Resume Examples Archives - Page 2 of 9 - Palladian Career Resources

Provide Context for Common Acronyms

I read a resume today with a lot of acronyms. I’ve written about the problems of using acronyms in the past – they confuse the reader and can make a resume impossible to decipher. This should be simple to understand, but what if the acronym is used much more frequently than the term?

This was the case with the resume I received. The resume was from a person who sold displays using LED lights. The acronym I had trouble with was LED. The term light emitting diode is rarely used – it’s almost always writen as LED. The reason I had trouble with this abbreviation is the resume provided no context for the term. It was only after I reviewed the resume in detail that I figured out that the reference to LED was likely to be a reference to light emitting diodes. There are a lot of other terms that use the abbreviation LED. In fact, a search of website listing common abbreviations yielded 169 results for LED. These ranged from the airport code for the St. Petersburg airport in Russia, to organization terms such as Law Enforcement Division and Library Education Division, to medical conditions such as Lupus Erythematosus Disseminatus, and a wide range of other terms.

Light emitting diode is one the most common meanings for the term. The reason the resume is confusing is it provides no context for the term. There was nothing at the start of the resume that would implied light emitting diodes were the technology being referenced. Some readers would instantly think of this meaning and “get it.” Others would think of some other meaning or context and be completely lost.

This could have been made clearer by adding a single word. The salesperson sold LED signs. Adding the word signs makes the context of the acronym clear.

After you write your resume, look closely at the terms you use. Make sure terms specific to your industry are clearly explained. In your job search, you cannot expect the reader of your resume to know the meaning and context of technical terms you use. Providing a simple explanation of your career and of each individual job can make your resume much easier to comprehend.

An Unimpressive Accomplishment for Your Resume

Your resume needs to show specific accomplishments demonstrating your abilities, experience and potential. You will compete against others who have the same experience and skills. In fact, some of your competition is likely to be higher qualified than you. To land an interview and to get hired, you need to show why you are better. A good accomplishment can to this. A weak, unimpressive accomplishment will not help, and can actually hurt the overall impression of your resume.

The resume I read today came from a training manager for a large corporation. It lists a number of training programs the candidate had managed. One of the bullets listed was:

Conceptualized and led the design of a leadership and management strategy and curriculum for all support divisions. Implemented and facilitated management training and best practices sessions. Results included a 60% participation rate in manager best practice sessions.

It’s important to understand that numbers stand out on a resume. A lot of hiring managers will scan a resume, looking for the number and read bullets with quantified results first. Additionally, for many people, numbers stand out from the rest of the text and will naturally draw their attention, even if they aren’t specifically looking for quantified results. This makes it much more likely your bullets with numbers will be read before the bullets without.

In this resume example, the bullet might draw extra attention because it lists “60%.” This figure may have been good, but on a resume, without any context to place this in, it seems very unimpressive. In fact, some may interpret it as a failure.

Imagine an executive struggling to cut costs, drive revenues and stay profitable in this economy. The exec decides he needs to upgrade the skills set of his workforce and needs a top notch trainer to design the training. His concern is driving specific results – profits – in the short term. This requires a training who can make an impact quickly and understands how to focus on elements that will make the company more productive right now.

The job seeker designed a management and leadership program for a major company – an organization everyone knows. This is a good responsibility. The only result given for the program was a 60% participation rate. I really can’t assess whether this was good or bad. If the program was very time consuming, voluntary for managers to participate and not supported well by upper management, a 60% participation rate might have been great. In the eyes of the hypothetical hiring manager I described, this result probably looks like a failure.

The hiring manager needs to maximize the value he gets for the cost of the training manager. Knowing he might only get a 60% participation rate, will make the training far less effective. Another candidate, showing a consistent pattern of running programs with very high participation rates is likely to have an edge, even though we haven’t assessed the quality of the training or the impact on the performance of the company.

Ideally, the job seeker wouldn’t emphasize participation rates. A better approach would be to emphasize the impact of the training. With 60% participation, showing how the group that completed the training improved their performance while the non-participants didn’t improve would be extremely impressive. If the job seeker can’t show a benefit like this, it is likely they will lose out to another job seeker than can.

Maintenance Tech Resume

A resume I read from a medical equipment technician. The resume illustrates a few of the common mistakes many job seekers make.

First, the job seeker failed to list his skills. Every job seeker needs to highlight their strongest skills on their resume. For equipment technicians, this is even more important. With technical positions, the technical skill of the job seeker is a major factor, and often is the most important assessment criteria. Omitting this information will hurt the candidate’s chances.

The job seeker could correct this by adding a skills section showing the specific types of equipment and technologies he has proficiency with. Adding some of the training classes he has taken would also help. In 25 years of operating and maintaining high tech medical equipment, the job seeker doesn’t show a single training class where he updated his skills.

The second change the job seeker needs to make relates to the responsibilities he has had. His resume has nothing more than a list of responsibilities. There are no accomplishments listed. Most hiring managers will assume he has either been unsuccessful or minimally successful in his career as a result. Below is are the bullets from his most recent position:

Maintain and troubleshoot anesthesia equipment and other medical electronics in the hospital
Provide clinical assessments during surgical procedures for anesthesia staff and residents when needed
Perform in-service training for anesthesia students on a variety of electronics equipment
Develop equipment maintenance procedures for department

For an equipment tech, it’s difficult to imagine someone else in the same role not having essentially the same responsibilities. The job seeker has succeeded in making himself a commodity no different from anyone else. This will not help him get hired.

I expect there are a number of accomplishments the job seeker could list. For example, he could expand on how he developed maintenance procedures. Giving a specific example of this, including the type of equipment, the scope of the procedures he developed and some measure of how change contributed to the organization would make a great impression.

A few questions this job seeker could answer that would lead to the type of impressive content that would get a hiring manager excited are:

When have you developed or changed a maintenance procedure resulting in lower overall maintenance costs?
When have you improved the performance of equipment you were maintaining?
When have you improved the reliability of the equipment you were maintaining?
When have you developed a faster process for maintaining equipment?
When have you modified equipment to better suit the needs of medical personnel using the equipment?

As it stands, a hiring manager who is concerned about some of these questions (cutting costs, improving performance and reliability, etc.) will assume the answer to each question is “never.” That’s not the impression this job seeker wants to make. Fortunately, the solution is easy. Add a couple bullets points showing the contribution the job seeker made.

Why Your Resume Should Have a Summary Section

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manage the relationships with key prospects throughout my region, to ensure that is best placed to win major contracts and associated services

Coordinate internal resources to respond to RFPs and secure business from both new and existing customers

Establish and strengthen customer relationships through developing an intimate knowledge of individual accounts and key stakeholders

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

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

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

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

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

Accomplishments that Hurt a Resume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the greatest challenges when writing your resume is knowing how a reader, who knows nothing about you, will interpret what you write. You have the benefit of knowing your complete work history. This makes it difficult to see when key details are omitted. The solution is to have someone, who knows little to nothing about your review your resume, assess the content.

Resume of a New MBA

I received a resume from a student about to graduate with an MBA. The candidate went straight from her undergraduate to graduate school. During both programs, she held a series of entry level retail jobs.

This career progression shows a good commitment and work ethic. The problem with the resume is the order of the information. It emphasizes the work history and not the education. The job seeker is not going to land the type of job she is pursuing based on her work experience. She’s going to get hired because of her education. This needs to be emphasized as the main selling point.

Below is the resume structure:

Summary Statement (19 words, does not mention the education, focused on the work experience)

Experience

Job 1 (127 words)

Job 2 (75 words)

Job 3 (70 words)

Education

Master’s Degree

Bachelor’s Degree

Skills

The entire resume had 387 words, so the listing of the three jobs represents 70% of the text. It’s also at the top of the resume. There’s a good chance a hiring manager receiving this resume will read the summary statement, skim the work experience and discard the candidate. This is unfortunate, because the job seeker has some great skills and a very good education.

A better way to organize this resume would be to focus on the education and skills of the job seeker. A hiring manager is going to be impressed with the potential of the job seeker, not the jobs she has held. The jobs help show her work ethic, but this is just one attribute. The experience should be placed in a supporting role, not the lead.

I would reorganize this resume into the following order:

Summary Statement (emphasizing the education and key skills)

Education

Master’s Degree

Bachelor’s Degree

Skills

Experience

Job 1 (127 words)

Job 2 (75 words)

Job 3 (70 words)

This structure leads off with the candidate’s strengths. The content didn’t change (except for the summary statement). Only the organization of the content changed. The other option I considered was switching the skills and education. As impressive as the education is, the job seeker possesses some great skills that might be more impressive for some careers. In this case, leading off with the skills would be better than starting with the education.

Improving a Resume Summary Section

The resume I read this morning started with an executive summary providing an overview of the job seeker. The summary focused on generalizations while the resume contained a number of specific accomplishments and experiences. The result was a summary that did little to help the overall impression.

Below are the first few lines of the executive summary:

Veteran Military Officer with extensive aerospace industry experience. Dynamic Industry Leader. Technically astute. Customer focused. Results oriented. Employs decisive, analytical approach to problem solving.

This summary lists some great attributes, but the buzzwords are so overused they make no impression. Everyone says the same thing. A much better approach is to provide a few attributes and back them up with specific accomplishments.

This individual managed a number of multi-million dollar projects producing significant enhancements to the military capability of various aircraft weapons systems and cost reductions to the military. These accomplishments are buried within the text of the resume. A hiring manager scanning the resume quickly is likely to read only a small portion of the text and may miss some or all of the accomplishments. For this reason, the accomplishments making the best impression should be listed at the top of the resume.

I would rewrite the summary section in this form:

Veteran Military Officer with extensive aerospace industry experience.

Technically astute – <insert the description of a successful technically challenging project>

Customer focused – <insert the description of a project requiring a high level of customer service>

Results oriented – <insert a successful project with significant cost savings>

Employs decisive, analytical approach to problem solving – <insert a project requiring complex problem solving skills>

The job seeker has examples in his resume for each of these bullets. All he needs to do is copy and paste them at the top. This will make a much stronger impression and ensure a hiring manager will see his strongest accomplishments first.

Supply Chain Resume Review

The resume and cover letter I read this morning contained a number of mistakes I routinely see. The candidate is a supply chain professional from one of the biggest and best known manufacturing companies.

The cover letter was long, a full page, but it had very little substance. The bulk of the cover letter was content straight from the resume. In fact, there is nothing in the cover letter that isn’t also in the resume. In addition to the substance of the cover, there was a lot of hype. For example, the sentence below is taken from the middle of the cover letter:

I am an interpersonally-skilled team leader with a rapid advancement history and a unique blend of analytical and communication skills.

This sentence will do little to impress a hiring manager. The rapid advancement history is a plus, but the rest of the sentence is just hype. Even worse, the value of the characteristics isn’t clear. I doubt a hiring manager has ever said they need a person that is an “interpersonally-skill team leader” and has “unique blend of analytical and communication skills.” The hiring manager is focused on finding someone that can achieve specific results. Nothing in the cover letter references specific results and accomplishments.

This omission is emphasized in the resume. The resume starts with a Professional Summary. The first line is “Results-driven Logistics & Planning Manager with global supply chain management…” How can a person be results-driven, but fail to list a single accomplishment? It doesn’t make a good impression.

Another problem with resume and cover letter relates to the career progression of the job seeker. This individual spent more than ten years with his last employer. Then, more than six months ago, he stopped working there. There is no explanation why. There are many candidates who have been laid off due to a downsizing or facility closure. Despite this, a hiring manager is unlikely to assume the candidate way laid off. It is more likely the hiring manager will assume the candidate was fired.

If the job seeker was fired, this isn’t a deal breaker. He was with the same company for more than ten years and received a couple of promotions in the process. Most companies will look past a termination, if the candidate can explain why the problems leading to the termination won’t occur in the future.

Recommendations:

A Short and Concise Cover Letter: The cover letter needs to be cut down to under 100 words. At more than 300 words, it isn’t going to get read.
Include Accomplishments in the Cover Letter: The cover letter needs to have some substance. Adding a couple of accomplishments demonstrating past successes can make a very good impression.
Add Accomplishments to the Resume: In a 10+ year career, with a couple of promotions, the job seeker must have done something right. Include a few accomplishments on the resume.
Explain the Gap in Employment: The job seeker has been out of work for six months with no explanation why they left their last position. Including a statement in the cover letter why the job seeker is unemployed can answer what is likely to be the top question by a hiring manager.

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A Resume Longer than War and Peace

When I get an extremely long resume, I check the word count. Up to now, resumes with 2500 to 3000 words have been the longest I have seen. I have received a number of resumes at this length, but nothing over 3,000 words. Today, a job seeker set a new record…

When I get an extremely long resume, I check the word count. After upgrading to Word 2007 last year, it’s easy. The word count is displayed at all times on the bottom left of the window. Up to now, resumes with 2500 to 3000 words have been the longest I have seen. I have received a number of resumes at this length, but nothing over 3,000 words. Today, a job seeker set a new record…

4,480 words

Most people read at 200-250 words per minute – so it would take 20 minutes to read through this resume, and that’s not even reading closely. The resume is from an IT candidate and written with a lot of technical terms and descriptions throughout – not something that is easy to read quickly.

There is so much detail in the resume, it is almost impossible to tell what the strengths of the candidate are. The candidate has a PhD, two masters degrees, a bachelor’s and a two pages of continuing education classes. Despite this, the only IT training was a six month IT program the job seeker did not complete. All of the other education is in other fields.

Every aspect of the resume is extremely long. The objective section is 155 words and lists eighteen separate job titles and thirty different technologies. Most of these are listed with only acronyms.

At least two thirds of the resume is completely unrelated to the IT field. It includes detailed descriptions of finance positions from the early ‘70s, medical positions from the late ‘70s and consulting roles in the ‘80s. This experience only serves to make the resume more confusing. The candidate has been in the IT field for nine years, but this is only a small percentage of the resume.

Recommendations

First, check the word count on your resume. Work to make the content more concise and eliminate extraneous details.

Second, make sure your strengths are clearly displayed. This resume lists so many different technologies, in long paragraphs, that everything runs together. Focusing on a few key strengths will improve the impression the resume makes.

Third, include accomplishments prominently within the resume. The first accomplishment listed on this resume was at the bottom of the fourth page. It is likely most hiring manager will stop reading long before this.

Retiree Returning to the Workforce

Two weeks ago, I talked with an individual who retired several years ago. The job seeker had decided to return to the workforce to offset the impact of the financial markets. This individual had spent the last 25 years of his career with the same company and had not written a resume or gone on a job interview in more than 30 years.

I reviewed the first draft he wrote of his resume and it was terrible. The resume started with an objective statement listing the job seeker’s goals. It said something to the effect that the job seeker need to supplement his retirement income and is looking for a position to do that. This reminded me of the interview from the movie The Wedding Singer. In the scene, Adam Sandler’s character talks about he likes money and is looking for a job where he can get more money. Although his interest is probably the same as many job seekers, talking about how your only goal or concern is to get more money is not a good strategy.

The remainder of the resume wasn’t any better. It contained very little information about the experience of the job seeker. The information he provided was limited to basic responsibilities – the type of tasks anyone that held the job titles would have done. There was nothing to differentiate the job seeker from other candidates.

The bottom third of the resume focused on the hobbies of the job seeker in retirement.I understand why he did this. The hobbies show his current active lifestyle and are the most recent elements of his background. Unfortunately, they do little to show the candidate’s qualifications for the job he is pursuing.

Mistakes like this are extremely common. There are very few people who can sit down and write a great resume if they haven’t written a resume in more than 20 years. Even job seekers with more recent job search experience struggle. It is very difficult become really good at resume writing when it is a skills only used every few years.

The solution very few job seekers adopt is hiring a professional resume writer. The retiree asked me to rewrite his resume for him.It only took a few days and we developed an impressive presentation of his experience and accomplishments. The job seeker also asked for some one-on-one coaching to teach him how to search for jobs on the internet, how to apply and how to write an impressive cover letter.

I completed the resume and the coaching two weeks ago.Earlier this week, the candidate let me know he landed a job that was almost an ideal match to his goals and wrote “There is no question I could not have gotten a job so quickly without your help, thanks.”

It is very rare that a job seeker can land a job this quickly. Few companies have a hiring process this rapid and the economic situation has made it more difficult.The candidate had a couple advantages – he is in a part of the country that is holding up better than most and he was seeking a job a level or two below the last position he held. With these advantages, an impressive resume and a good job search plan, the candidate was able to capitalize on this opportunity immediately.

Whether you are returning to the workforce after years off, or are actively employed and looking for a change – get help with your search.