about their background, but little in the way of accomplishments. This is how most people would present the introduction to their resume.

Experienced at enduring cold conditions. 10 year track record of successfully running in cold weather. Able to warm up my body at will. Experienced swimming in near freezing water.

This teaser doesn't generate much interest. It's a set of facts that don't qualify the talent of this individual. A person in a polar bear club that runs around in a pair of shorts and then jumps in a local river for a few seconds every winter could have a similar start to their resume. The teaser in the show made it absolutely clear that the Iceman was far from ordinary – separating him from everyone else on the planet.

Another thing the teaser did was present the title of the individual – Iceman – before the teaser. This helped to create a single image of the individual that could be remembered. It is very helpful if you can generate a word or phrase in the mind of the hiring manager that they can use to remember you and your background. Something that symbolizes why you are exceptional.

If the teaser for the show was in fact a resume, cover letter or interview answer, it would go too far. I don't recommend giving yourself a nickname like the Iceman. Supply Chain Superstar, Manufacturing Man, or The Energetic Engineer would all come across very badly. What you need to do is create a picture of one or more accomplishments that is so clear and impactful that the hiring manager develops their own phrase to remember you.

Another noteworthy aspect of the teaser was the choice of people to profile. The Iceman was the first. There were other people in the program whose abilities are arguably much more impressive. So, why was the Iceman picked to be first?

The Iceman's ability and accomplishments were very easy to demonstrate quickly. Some of the abilities presented later in the show took several minutes to explain. They were too complicated to capture in a word or phrase. The Iceman, with just a nickname and a few sentences, could be presented very clearly.

This is a good lesson for your resume and cover letter. The most impressive accomplishment from your background may not be the best to present first. A less impressive accomplishment that can be read and understood very quickly could be more effective. The reason for this is the same as the reason the show had the teaser – motivate the hiring manager to read the rest of the resume. If the most impressive accomplishment is so complicated that the hiring manager doesn't understand it quickly, they may move on without ever getting it. This makes it completely ineffective.

Provide the Scope of Your Experience

I read a resume today that started with a section titled “Highlights of Experience.”  This can be a good way to start a resume because it focuses on the key elements of the job seeker's background. 

The resume I read listed a number of vague bullet points.  One in particular that I see on a lot of resumes was:

  • P & L Management

Having profit and loss responsibility for a department or company is a great experience.  Many positions require this background and it is good to list it.

The problem with the bullet the job seeker listed is it gives no measure of the scope of the responsibility.  I can't tell if the guy managed a bake sale with a $20 budget over a weekend or had a billion dollar budget he managed for a decade. 

Adding just a little detail – number of years and the size of the budget – gives sufficient detail to understand the scope of responsibility.  For example:

  • Full P&L management of budgets ranging from $2 million to $5 million over eight years.

This bullet provides sufficient background on the P&L experience to help differentiate the job seeker.  Without providing detail, the hiring manager will do one of two things.  They may discount the experience as insignificant and forget it or they will ask for details of the experience in an interview.  If you want the your P&L experience to be a selling point, provide the details up front.  Otherwise, you need something else in your resume to sell your potential and get you the opportunity to interview.

Accomplishments

If you have read a number of my posts on resumes, you probably know that I'm a strong proponent of providing accomplishments and not just responsibilities.  Listing “P&L Management” is a responsibility.  The rewritten bullet above adds details of the scope but is still just listing a responsibility.  Having a lot of responsibility is good, but it's what you do with it.  For example, the US Congress is responsible for passing the budget of the federal government.  If we were looking at a Representative or Senator, there is no bigger budget in the world to manage.  Despite this, the size of the budget deficits we have had is not a selling point for P&L Management. 

Even better than providing the scope of the responsibility is providing a specific accomplishment.  Something like this would be great:

  • P&L Management:  Full P&L management of budgets ranging from $2 million to $5 million over eight years.  At ABC Company, took over a department with a $4 million budget that had missed budget by $250k the prior year.  Implemented new cost control procedures and replaced numerous suppliers, leading to a $125k positive variance the first year.

If you were a hiring manager looking for a manager that could manage a budget effectively, this example would make a significant impression. 

Compare this to the original bullet that is typical of so many resumes.  The original bullet does nothing to differentiate the job seeker from their competition.  The second bullet provides some good information that may separate the job seeker from some of their competition.  Only the 3rd bullet sells the candidate's background.  If we were looking at three candidates, I know which one I would want to interview first.

When to Use Abbreviations and Acronyms

Each industry has specific terminology and language that is common within the industry but unknown outside the field. This jargon can be so common in an industry that some practitioners forget that others outside the field have never heard many of terms.

When you write a resume, this can lead to a big mistake. Using too much jargon can make your resume unreadable for hiring managers in another industry.

The easiest way to confuse a reader is with unnecessary abbreviations and acronyms. A reader may be able to figure out the basic meaning of a technical phrase but an acronym is often impossible to decipher. This makes it important to avoid acronyms.

When you have the choice of writing a multi-word phrase that is specific to your industry or writing the acronym, use the phrase. If it is a phrase you are going to use repeatedly, you can put the acronym in parentheses and then use the acronym later in your resume. By doing this, you define the acronym for the reader.

The one use of this technique that I absolutely hate is when a person writes out a phrase, provides the acronym and then never uses the acronym or phrase again. The point of including the acronym is to make the text more concise by only writing out the phrase once. This only works if you have a long phrase that you use often and can replace with the acronym. If you don't use the phrase multiple times, there is no benefit to adding the acronym. It actually makes the text less concise.

If you have one technical phrase you want to use in your resume, this isn't a critical concern. The real challenge is integrating multiple terms and phases. The more jargon you use, the less comprehensible your resume will be. A hiring manager doesn't want to spend a lot of time figuring out what your resume means. If they can't see the value you offer quickly, your resume might get discarded.

As a general rule, try to keep the number of highly technical terms to one or two per paragraph. More than this, and the terminology may detract from the impression you make. 

If you are seeking a position within the same industry, this is less of a concern. It is critical to limit the technical terminology, jargon and acronyms when you are attempting to change industries. 

The Importance of Interview Practice

Interviewing may be the most important skill in your job search.  Hiring managers decide who to hire based on the interviews.  Your resume helps you get an interview, and references checks and assessment tests are used to validate the conclusions of the interviews.  None of these will get you hired.  It is the one-on-one interaction, where you have the opportunity to talk directly to the hiring manager, that will motivate the company to hire you.

Despite the importance of interviewing, very few people practice their interview skills.  Most people do three things to prepare for an interview.  They start by developing a list of questions they think they will be asked.  They then prepare answers to those questions.  Finally, they research the company where they will interview.

These three steps are important, but they’re just a starting point.  No matter how much you prepare, it will never be the same as actually interviewing.  Guessing what is important to a hiring manager will uncover some of the questions you will be asked, but you can’t prepare for every possible question.  At some point, you need to practice being asked a question you didn’t expect.

Most people get the practice they need in real interviews.  During their job search, their interview skills start out very rusty.  They go to a few interviews and improve over time. Two or three interviews can make a huge difference.  Then, their interview skills start to plateau.

The problem with this pattern is twofold.  First, the job seeker uses their first few interviews to get their skills up to speed, reducing the chances of getting hired early in their search.  Second, once the job seeker gets comfortable interviewing, their skill level plateaus.  This is a nature result of interviewing without ever getting specific feedback.

The only way to maximize your interview performance is to practice.  Completing several practice interviews before your first real interview will help you avoid mistakes and improve your chances of getting hired.  This will help avoid those moments in an interview when you think “why am I talking about this – I have to remember not to tell this story again.”

Practicing your interview skills can also help you improve significantly beyond where you would have plateaued.  I’ve coached a lot of job seekers to improve their interview skills and have found many people make mistakes they don’t realize.  They describe something in their background in such a way that it hurts the impression they make.  This is very common.  There are few people that are such good communicators that they always convey the exact meaning they intend.  Unfortunately, by not getting specific feedback, the job seeker never learns how they are being misinterpreted.

This is the most significant benefit from a practice interview.

To identify areas where you can improve, you have to get an outside opinion.  To do this, you need to find someone that does a lot of interviewing to assess your performance. The interviewer should select the questions so you do not know what to expect.  This will force you to improvise as you would in a real interview. The interviewer can then assess the impression you give.  The feedback you receive will be invaluable to your interview performance and your job search.

A Cover Letter Without Spell Check

The cover letter I read today illustrates a number of basic grammar mistakes.  The overall impression is either the job seeker can’t write or has no attention to detail – possibly both.  This is the cover letter:

Iam purusing a Project Manager of Construction job. With multiple years of experience and millions of dollars in residental and commercial developments being seccessfully completed you will see in my resume that iam qualified to assist any company with their projects. I look forward to hear from you in the near future.

There are a number of typos.  Purusing should be pursuing, residental should be residential, seccessfully should be successfully and hear should be hearing.  This are basic mistakes – probably the result of typing quickly and not proofreading.  What I don’t understand is the use of “Iam” instead of “I am.”  It’s used twice in the letter, leading me to believe the job seeker meant to type it this way.

The problem with a cover letter like this is that it creates substantial doubt about the job seeker’s credibility.  This individual listed their salary requirements – $90k and up.  Do you think a company is going to be comfortable paying that high of a salary for a manager that could be responsible for decisions on multi-million dollar projects?

Below is the same cover letter in Microsoft Word.  As you can see, almost every mistake is caught by the grammar check and underlined in red.  

The one mistake the grammar check didn’t catch is “hear” instead of hearing.  Software grammar checkers are not perfect, but they do help in avoiding a lot of mistakes.  A cover letter and resume are so important to your search, running them through spell check is essential.  One minor typo will often be overlooked, but a half dozen obvious ones won’t.

OpenOffice is a free open source office suite similar to Microsoft Office.  I use it on my laptop at home.  It has a word processor similar to Word, a spreadsheet tool like Excel and a presentation program similar to Powerpoint.  It’s a great office suite if you don’t have have Microsoft Office.  You can download OpenOffice at http://www.openoffice.org/.

Too Much Tech Speak

One of the resumes I reviewed today went overboard with the technology terminology.  The job seeker worked in the aircraft industry.  In their most recent job, they listed the models numbers of 19 separate components.  These models weren't airplane models like 747.  They were the model of valves, servos and electronic controls. 

It should be obvious that this level of detail should be avoided.  The type of equipment that this individual has experience with can be summarized very effectively in a few words.  Instead, the job description is nearly 500 words.  I'm a strong proponent of short, concise resumes, and recommend 250-500 words.  That's for the entire resume – not just one job.  Then entire resume was over 900 words long. 

This is far too long.  The level of detail is too high and it's a very tough read.  Few hiring managers are going to read much of this resume.  Most will discard it.

The resume is made even worse by a major omission.  The job seeker failed to include his job title. I can guess what job this person was doing, but it's only a guess.  Without a job title, it makes it very difficult to assess the job seeker. 

I think I know what happened that led to a resume this bad.  The job seeker started writing about their current position.  He is proud of the range of technical expertise and wrote in great detail, including specific information intended to impress a hiring manager.  Once written, it was absolutely clear to the job seeker what their employment entailed and they forgot to include a job title.  They may also feel that a job title pigeon holes them in a way that misses some of their capability.

A hiring manager looks at a resume from a different perspective.  It's likely the hiring manager is not a technical expert.  They may not understand the significance of many of the terms used, and will disregard this information.  Terms that help categorize the job seeker are very helpful and the job title is at the top of the list. 

We're moving into a tougher economy.  Think about how this resume will be reviewed. 

An ad is posted for a technical position by a large aircraft component's manufacturer.  This job seeker sends in their resume.  In a strong economy, the company usually gets a couple hundred resumes.  With unemployment rising they could get more than a thousand. 

The first step in the screening process is for a human resources representative to review the resumes, and cut get the total down.  A good goal might be to cut the 1,000 resumes down to less than 100.  This means that 90% of the resumes get eliminated by someone that is not a technical expert. 

There is a very good chance that this job seeker will get rejected at this stage.  The screener just doesn't have the time to figure out what the job seeker did.  They have a thousand resumes – they're going to find some good people. 

Corporate Downsizing

This weekend, it was reported that challenges in the auto industry extend beyond domestic producers.  Porsche is going to shut down production for eight days, Volkswagen is considering a three week shut down and Audi is preparing to announce a temporary shutdown.

As the world economy slows, companies are struggling with how adjust their cost structure to meet following demand.  Many firms are working to lower labor costs.  Past recessions can help predict how companies will act.

In the more recent recessions, we have watched different tactics for reducing labor expense. Some companies have laid off workers across the board. Others have reduced wages or benefits. There have been some that have reduced hours per week.

There is an interesting article from the Wharton faculty talking about how companies react to recessions and strive to reduce costs.  In particular, the article talks about how companies may utilize pay, benefits and hours reductions over mass layoffs. 

In the past, the priority was retaining key talent. Recessions were expected to be short and maintaining the core of a talented workforce was the priority. This led to across mass layoffs with the goal of eliminating the least experienced or productive workers.

This tactic was chosen over reductions in pay, benefits or hours. The companies hoped to keep their top employees happy even if the layoffs hurt morale substantially in the short run. Although poor morale hurt, the fear was that a cut to compensation would motivate top employees to leave for a competitor.

In more severe recessions, few if any companies are hiring. The risk of a top employee leaving for a competitor is extremely low with few options for the employee. In this situation, more company should resort to pay, benefit and hours cuts. Although this does cause significant hardship for the employees, it usually does not hurt morale as much.

If our economy declines substantially, it will be important to understand what you can expect from your employer. Layoffs may be a possibility, but so could reductions in compensation. If your employer reduces pay or hours, it may show a commitment and belief by the management that they can maintain their workforce at the reduced labor expense level.

To read the full article from Wharton, go to As Layoffs Spread, Innovative Alternatives May Soften the Blow