Education Archives - Palladian Career Resources

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.

Graduation Dates on Your Resume

I read a couple resumes recently that had unusual graduation dates. The dates listed detracted from the impression the resume made.

Six Years of High School

A candidate with a bachelor’s degree and 40+ year career listed his high school on his resume. With a bachelor’s degree, there is no need to list high school. This isn’t a major problem though. The problem was range of dates. The high school listing had the dates 1961-1967, a six year time period. I don’t know if this was a typo, if the school system considered high school to be 7^th through 12^th grades, if the candidate had repeated a couple years or if there was another explanation.

Including the dates raises a question that is meaningless. The candidate’s performance in high school more than forty years ago has nothing to do with their capability today. Additionally, including the range of dates makes no sense. It is generally assumed if you include a single date, it is the graduation date. Finally, many older workers report instances of age discrimination. Highlighting your age with a high school graduation date can’t help your search, and may hurt it.

Super Fast Bachelor’s

A candidate listed their high school graduation and their college graduation dates. They included the months of each. This made it clear exactly how long the candidate had been in college – a year and a half. Reinforcing this, the candidate listed the number of credit hours completed to get the degree and a 4.0 GPA. Ordinarily, I would assume a graduation date only 18 months after getting out of high school would indicate a diploma mill, but the school is a big state school with a good reputation anyone would recognize. My conclusion is the date is either a typo or the candidate is lying. Neither is a good impression. There was no need to list the high school, or any of the graduation dates.

Employment dates are a critical element of a resume, but graduation dates are optional. Unless you are a recent graduate, drop your graduation dates. They will offer little value.

Education and Training on a Military Resume

The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowing what to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.

The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowingwhat to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.

I’ve read a lot of resumes from military personnel that include a page or more of classes and workshops the individual completed over their career. Most of these are routine classes that do not differentiate the candidate. Additionally, many military personal include courses with no relationship to the career they are pursuing. For example, listing a large number of classes and certifications for various weapons will not help a person land a leadership position in manufacturing (except, perhaps, with a firearm manufacturer).

Including significant detail of your training in unrelated areas will not help you land a job. It may also hurt your chances. When a hiring manager reviews your resume, they may only spend 15 seconds looking at it. Any time they spend reading details that don’t sell your background is a waste. They may move on to the next candidate before they get to the impressive parts of your background.

To determine the elements of your education and training that are significant and should be included in your resume, you need to focus on the core challenges of the position. Identify the most significant skills that are required. Then include the courses that relate to these skills.

As an example, let’s contrast two positions.

The first position is for a leadership role, a supervisor or manager, with a manufacturing firm. A candidate pursuing this position should emphasize leadership, communications, strategic planning and organizational skills. A routine safety or hazmat class, that all military personnel complete each year, is irrelevant for a position like this. Training classes like this focus on conferring basic knowledge of safety issues. They won’t set someone apart. It is much better to list and emphasize training in leadership and communications skills.

The other position is a health and safety manager for a chemical firm. In this role, technical experience and skill with federal regulations is very significant. Leadership and communications skills may also be important, but technical ability will usually be the highest priority for a hiring manager. In this case, emphasizing safety and hazmat courses is good idea. Although you want to emphasize safety courses, don’t go overboard. Focus on significant courses, not the routine ones everyone completes. You want to show you are an expert, not just someone that showed up for the annual one hour safety refresher.

The key to selecting the right items to include in your resume is prioritizing what is important to the reader. If a training class isn’t especially impressive, you are better off putting more detail in your work experience section and leaving the training class out.

For civilian positions, your resume should be two pages or less. This makes it essential for you to prioritize the content of your resume.

Should My Education or Work Experience Go First on My Resume

Deciding the order of information on your resume is an important step in your search. The order indicates the relative importance of information. The content at the top of the first page is most likely to be read. As you progress to the end, it becomes less likely the hiring manager will read everything.

This is similar to the way a newspaper is organized. The most significant and important stories are put on the first page at the top. On TV, you see this with lead story in a news program. In fact, almost every media, including books, magazines, movies and music, is structured with the most appealing content at the top.

Your resume should be organized in a similar manner. What is the most important aspect of your background? This goes at the top. Let’s look at a few examples:

New College Graduate: Individuals that recently (in the last year or two) graduated with a bachelors, masters or PhD should put this at the top of their resume. This is the most significant element of their background and demonstrates their potential for a new career.

Technical Experts: Engineering, IT and other technical specialties prioritize technical skill very high. Often, the skill level with specific technologies or disciplines is more important to a hiring manager than anything else. In this case, the technical skills should be featured. This can be done by starting the resume with an executive summary or a skills section that demonstrates these skills.

Experienced Professionals: Individuals that have worked in a field for a number of years usually will want to lead with their experience. Starting the resume with an executive summary and then the work experience section makes the most sense. It highlights the experience doing the job that the job seeker is pursuing. Often, prior experience in the same role is the most important attribute a hiring manager wants.

Career Changers: If you are attempting to change career fields, your decision of what to prioritize may change. Your experience won’t be as significant in the new field. In this case, you may want to highlight your transferrable skills or your education first.

Unusual Specialties: There are some experiences, skills and abilities that are unusual and in high demand. Being able to speak a foreign language, possessing a government security clearance or experience managing hospital construction projects are examples of specialties that are rare. They are often non-negotiable requirements for some positions. There are a lot of specialties that are rare and in demand. If you possess have experience in one of these areas, it should be highlighted on your resume.

Bottom line: Approach your resume as a sales pitch for your background. Lead with your strengths and make the best impression.

Falsifying Education

A resume of very strong manufacturing job seeker came to my attention recently. The candidate looked great, but I didn’t recognize the school they attended. I’m not an expert on every school out there, so I use several research tools. In a few minutes, it was clear this school was not reputable. First, it’s not accredited, and second it awards degrees without requiring any course work. Just write a check and they mail a transcript and degree.

With an explosion of educational opportunities, it’s no surprise that a number of diploma mills have cropped up. If you’re not familiar with diploma mills, they are companies that issue degrees without requiring a single class. Some go so far as to offer overnight delivery of a degree – someone that didn’t graduate from high school can obtain degrees all the way through to a PhD in a matter of days.

Many of these programs market themselves as life experience degrees – degrees awarded solely based on the life experience of the individual. The requirements are less than stringent. Colby Nolan is a cat that received a Bachelor’s degree and an MBA from a diploma mill. Unfortunately, Colby is not alone – there a number of cats, dogs and other animals with degrees.

The job seeker I was assessing had a resume that looked great. With the complete fabrication of their education, there is no way to trust the job seeker. Unfortunately, if they are lying about their education, I have to assume they could be lying about everything in their background.

Now it may sound tempting to go from a high school grad to an MBA overnight, but it’s a fraud. States are cracking down on this, with a number having already passed legislation criminalizing the use of an unaccredited degree to obtain employment (or even a promotion in some cases). Additionally, the tools to check the validity of a degree are getting better and faster – it’s only takes a minute or two to check.

If you are looking to enhance your education, check the reputation and accreditation of the program. This isn’t difficult to do, but you do need to know where to look. The diploma mills often claim accreditation, but from accrediting bodies that either don’t exist or have standards as low as the diploma mills.

There are a lot of resources you can check. Two that I like are:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation: www.chea.org
State of Michigan: list of schools the state will not recognize – http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf

I’ve run into a number of job seekers that made the mistake of getting a fake degree. A few were able to use the degree to get a better job (although the odds of this go down as background checks get easier). This didn’t help in the long run though. With the lie, they end up stuck, unable to leave because the lie continues to be uncovered – and very bitter every time they are discovered.