gcapone, Author at Palladian Career Resources

Supply Chain Risk Reduction

As you write your resume and prepare to interview, you will want show how you contributed to your past employers. Focusing on ways you have cut costs is a good start. Reducing lead times and improving quality are also good to emphasize. These are only starting points for supply chain professionals. Managing risk can be the most important aspect of a supply chain role.

Supply chain professionals face numerous challenges. Sourcing provides some of the most complex obstacles a company will face. Sourcing professionals need to find ways to source high quality products, materials and services at low prices with short lead times and no supply interruptions. All of this must be done in a global economy constantly changing. As a supply chain professional, how you maximize the performance of the supply chain is important, but equally important is minimizing risk.

There are risks in every strategy and tactic a company adopts. Some risks are small. Supply chain risks are often huge. For example, construction firms who utilized Chinese drywall over the last decade face tremendous liabilities as the material has been found contain chemicals that make houses unlivable. Entire subdivisions are being abandoned. There are numerous examples of companies harmed by poor quality materials from suppliers. These risks are significant, but are only the tip of the iceberg.

When sourcing globally, companies face risks from every direction. Currency fluctuations can turn the lowest cost supplier into the highest cost option. Political disputes and striking workers can shut down companies and key transportation routes. Energy price changes can drive up or down transportation costs. Every year, natural disasters, from hurricanes to earthquakes, hit different parts of the world. The more widely spread your supply chain, the more likely you will be affected.

Managing all of these risks is challenging. Risk management was a key theme in one of the supply chain management sessions at the APICS Conference in Toronto I attended. The speaker talked about ways to build in alternatives and options into a supply chain. Developing secondary suppliers and alternate delivery strategies can be essential if your company wants to survive a major supply disruption.

As you write your resume, include examples of your contributions to managing supply chain risk. Often this will take the form of developing additional suppliers. Doubling your supplier base could be an expensive proposition, but it could also be much less costly than a major supply disruption. Your experience with balancing these priorities and the solutions you delivered can help set you apart from other supply chain professionals. Some people just show up. They do the minimal to get by. This usually involves shortcutting to the solution. Showing how you took a more difficult path but set the company up for success no matter what happens is much more valuable.

Risk management is a good topic for a resume, but it may be more suitable for interviewing. On a resume, you need to brief. You may only have a couple lines to devote to each accomplishment. Managing risk can be a complex process not easily condensed. For this reason, your best risk management accomplishment might not help on your resume. Once you get into an interview, though, you will have the opportunity explain what you did more fully and dive into complex accomplishments.

Using Metrics to Write a Resume

One of the greatest job search challenges people struggle with is identifying a wide range of substantive accomplishments to include on their resume. Accomplishments show what you did. Part of the difficulty lies in how companies measure performance.

Every company uses metrics to measure performance. Some companies have comprehensive metric tracking, while others use only a few measures. In either case, the metrics show the performance of an aspect of the company. With a well designed metric system, improving the individual measures will improve the bottom line of the company.

For many people, showing how they directly improved a company’s bottom line can be difficult or impossible. This is where the metrics help. You can show how you improved key areas of the company that are recognized to be drivers of the organization’s success.

For example, in the NFL, how could you assess the performance of a running back? This is made difficult by the variance in the quality of the teams and the different offensive strategies used around the league. Although a running back can have a significant effect on the success of a team, he cannot win alone. So how would you decide who is successful and who isn’t? Football, like all sports, has a number of metrics used to judge a player’s performance. For a running back, this could be yards/game, yards/carry, total yards in a season, touchdowns scored, fumbles and a host of other stats. These metrics measure individual performance and help differentiate runners.

In your career, you should identify the key metrics for your job and track them. Typically, these will be a part of your performance evaluations. Some companies publish their metrics on a regular basis so employees know how the organization is performing. This makes it easier. If your company doesn’t do this, you may have to do a little more work, but you can still show you performance.

There are a tremendous number of metrics. The Supply Chain Council has a benchmarking program with over 400 metrics to choose from. The Performance Management Group is a consulting firm that helps companies improve their metrics. They list 95 metrics they routinely use with clients. For example, PMG lists seven metrics for order fulfillment lead times:

Customer Signature/Authorization to Order Receipt
Order Receipt to Order Entry Complete
Order Entry Complete to Start Manufacture
Start Manufacture to Order Complete Manufacture
Order Complete Manufacture to Customer Receipt of Order
Customer Receipt of Order to Installation Complete
Total Order Fulfillment Lead Time

If you are involved in order fulfillment in any way, you should have had an impact at least a few of these metrics. Show what you did and the effect it had on your resume. This will demonstrate your potential by showing you specific work performance.

As you review metrics and include them in your resume, you need give the reader a clear understanding of the magnitude of the impact. Going back to the NFL, a running back might talk about yards gained in a season. One running back might talk about gaining 1000 yards last season. For people unfamiliar with the NFL, this is meaningless stat. You need some context for the metric to know what it means. Adding one key piece of information, that only 16 players gained 1000 yards in the NFL last year, turns this metric into something significant.

On your resume, it is unlikely you can benchmark your performance against league stats. What you can do is benchmark yourself based on historic performance levels and the goals of the company. For example, if you work in manufacturing, you may want to highlight a fulfillment measure such as Start Manufacture to Order Complete Manufacture. You can show your performance level, perhaps three days. To make this stand out, you need to show what you did and the significance of the measure. For example:

Developed a cellular manufacturing station, a pull production system and a dedicated value stream for the highest volume product class, leading to reduced inventory and shorter manufacturing lead times, including a reduction in the Start Manufacturing to Order Complete Manufacture measure from 6 days to 3 days.

An accomplishment like this shows what the job seeker did and the tangible results they delivered. This type of bullet on a resume will help differentiate the job seeker from other manufacturing professionals. To really get the biggest impact out of this, the job seeker should put an accomplishment like this near the top of the resume. For example, the resume might start like this:

Experienced manufacturing manager with a track record of implementing process improvements and delivering cost savings.

Lean Manufacturing: Developed a cellular manufacturing station, a pull production system and a dedicated value stream for the highest volume product class, leading to reduced inventory and shorter manufacturing lead times, including a reduction in the Start Manufacturing to Order Complete Manufacture measure from 6 days to 3 days.

This presentation will be a good attention getter. On a real resume, I would have a slightly longer summary description before the bullet and would add a couple more bullets with other accomplishments.

Take a look at the metrics used in your company and the metrics common to your industry. These can help you identify the key areas of your company that you impacted. Recognizing the areas where you have had a significant impact is the critical first step.

Newly published in 2010: Get the best book for Manufacturing Resumes

Resume Writing for Manufacturing Careers - Front Cover

Information as a Strategic Asset

I had the opportunity to listen to a couple consultants from IBM at the APICS Conference in Toronto. They discussed ways to capture information and make it easier for decision makers to use. The overriding theme of the presentation was transforming a mass of data into an organized, easily accessible store of information. Meeting this challenge can offer job seekers a means of differentiating themselves from their competition.

The guys from IBM quoted two statistics that really stood out. First, they referenced a survey of CEOs where 60% said they need to get better at leveraging information. This is a challenge in every organization, regardless of company size, industry or market position. We live in a world with so much information; it can be difficult or impossible to get a handle on what is really going on.

The second stat related to ability of workers to find the information they need to make decisions. The stat was from a study of workers’ time and found 70% of time is spent searching for information. This means in a company, out of every three people, two of them are looking for information at any point in time. Only one in three is actually acting on the information they find.

These stats point out a major concern in organizations. Capturing data quickly and efficiently, and incorporate that data into decision making are critical capabilities to allow a company to change faster. Speed and flexibility were a major theme of a number of the presentations at the conference. Companies can’t afford to wait a long time to see trends develop and mature. They need to adapt quickly – faster than their competition.

As a job seeker, how is this relevant to your search? Simple, managing and leveraging data is a critical concern for companies, and if you can show how you improved the effectiveness of an employer in this area in the past, you can set yourself apart.

Some people will look at this and assume the change has to be major – implementing a major data management system affecting every aspect of the company. Major technology upgrades are important, but few of us are involved in buying a new ERP system. Despite this, there are a lot of other ways you probably affected information utilization.

Look at the ways you changed the information you required from your team. Did you make any changes to the reporting you required? How did this streamline the process for your team? How did this allow you to make faster and better decisions?

Look at the ways you changed the information you provided others in the organization. How did you improve the speed you were able to distribute information? How did you improve the quality of the information you provided? What did you do to make this information more accessible so others could make better and faster decisions?

These questions point to improvements you may have made in your organizations. Examples of these improvements can show the value you will provide if hired. They are accomplishments that can set you apart from your competition. To present these with the most impact, you should show the end result of the improvement. It’s not enough to just say you improve the efficiency of information gathering activities. How did gathering that data faster allow the organization to do something it couldn’t do before? This improvement could allow for better customer service, better forecasts, improved quality and reduced scrap, faster product development, or a host of other improvements.

Ultimately, you want to show how your efforts made a company more competitive and profitable. The incremental activities towards this goal can be impressive and help you land a job over other candidates with the same or greater experience. The key is showing your contributions and successes. Data management and reporting is critical competency affecting the overall success of a company. Providing examples of your success in this area will help demonstrate your potential.

Demand Forecasting

Demand forecasting is the activity in a company that predicts the level of demand customers will have for a company’s products. This activity usually garners very little attention from outside the company. For most job seekers, demand forecasting is far from their thoughts, and yet, a close look into the metrics of demand forecasting uncovers an important lesson for resume writing and interviewing.

Companies are supposed to make what customers want. The challenge is significantly greater than most realize. As we move towards the holiday season, manufacturers and retailers have established their forecasts, and products are moving through the supply chain. Lead times for many products are several months, especially if a product is a big holiday seller. Invariably, we will have a story about the “hot toy” this year that catches all the retailers off guard. They will have far less inventory than they need and manufacturers won’t be able to respond fast enough. By the time we know what is hot; it will be too late to respond by making more.

Although missing sales on one hot product can be a major mistake for a company, consistent demand forecast errors can be even more crippling. Making too much of one product is costly as the inventory sits, or worse, has to be discounted to move. Missing sales on a wide range of products by under forecasting demand will mean lost sales, and in some cases, the loss of major customers.

This was the discussion in one of the sessions I attended at the APICS conference last week. The speaker showed techniques he had used to improve demand forecasting.

Improving demand forecasting can be a significant driver of profitability for a company. Forecasting errors produce waste and lost sales. Any improvement will improve sales and reduce waste. To measure the effectiveness of a company’s demand forecasting, several key performance indicators (KPI) can be used. A few of the KPI’s mentioned were:

MAPE – Mean Absolute Percent Error
ONIF – On Time In Full
SLOB – Slow Moving and Obsolete Inventory

Each of these KPI’s is critical to a business. There are lots of metrics companies can use to measure performance. KPI’s are the critical metrics that do the best job of capturing the performance of the business, and if improved, will drive overall improvement in the overall business.

For individuals in roles developing demand forecasts or contributing to the demand forecast, changes which improve the KPIs can be significant. They are the type of accomplishments that should be highlighted in a resume and discussed in an interview.

Most people, if they include accomplishments, list very general accomplishments and only focus on cost savings. Cutting costs is critical to a business’s long term success, but it is only one element of performance. Discussing other KPIs that drive performance can also make a strong impression on a resume. Discussing the accomplishments in detail, where it is clear what you have accomplished and how you did it, can help set you apart from your peers.

If you are the manager of production planning or demand forecasting, focusing on these measures makes a lot of sense. There are others in the organization who influence forecasting accuracy. The sales department needs to give quality customer forecasts to the planners, otherwise, the planners will be guessing. Marketing needs to provide the planners with their plans for major promotions. The speaker told a great story to illustrate this:

A major car company had forecasted a product mix with a lot of green cars. Manufacturing produced the cars and the new model was rolled out and shipped to dealers. The cars painted green sold below other colors, leading to high inventories. Marketing and sales quickly heard from the dealerships and responded with a large promotion to discount the green cars. Sales went through the roof and the inventory was cleaned out. At the same time, demand planners saw the increasing sales of the green car, but knew nothing of the special promotion. They responded by ramping up production to keep up with demand, flooding the supply chain with even more green cars.

This is an obvious mistake, but it is far from uncommon. Communication within companies can be challenging. If you are in sales or marketing, changing your communications with the planning department can make a significant improvement in the business and affect measures such as MAPE and OTIF. If you have implemented a change like this, you should mention it on your resume. Not only does it show an example of a contribution you have made, it shows a broader understanding of how your role can drive performance of the company.

Bottom Line: Look beyond simple cost savings and revenue generation metrics to show how you impacted the overall performance of an organization. Use the metrics that are true key performance indicators to demonstrate your performance.

Newly published in 2010: Get the best book for Manufacturing Resumes

Sustainability on Your Resume

As a job seeker, there are hundreds of skills, experiences and accomplishments you can discuss on your resume. Sustainability and environmental initiatives are just one category of priorities you can highlight. So, should you market yourself on the cutting edge of sustainable business practices?

“Going Green,” sustainability and environmentally friendly initiatives continue to gain momentum and are increasingly becoming key priorities for companies. This trend is far from universal. As with every other priority companies face, environmental factors weigh differently from company to company. This was made clear at the APICS Conference in Toronto this week.

The theme of the conference was Global Ability, and sustainability in manufacturing and supply chain roles was a key topic. I had the chance to sit in on several of the educational sessions for sustainable issues. Although many companies are grappling with how to integrate sustainability concerns into their business, several companies showed how they are delivering significant tangible results. Reducing the environmental impact of the business is not a goal at these firms. It is an absolute requirement. Even more important, these companies showed significant improvement.

Unfortunately, there is no right answer to this question. When you write a resume and market your background, you are trying to align your sales pitch to the priorities of the hiring manager. This is difficult.

There are a couple reasons you may want to highlight your experience with sustainability on your resume. First, job seekers with significant skill and experience with designing and implementing sustainable improvements should show this experience. Hiring managers wanting to improve the sustainability of an organization will value this past experience. Second, job seekers without a lot of experience with sustainability may also benefit from a focus on this area. For many companies, sustainability is still new. Showing an interest and some experience in this area will help demonstrate a closer alignment of your values and interests with those of the company. This by itself won’t get you hired, but may improve your odds.

The biggest challenge is knowing whether to emphasize your environmental experience. If you emphasize this experience, you will have to de-emphasize something else. If sustainability is only a minor concern for a hiring manager, and you decide to emphasize this over a key priority of the hiring manager, you will hurt your chances.

There is only one solution to this dilemma. You need to research the opportunity. Reading the job description is not sufficient. Many job descriptions include standard boilerplate text, listing all of the priorities of the company and the position. Most job descriptions will not be tailored to the specific situation. In fact, the same job description may be used company-wide over a period of many years. Despite this, the demands and requirements of different departments, locations and hiring managers will dictate who is hired. These priorities can vary wildly, while still falling under the broad guidelines of the position.

The research you need to do starts with the company. What are the key priorities of the company? What are they actually doing? It’s easy to write a mission statement with a bunch of goals, but what are the activities to back this up. Companies committed to sustainability as a key priority will show how they are achieving sustainable goals throughout their organization.

Other companies are just starting on the sustainable path. They may have little in the way of tangible results, but consider sustainability a key priority. Additionally, every area of a company will not have the same priorities. New initiatives have to start somewhere and spread through an organization. If the hiring manager is on the cutting edge, their priorities may be different from the company in general.

The more you can drill down on the goals specific to the role you are pursing, the better you will be able to tailor your sales pitch. One technique is to network with current and former employees. If you can find people who have experience working within the organization you are pursuing, you greatly improve your odds.

Newly published in 2010: Get the best book for Manufacturing Resumes

APICS Conference

I’m back from the APICS Conference in Toronto. The event was extremely valuable. If you are not familiar with APICS, the organization provides operations management education, research and professional development. This was the first time I have attended an APICS Conference. I’ve been a member for a long time, but had never made it to conference. I now know what I was missing.

Two elements made the conference exceptional. First, the people at the conference are leaders in their fields. They are constantly reinventing manufacturing, operations and supply chain practices, and they are committed to improving not just their companies but their own potential. Second, APICS developed an educational curriculum offering tremendous value.

What stood out to me was the scope of the challenges people were tackling. For example, the theme of the conference was Global Ability. With this theme, people talked about how they were cutting costs and reducing their impact on the environment at the same time. The discussion was not how to balance these priorities. Balancing requires tradeoffs. The discussion focused on ways to achieve both simultaneously without having to hurt one area to help another.

The goals were impressive, but the results were what really stood out. I had the opportunity to hear from people who were succeeding in some of the most challenging situations. For example, one food manufacturer had committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, reducing waste and improving profit margins. Several years into their effort, they had made substantial GHG cuts, and they reduced the total waste from a manufacturing plant to less than one dumpster a week. They also demonstrated specific savings from each of the activities they undertook. The result was a company doing significantly more volume, with less overall GHG emissions and waste, and a higher profit margin.

This is a great story and should inspire people to stretch to achieve beyond what appears possible today, but that’s not why I’m telling it. The people who developed the plan, solved the technical problems, led the teams to implement the changes, worked through the details and made this happen, and everyone else involved in the effort delivered substantial success. Do you think there are companies who would like to achieve similar results? Do you think there hiring managers who are tasked with delivering similar results and need help? Absolutely.

With the global theme of the conference, it became clear that the companies around the world face the same challenges. There are differences, but much more was the same. The demand for solutions and the people who can provide them is strong – even as the job market is weak.

To standout in the job market, you need to show how you are exceptional. There are plenty of people who will be average in a role. Hiring managers want people who will deliver results well above average. The key to this is showing what you have done.

Over the next couple weeks, I’m going to focus on operations positions and show how you can differentiate yourself and get hired. Some of the advice will related to resumes and some to interviewing, but most will help across the board in a job search. Although I am focusing on a specific set of careers, the advice holds for anyone. It doesn’t matter what your career field is. Demonstrating your potential through specific examples of your past success is proven technique and very effective in a job search.

So, check back every couple days for the operations management articles. To make it easier, you can sign up for the newsletter and receive all of them, sent twice a month.

Are You Engaged in Your Career

I’m in Toronto at the annual APICS International Conference and was able to attend a session with bestselling author Jason Jennings. Jason’s presentation was excellent and included a number of insightful ideas about leadership. One statistic jumped out to me when I heard it.

The statistic Jason quoted was that in studies, 73% of workers say they just show up to work. They have no emotional attachment to their jobs.

This is an incredible stat. Out of every four workers, three aren’t engaged. They are doing their job but don’t have a true passion for their work. This doesn’t make these employees failures or valueless. They are making a contribution to their companies, but they are unconcerned about delivering superior results.

If you are seeking a job, you can expect a hiring managers to want candidates who have done more than just meet the minimum requirements. They want people who will exceed expectations and go above and beyond the norm.

Accomplishments

When we studied resumes a year ago, we found 57% of resumes either failed to include any accomplishments or listed only one or two. The resume is the primary sales pitch that will land you an interview. Despite this, nearly 60% of job seekers are saying they have accomplished very little in their careers that is noteworthy.

Most resumes list a ton of responsibilities. They show what the job seeker should have done. Listing responsibilities does not show what you did.

Roughly 40% of the resumes we studied showed 3 or more accomplishments. Only 10% had 5 or more. For a hiring manager looking for someone truly engaged in their career, with a passion for their job and a commitment to exceed expectations no matter what, who do you think will get hired? Do you think it will be the 60% that have few or no accomplishments on their resume? Or do you think the job seeker who shows a pattern of success throughout their career will garner more attention?

The answer is obvious. Hiring managers want people who are successful and that will do more than just show up.

What You Can Do

On your resume, you need to show what you did, not what you were responsible for doing. List accomplishments throughout your resume. These can major accomplishments, recognized throughout the company, or they can be smaller accomplishments only recognized within your department. The key is showing what you did beyond what is typical.

When you interview, be prepared to talk about your commitment to succeed with specific examples of what you have achieved. In our economy, there are a lot of talented people on the job market. The people who rise to the top will be the ones who best market their ability to deliver results.

In your career, you can be one of the 73% of people who show up, or you can be someone who is engaged and committed to their job far beyond normal. If you choose the later, not only will your career be more successful, but your job search will be more successful as well.

Using LinkedIn in a Job Search

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in a job search. You can use it to uncover opportunities. It can help you gain referrals into companies, and it can help you research jobs. Using LinkedIn in your job search is also easy.

On Monday, I wrote about building your LinkedIn network. This is an essential first step to using LinkedIn. Once you start building your network, you can start leveraging the contacts you develop.

The easiest way to use LinkedIn for your job search is to check out the job postings. A lot of companies post positions on LinkedIn. This doesn’t require network building. All you have to do is search the jobs. Although there is a benefit to job postings, this is just a starting point.

The real value LinkedIn offers is in gathering intelligence. Knowing the priorities and goals of a hiring manager can give you a significant edge in the hiring process. Failing to understand what a hiring manager wants can make it difficult to tailor your presentation, both with your resume and in interviews. LinkedIn offers a great way to gather insight into the hiring priorities of a company.

Researching Profiles

The first step in researching a position on LinkedIn is to read the profiles of people in similar positions. Ideally, you will be able to find the profile of the hiring manager, but this isn’t always possible. In large companies, there is a good chance you will find people doing the job you are pursuing. They may be in other locations, but their profiles can still give you insight you can use. Just remember many people don’t update their profiles routinely. The “current” descriptions can be a year or more old.

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers offers a great way to pose a question to a large group of people. A lot of LinkedIn users actively participate by answering questions. If you ask a broad question, there’s a good chance you will get good info from a number of people. When asking a question, ask something that a lot of people in a company could answer and that would be valuable to more than just you. For example:
How would you describe the culture at Widget, Inc? I’m interested a job opportunity in (department or division) with Widget, Inc and would like to get an idea of what it is like working there.
How does the hiring process work at Widget, Inc? I’m pursing a <job title> position and want to understand what I should expect during the hiring process.

With large companies, you should get some answers that will be useful. For small companies, this tactic is unlikely to yield much. You can check how many people from a company are on LinkedIn by clicking on the company name in someone’s profile.

Asking For Help

Instead of broadcasting a question to everyone, you can ask a question of specific individuals within your network. With large companies, you can often find someone doing the job you want in a different location. Asking this person about their job and how they got their job can often yield great insight. Stick with questions the person can answer easily. For example, if you find a person hired in the last year, you can ask how the hiring process worked when they were hired and what they did that was effective in landing the position. Asking a question like “what is the manager at xyz location looking for” is not a question most people in other locations will be able to answer. You’re unlikely to get any response to this.

Getting Referred

As you interact with people through direct contacts and LinkedIn Answers, you will start building relationships with people. At some point, you may get to know someone who offers to refer you to the hiring manager for consideration. This can improve your chances of success dramatically. It’s not that the hiring manager will lower their standards – those won’t change. What will change will be the level of scrutiny you will receive early in the process. Many hiring managers receive an overwhelming number of resumes. Most only get a 15 to 30 second look before being rejected. You can improve your chances by getting the hiring manager to take a much closer look before making a decision.

Remember the rule of networking – it’s a two-way street. Individuals aren’t going to drop what they are doing to start working on your job search full time and a person isn’t going to recommend you for a position if they don’t think you will be successful. People will help you but it will be on their terms. You also need to try to help them. There will be times, in the short run, when networking is one sided – either you get a significant benefit without offering much or you provide a lot of help without getting anything in return. In the short run this is possible, but over the long term, both parties need to contribute. If one side is perceived as only interested in their self promotion, the relationship won’t work.

Building Your LinkedIn Network

Linked In is one of the best professional networking tools available. It offers the ability to find and meet professionals in almost any field, company or region. With over 45 million users, it is very likely you will find people who can influence your career.

LinkedIn is one of the best professional networking tools available. It offers the ability to find and meet professionals in almost any field, company or region. With over 45 million users, it is very likely you will find people who can influence your career.

If you are new to LinkedIn, you will need to build a profile and start inviting people. This is very easy. Your profile is similar to a resume, but you have much greater flexibility in what you include and emphasize. Building your network is easy too. It is likely a lot of people you know are on Linked In. All you need to do is search for them and invite them to connect.

Linked In is relationship based. You need to link to people to get value. It may seem difficult to build a large network. Connecting to 45 million people may seem like an impossibility. Fortunately, you only need to connect to a few people to build a valuable network. The reason for this is simple. You have access to the profiles of anyone within three connections. The key is linking to people with large networks.

When I started with LinkedIn a few years ago, I added a couple dozen connections almost immediately. I then struggled to figure out who to invite. Most of my connections had only a few connections. My network was small, a few thousand profiles.

I was recruiting and met a candidate with a couple thousand contacts. I connected with him and instantly, my network increased to close to a million. I had access to key decision makers in hundreds of companies and an ability to research companies and people. It became clear that a huge network has tremendous value. I started looking for ways to increase my network.

There are a few easy steps to increase in your network quickly. If you set your profile up right, your network will build itself.

Step 1: Search for Open Networkers
You can do a keyword search for common email addresses. The easiest is gmail. By running a keyword search for the word gmail, you will get over four thousand people on Linked In who have put their gmail address in their profile. You can then invite them to connect to you. It doesn’t take many people in this group to grow your network substantially. Most will have hundreds or thousands of individual contacts.

Step 2: Join an Open Networking Group
I joined the LIONS, Linked In Open Networkers (Note: the last time I checked, their website was down.), a couple of years ago. When you join, you can download the list of LIONS, along with the email address of everyone. You can then upload this list to Linked In and invite everyone at once. I went from a hundred contacts to two thousand almost overnight. With the LIONS, you can then add your name to the list. You will receive a couple of invitations a day from this and your network will grow on its own. I’ve added several hundred connections over the last year just by accepting the invites I receive this way. I’ve been stuck around 2,600 contacts for several months and decided to download the lions list again. There were nearly a thousand new people on this list. I loaded it and sent invites to all of them. Because I am on the list, I found I was already connected to half of the people, and sent invites to the other 500. With the invitations, I will top 3,000 connections this week.

Step 3: Add Your Email Address to Your Profile
Make it easy for people to invite you. Add our email address to your profile. If you have a Gmail account, use it. It will make it easy for people to find you. The key is to help people connect directly to you.

Step 4: Promote Your Linked In Profile
If you have a website, blog or other social media profiles online, include your LinkedIn profile with instructions for how to connect. This will help generate a consistent stream of invitations coming directly to you. To connect to me, send an invitation to [email protected].

Step 5: Join Groups
A good way to gain access to larger networks is to join some LinkedIn groups. Most schools have alumni groups online. Professional organizations and companies also have groups established. I joined a few of them. In addition to the school, company and professional organization groups, I joined a couple open networker groups. I’m already connected to most of these people, so the groups didn’t do much for my connections. The reason I joined was to reinforce on my profile that I welcome invitations to connect.

If you follow these five steps, or even just a couple of them, you can build your network quickly and efficiently.

Resume Without Job Titles

Most jobs have well established titles and easy to understand responsibilities. Some, though, are unique. What do you do if you work in a role that has little or no equivalent at other companies? Do you list your job title, change the title to something more commonly used, or skip it entirely? The resume I read today struggled with this dilemma.

Most jobs have well established titles and easy to understand responsibilities. Some, though, are unique. What do you do if you work in a role that has little or no equivalence to jobs at other companies? Do you list your job title, change the title to something more commonly used, or skip it entirely? The resume I read today struggled with this dilemma.

The resume was from a manager who had worked as a strategic planning analyst and then as an operations manager. Those are my titles – the closest I can come up with for the positions after reading the resume closely. The job seeker decided to take a short cut. He didn’t list any job titles, just the functional areas of his jobs, operations and strategic planning.

Omitting the job titles was a mistake. It makes it very difficult to understand the background of a person quickly without some indicator of the type of role. The only way to understand the positions is to read the job descriptions closely. The job seeker was thorough. He described every aspect of his employment, from core responsibilities to minor details.

The thoroughness of the job seeker’s job description had an effect opposite to what he intended. By listing anything and everything he did, it’s very difficult to understand what role he had. The job seeker left out any description of the scope of his responsibilities or some statement as to what was typical. This puts the minor aspects of his role, tasks he might work on only a few times a year, on equal footing with the core of his job. It’s impossible to know what this guy really did.

Every job will eventually touch on every aspect of a company. If you have been somewhere for ten years or more, you can talk about any functional area in your resume. For example, a staff accountant might work closely with someone in marketing or sales on a specific project for a few days. This can be good experience and may show the versatility of your skills. What you don’t want to do is include this as some vague description. For example, “supported marketing with development of new product pricing.” This description may be completely accurate, but would not be representative of a lengthy career if you only did this for a few days.

The resume I received listed so many functions and never described what the core responsibility was. It’s a guess as to whether this individual was really an operations manager and strategic planning analyst. I could be completely wrong.

As a recruiter, what do I do with a resume like this? I receive a lot of resumes. I don’t have time to spend a significant amount of time on each. I have to make a quick assessment if I can place the person and move on if I can’t. To make this decision, I look for something showing how a person stands out in their field – why they are better than their competition. If I can’t find something with some “wow factor,” I’m likely to move on. The key to this is assessing the candidate’s capability quickly and comparing them to other candidates in the field I have assessed. If I can’t determine what field the candidate is in, I can’t even start this process.

After reviewing the resume for a minute, I don’t know what job the candidate has held. I can’t assess his performance relative to his peers, because I don’t know who his peers are. I can’t even tell if he’s been successful because I have no basis for determining the scope of his role. My final assessment is to move on to the next candidate. I will be able to screen several other candidates in the time it would take me to pick up the phone, call this candidate and ask the basic questions like “what job did you hold at your last employer?”

What Should You Do?

There are a lot of job seekers who create overly vague and confusing descriptions of their experience. This forces a hiring manager or recruiter to spend a lot more time figuring out what the person is capable of doing. Every second increases the odds the resume will be discarded. To avoid this, you need a quick to read, easy to understand and impressive description of your background and potential.

Print out your resume and sit it in front of you. Take a highlighter and highlight the phrases that best summarize your experience and accomplishments. Don’t highlight more than 50 words. I’m sure there is a lot of important info on your resume and 50 words won’t capture everything. Stick with only the most important 50 words.

Where on your resume are there 50 words? They need to be at the top if want them to be read. If they are buried deep in the resume, there is a good chance you will be rejected before they are read.

Are your most important two or three skills clearly presented in these fifty words? You probably possess dozens or hundreds of different skills. They are not all equal. There are a couple that will land you a job and the rest are supporting information. Make sure the essential skills stand out.

Do you show how you were successful? It is easy to write that you are highly successful. In fact, putting “highly successful” and a job title as the first few words in at the top of a resume are a common way to start. Anyone can write this. It is nothing but hype. What matters is what comes next. You need examples of your success that are clear and impressive. Without specific accomplishments, you will not measure up to your peers who list accomplishments on their resume. Even if you were successful, you are likely to be rejected before you get a chance to tell your story in an interview.

What is your specialty? Make sure you show a clear specialization on your resume. A non-descript generalist, with no specialization will appear very unimpressive. You need something that will differentiate you and specialization is critical. Make sure your fifty words show this specialization clearly.

If you complete this exercise and focus your resume to make your potential stand out in the first fifty words, you will dramatically improve your odds of getting an interview.