Resume Examples Archives - Page 3 of 9 - Palladian Career Resources

Eliminate “Responsible for” From Your Resume

Job seekers overuse the phrase “Responsible for” on their resumes. It is an easy phrase to use. Just put “responsible for” at the start of a bullet and describe some aspect of the job.

Writing a resume like this will not make a good impression. A resume I read today illustrates this very well. The resume is from an insurance agent, but it makes it hard to determine whether the agent was successful. The resume and cover letter contained details that fail to create a clear picture of the job seeker’s performance.

A resume should provide a clear statement of the success of the job seeker. Instead, it lists a number of responsibilities and sales goals. The resume never comes right out and says whether the job seeker achieved the goals. Below are the bullets under the most recent job listed:

Responsible for sales, management, marketing and service of commercial, life, group, LTC, and voluntary benefit insurance products, as well as pension plans
Directly responsible for increasing the territory book of commercial business from $#.# million to $#.# million over a # year period.
Responsible for increasing group life customer base from 0 to ## current groups.
Responsible for increasing LTC book from $0 to $###,000.
Responsible for increasing territory pension assets from $#.# million to over $#.# million in just over # years.
Directly responsible for increasing current commercial client base from ## accounts to ## accounts.
Responsible for increasing life insurance book from $##,000 to $###,000 over # years.

There are two ways to read this. You can assume the statements are a list of sales goals the agent was responsible for hitting, or you can assume the statements detail the specific results the agent achieved. If they are goals, there is nothing to indicate the agent was successful in achieving them. When a hiring manager is screening hundreds of resumes, and only spends a very short time skimming each, you can count on the hiring manager to be very skeptical. Most will assume the job seeker was unsuccessful if the job seeker does not specifically detail the successes.

Further hurting the presentation, the job seeker uses two different phrases, “responsible for” and “directly responsible for” in the bullets. There’s a chance the job seeker is just trying to vary the structure and reduce the repetitiveness of the resume. It is also possible the job seeker is showing the difference between individual and group goals or accomplishments.

Recommendations

The changes to correct this are easy to implement. If the bullets detail specific accomplishments and not sales goals, each bullet (except the first) should be changed to eliminate the “responsible for.” Below are the revised bullets:

Responsible for sales, management, marketing and service of commercial, life, group, LTC, and voluntary benefit insurance products, as well as pension plans
Increased the territory book of commercial business from $#.# million to $#.# million over a # year period.
Developed the group life customer base from 0 to ## current groups.
Developed the LTC book from $0 to $###,000.
Increased the territory pension assets from $#.# million to over $#.# million in just over # years.
Grew the current commercial client base from ## accounts to ## accounts.
Increased the life insurance book from $##,000 to $###,000 over # years.

This reads much better and provides a stronger impact. The contributions of the job seeker are clear after these minor changes.

If the job seeker did not achieve these goals, rewriting the bullets will take a little more work. The job seeker will need to identify their specific accomplishments and write about these. The numbers may not be as impressive, but they will be genuine and honest. This will help the impression the resume makes.

Resume with an Atypical Career Progression

The career progression of most job seekers follows a typical pattern. It starts with an entry level job and progresses to positions of increasing responsibility. At any point in time, the job seeker holds a single full time position. This progression is very common and easy to understand. So, what do you do if your career isn’t typical?

The resume I ran into today dealt with a non-traditional career in a very effective way. The job seeker had held a series of sales and sales management positions. Then, a couple years ago, he shifted into a consulting role. His resume shows five concurrent positions, with titles such as Director of Sales, Director of Business Development and Director of Fundraising.

This list of positions raised a number of questions immediately. Holding what appear to be five full time positions simultaneously doesn’t make sense. My initial reaction was confusion. I had no idea what the job seeker was doing.

One tactic the job seeker could have taken would be to describe each position in detail. This would make for a very long resume. The job seeker took a different approach. He provided one line that explained that these were consulting positions. He then offered an example. In the example, he described one of positions in detail. This showed the type of work the job seeker was doing. Because the positions were similar, it is easy to see how the other roles would have similar responsibilities and accomplishments.

The job seeker then provided a traditional description of each full time job he had held prior to moving into consulting. The approach turned out to be clear and easy to follow.

The key to the effectiveness of this resume was its clear presentation of what the job seeker did. The way it was written was unusual, but it made it clear, very quickly, what the job seeker did. Although I started out confused, it only took a few seconds to understand what was going on. There are other ways the job seeker could have presented their consulting experience without writing a long description of each position. The important thing is not providing every last detail – it is showing a clear picture of your overall experience. In this regard, the job seeker did a good job by describing just one of the five positions.

If you have a non-traditional career progression following a traditional chronological format may not work. If you are uncertain how to structure your resume, get help.

Using Buzzwords Without Substance

Buzzwords are used so commonly they lose their impact. The resume I read today illustrates this. At the top of the resume was a Summary of Qualifications section. In it, there were a number of buzzwords. The overall effect was to hurt the impression the resume made.

The buzzwords listed are some of the most common. In fact, some used so much, they qualify as gobbledygook – words that have lost all meaning due to over use. Below are a few of the bullets from the Summary section:

Summary of Qualifications

Change-management leader

Understands budgets and expense control

Six Sigma/Lean exposure to improve productivity, teamwork, and profitability

Diversity aware

A summary section like this is supposed to create a positive image while introducing the job seeker. Instead, the bullets do little if anything to promote the job seeker. The problem is they don’t have any clear benefit.

Change-management is a nice buzzword, but the resume has little content that demonstrates how the job seeker led change in an organization. Where it is mentioned, it is buried deep in the resume. I had to read closely to find something that showed some change-management experience.

I’m not sure what to make of “Understanding budgets and expense control.” My initial reaction is: “great, you understand cost-cutting – I’m looking for someone with experience cutting costs.” This is a very weak bullet and the resume would be stronger if it was deleted.

The Six Sigma bullet is also extremely weak. I read having exposure to Six Sigma as meaning someone in company ran a six sigma project and the job seeker got to watch some of what that person did. Reading rest of the resume, there is nothing that shows the six sigma experience is more than a basic familiarity the term.

Six Sigma is a major buzzword found in a lot of job postings. If you have significant Six Sigma experience, highlight this skill. If you don’t have experience, don’t highlight it. This bullet was at the top of the resume, with the words "Six Sigma" the 14th and 15th words on the resume. Putting this at the bottom of the resume wouldn’t hurt overall impression (I doubt it would help either). At the top of the resume, it makes a terrible impression.

The resume is from a human resources manager. Diversity is a major buzzword in HR, but I really don’t know what it means to be Diversity Aware. Is the job seeker aware of the importance of diversity in the workplace? Does he have experience promoting diversity? Is he saying he is capable of recognizing difference between men and women or between different ethnic groups? I expect that he is trying to say that he knows how to promote and improve the diversity in a workforce.

When hiring managers read your resume, they will not assume you have more experience or better credentials than the content of your resume shows. If you are very good with a specific skill, you need to show that. Listing a buzzword without qualifying your experience will not help and may hurt the effectiveness of your resume.

Resume Writing Style

In our Military Resume Benchmarking Report, we assessed the writing style of the resumes and found 31% of the resumes had inconsistent sentence structures.

In our Military Resume Benchmarking Report, we assessed the writing style of the resumes. A resume is an introduction to an employer. Writing a resume requires a much greater attention to detail than almost any other form of writing. A poorly written resume with lots of mistakes will ensure a bad first impression. Unfortunately, mistakes on resumes are not rare. In our research study, we found 31% of the resumes had inconsistent sentence structures.

There are a variety of acceptable styles and we didn’t want our personal preferences to bias the report. We assessed the consistency of the style. Most resumes are written without using personal pronouns. Others are written in the first person. The verb usage also varies from passive to active voice. Maintaining consistency makes a resume more predictable and easier scan quickly. At the same time, when you write, some variation in sentence structure can improve readability. When we assessed the writing style, we looked for inconsistencies or gross grammatical errors that significantly hurt the readability.

Seeing so many resumes make basic writing mistakes, I wanted to share an example of inconsistent writing from a resume. Below is the first paragraph from a resume I received recently. It isn’t one of the resumes from the research study, but is representative of some of the worst offenders.

Professional Summary

I’m an honest, loyal and highly motivated worker who is result-oriented with over 20 years of active military service and experience in Recruiting, Human Resources, Personnel Administration, and Operations & Training. Possess strong leadership skills and successful team building capabilities and have excellent technical, communication, presentation, and customer service skills. I am a resourceful problem solver with the proven ability to bring quick resolution to challenging situations. Hold a Bachelor of Business Administration degree majoring in General Business with a minor in Business Management.

The summary starts out with by the personal pronoun “I.” The second sentence omits the pronoun, starting with “Possess strong…” In the third sentence, the job seeker uses the personal pronoun again. Finally, in the forth sentence, the job seeker leaves out the pronoun again.

This inconsistencies hurt the readability and are a distraction from the content. A much better approach would be to pick a convention and stick with it. Further hurting the effectiveness, the job seeker uses “Possess” and “Hold” to start two of the sentences instead of the more common “Possesses” and “Holds.”

To fix this, I would scrap the structure and break the text into bullets. The summary is essentially a list of qualities and I would break it down into the form of a list. I would also bold some text to highlight key concepts.

Professional Summary

Results-oriented Sergeant Major with 20 years of active military service in Recruiting, Human Resources, Personnel Administration, Operations and Training.

Strong leader with a track record of building successful teams.

Highly skilled in technical, communications, presentation, and customer service.

Resourceful problem solver with the proven ability to bring quick resolution to challenging situations.

This section reads much clearer. It has most of the same content. I emphasize a few key attributes by bolding a few words. If a hiring manager only scans this section on their way to the work experience, it should help to create an image of the job seeker as a results-oriented, highly skilled leader with good problem solving skills. This simpler summary of the job seeker is likely to be much more effective than a longer more detailed summary.

Is my rewrite perfect? No, it’s far from it. I wanted to show how inconsistent sentence structure can hurt a resume. I also wanted to show an alternative, but didn’t want to bring in much new content. If I really want to fix this resume, I would cut the bullets I listed down to just a couple lines and add a few accomplishments. It’s good for a job seeker to say they were successful, but it is much more effective to show a hiring manager past successes. Adding a couple accomplishments can dramatically improve the overall impression of the resume.

Bottom line: Keep your sentence structure consistent. Proofread your resume closely. Add some accomplishments to show a hiring manager how good you are rather than just making claims. Do these things, and your resume will improve.

Resume Accomplishment: Saved Less Than 1%

I read a resume today with an accomplishment that stood out. The accomplishment stated the job seeker had saved $60k in the last year on a $14 million budget. This works out to 0.4% of the budget – a very small amount. Despite this, the accomplishment was noteworthy.

In spite of declining sales, labor and expenses were managed proportionally leading to a favorable budget variance of $60k.

The reason this accomplishment is significant is the context the job seeker provides. The company is facing declining sales. This is common today. Managing in a declining sales environment poses unique challenges. Companies have fixed expenses that do not fluctuate with sales. This requires a manager to adjust variable experiences significantly to maintain margins.

The job seeker was able to manage the change in volumes and achieve results similar to plan. In a different bullet, the job seeker provided background details on the position, including responsibility for a budget of $14m and a staff of 140 employees. This provides the scope of the responsibility.

Although the accomplishment is a great addition to the job seeker’s resume, there is one additional detail that would improve it. Adding some measure of how much sales had declined would show a more complete picture. If sales dropped 1%, adapting would be easy. On the other hand, if sales dropped 50%, managing expenses to match this would be a tremendous accomplishment.

Successfully Showed Up

I read a lot of resumes that are nothing more than copies of the job descriptions the employers wrote. The basic responsibilities from a job description do not demonstrate any ability or skill. One resume I read recently was especially bad.

The resume had a litany of basic responsibilities that did nothing to sell the job seeker’s potential. One bullet that really stood out for me was:

Attended staff meetings

A staff meeting is a meeting where all the staff get together. Attending requires moving from one’s desk to the conference room. This is barely a step up from “showed up to work.”

There are two reasons I can think of why a job seeker would list something like this. First, the job seeker may have copied the job description and was too lazy to edit it. Second, the job seeker may have added this bullet in order to fill space and make his resume look more hefty. In either case, the bullet makes a terrible impression.

When writing your resume, focus on giving reasons why you are valuable. The key question you need to answer is:

How are you better than others doing exactly the same job as you?

If you do not give a reason why you are more valuable than your competition, you will not get hired. The job market is competitive enough to guarantee that someone applying for the same job as you will develop a resume highlighting their skills, accomplishments and potential value.

Does your resume show specifically the attributes that make you valuable? Do you show how you have used these abilities in the past with concrete examples of what you have done? Do you provide specific results you delivered? Does your resume show the value you will provide an employer?

If you are having trouble identifying how you stand out from your competition, talk with a resume writer or career coach. These individuals are a experts in assessing job seekers and identifying the strengths that can be marketed.

A Recruiter’s Perspective

One of my primary goals in writing the this blog is give you the ability to look at your resume the same way a recruiter or hiring manager will. I ran into a resume today that illustrates a common mistake I see, although this example is worse than most.

The resume is from a salesperson with fifteen years of experience. The resume listed a number of great accomplishments. There were bullets where the job seeker had exceeded their annual quota by significant percentages. Other bullets showed their ranking within the company or region – for example, top five out of three hundred sales associates at one position.

The work history looked good. Then, at the start of 2007, the candidate took a new sales job. The new position had one bullet, “Sell comprehensive line of…” and a list of products. The listing had nothing about the success of the individual. No details of the territory, customer base, training or anything else about the position.

Recruiter Perspective

My reaction to this resume is simple. The job seeker had been successful in the past but failed dismally in their most recent position. I can’t think of any reason why the job seeker wouldn’t give some detail of their performance for this position if their performance was good. Describing this as a dismal failure may seem strong. I have to assume the candidate did not meet or exceed expectations in any way.

I also read the cover letter closely. My thought was the candidate might have a reason why he didn’t detail the position. The company many have had financial difficulty or the sales process may not have been a fit for the candidate. These reason could mitigate a failed position. The cover letter mirrored the resume, emphasizing the past and skipping over the most recent position.

The Job Seeker’s Perspective

I expect the job seeker left out details of this position because he has trouble acknowledging the failure. The career track record shows a pattern of success. It doesn’t appear that he has had to deal with failing before. The easiest thing for the job seeker is to skip over the position and emphasize his accomplishments. I’m sure this seemed like a good idea, but it doesn’t create the impression the job seeker wants.

Just as there are reasons that would mitigate the significance of a failure, there are reasons that could make this failure a major issue. What changed about the job seeker that led to the failure? In an interview, this would be my focus.

Solution

The best way to deal with this is to be upfront and give some detail. The job seeker should explain their performance. If the performance was below expectations, then the job seeker should explain way. I’m not suggesting that they job seeker needs a bunch of excuses – that’s the wrong approach. He just needs to provide an honest assessment. For example, shortly after starting the position, the company may have experienced a change in a their operations that made their products less competitive. Stating this by itself is just an excuse. Adding details about how the company’s sales dropped significantly would make it understandable that a new salesperson would struggle.

Another option is to remove all the accomplishments from the resume. I think this is a terrible option, but some job seekers may consider it. By removing the other accomplishments, the job seeker will create a consistent pattern from start to finish. The lack of accomplishments in the current position will not standout without any other accomplishments on the resume. In a down economy, this tactic will cause the job seeker to appear completely unimpressive and reduce the chances of getting an interview.

Often a resume tells as much about the job seeker from the lack on information as it does from the information is included.

Identifying Impressive Accomplishments

I read two resumes today with accomplishments that appeared to have nothing in common. One is from a senior manufacturing executive and the other is from an individual in the Navy. The scope and type of the accomplishments are vastly different, and yet, they both are impressive.

The Manufacturing Executive

The accomplishment on the resume provided specific results and a description of how they were achieved:

Reduced annual labor costs by $1.75 million through standardization of work methods, instituted employee productivity reporting system, improved product-flow, realigned supervisory responsibilities, and implemented a comprehensive employee training program

This is an impressive accomplishment. Nearly $2 million in labor savings through a number of changes. Any manufacturing manager would want an accomplishment like this on their resume. Most people don't have accomplishments this significant, though.

The Transitioning Sailor

The accomplishment from the individual transitioning from the Navy also provided specific results and a description of how they were achieved:

Saved over $7,000 by expertly using outside government sources to provide services previously taken from activities budget.

After reading about a $1.75 million in savings, $7,000 appears insignificant. You may be thinking that it is pointless to write about saving a few thousand dollars. For this individual, the accomplishment is impressive and may be more impressive than the accomplishment from the manufacturing executive.

The reason the accomplishment is impressive has nothing to do with the dollar amount. Going by dollars, there's no comparison between these two accomplishments. Dollars saved isn't the only factor. We also have to look at the role of the individual and the potential for savings. If the CEO of GE, IBM or Exxon listed an accomplishment of saving $1.75 million, it would not be impressive. These companies have sales in excess of $100 billion dollars. A million is insignificant to the scope of company.

For the transitioning sailor, there is very little opportunity to generate cost savings. This individual was enlisted and at a lower level. Very few of his peers can identify any specific cost savings they have delivered. This is what makes the accomplishment significant.

In your career, you may not have had the opportunity to save millions of dollars. This does not mean you do not have significant accomplishments. Review your background for situations where you were able to make a contribution beyond your basic expectations. These accomplishments could involve saving money, but they could also relate to other aspects of your job. Have you improved a process? Did you help a company become more efficient? Did you do something that elevated customer service levels? There are a wide variety of ways people contribute to their employers. Look for ways you have contributed and highlight these on your resume.

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Resume Writing for Manufacturing Careers - Front Cover

Functional Resume Example

I read a functional resume today that illustrated clearly why most people should avoid this resume structure. Functional resumes organize information according to the skills or experiences of the job seeker, not the individual jobs. This resume type can be effective for some individuals, but most people are better served by a chronological resume.

The resume was organized with the following sections:

Experience
Accomplishments
Education
Special Training
Technical Skills
Affiliations
Awards & Honors
Professional Work Experience

The resume had a number of problems. By far the biggest was the disconnect between the Experience and Accomplishment sections and the Professional Work Experience section. The Experience section described the candidate’s background in a single paragraph. The Accomplishments section contained a series of paragraphs, each describing a skill.

Both the Experience and Accomplishments sections described a senior executive with advertising and sales experience. The Professional Work Experience section showed a series of jobs, listing the title, company and dates only. The job titles listed in this section were for retail store manager positions. None of the jobs mentioned a VP role in any field, and did not show any advertising or business development roles.

Further clouding the picture was the Education section. The job seeker had bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science. None of the jobs, skills, accomplishments or experiences had anything to do with the IT field. I can understand a person getting a bachelor’s degree in one field and then working in another field. I have trouble understanding what would cause a person to get a master’s in a field but never work in a job remotely close to that field.

If you choose a functional structure for your resume, you need to create a clear picture of your career. Chronological resumes are much easier to write. The sequence of jobs and time in each position helps show the capabilities of the job seeker. In a functional resume, experiences and accomplishments are not tied to a specific position. This can cause confusion.

Recruiter Assessment

As a recruiter, I can’t see a situation when I would want to interview this candidate as long as they have this resume. The resume presents three primary areas of expertise: senior management of advertising and business development, retail store management and IT.

The job seeker did not list any positions where he held a senior management role and no positions in advertising or business development. If I had a VP position, I would find someone with experience in the field long before considering this candidate.

If I was filling a retail store manager position, the candidate would get a solid look, but still not fair well. None of the accomplishments on the resume have anything to do with retail. I would question why a good store manager has to list accomplishments from other fields and can’t include one from retail. There are a lot of good retail managers that can show clearly their performance and accomplishments. They will have a big edge over this candidate.

IT jobs are an even a bigger stretch. The field changes quickly and a few years out of the industry can put someone technically behind. With only a couple degrees and no work experience, the person would only be qualified for an entry level role. In those roles, more recent graduates would have an edge.

You may be wondering if this job seeker has a chance to get hired. With this resume, it’s very unlikely. With a targeted resume focused on one field and a better presentation of the job seeker’s skills, experience and accomplishments in that field, he would greatly improve his chances. The key is to create a solid sales pitch for the desired role.

The 2,600 Word Resume

A resume should be a concise summary of a job seeker’s background and potential. Resumes are not designed to provide every detail about the job seeker. The resume I read today was far from being concise.

I recommend a resume should be 400 to 900 words and no more than two pages. There are rare exceptions to this guideline, but most resumes are too long. The resume I looked at was seven pages, with a small font. I ran a word count and it totaled 2,606 – more than six times the length I recommend.

This wasn’t the first problem with the resume. The cover letter got things starter, beginning with:

Hello Gentlemen/Ladies,

I am a software engineer with a very strong backgroud in UNIX/LINUX, C, C++, parallel and distributed computing applications. I think my resume speaks for itself.

If misspelling “backgroud” wasn’t enough, a statement that the “resume speaks for itself” is a major detractor. It creates an impression of an extremely arrogant job seeker. The resume confirmed this. The vast majority of the resume dealt with various IT systems and programming languages. The level of detail was so overwhelming, it is very difficult to know what the candidate’s greatest strengths are.

The talent, education and experience of a person with a PhD in computer engineering and 16 years of design experience at top firms is impressive, but the candidate isn’t going to be assessed in isolation. A company that is considering a PhD with this much experience will be looking at other candidates with similar experience and educational backgrounds.

The resume was composed of lengthy paragraphs that only detailed the technologies used on the project. The technical skills are important, but listing the names of the technologies does nothing to show the skill level of the job seeker. It read like an IT version of boastful name-dropping. The project descriptions provided little information as to the scope of the project, the obstacles that were overcome and the results of the project. It only explained what technologies were used.

Without detailed information on the project scope, there is no way to assess the work of the job seeker. Listing a lot of in demand technologies does not make a person qualified to do a job. A much shorter resume, with far less detail could convey a lot more information.

Another problem is a direct result of the length. A seven page list of projects detailing every technology ever encountered resulted in a list of skills that covers most of the IT field. No one can be an expert in hundreds of different technologies, and companies don’t hire people because they have a very limited familiarity with a skill that is critical to the job. By presenting so many technologies, the job seeker dilutes the skills he really is a top expert in using.

This resume will show up in a huge number of IT searches if it is posted on a job board, but it is unlikely that the job seeker will get many calls. There just isn’t anything to generate a positive impression except for the education of the job seeker and a seven page list of buzzwords.

When writing your resume, look for ways to cut words out. You should assess every word and every sentence for whether they provide significant value or not. Shorter and simpler will be much more effective.