Category: Resume Writing

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.

Highlight Your Skills

I was asked to help a job seeker under a really tight deadline.  The job seeker wanted to apply for a job that appeared to be an ideal match to their goals and needed to get their resume submitted that same day.

Because of the deadline, we focused on the quick and easy changes that would make a huge difference.  I wanted to share some of the changes we made. 

Background

The job seeker is a freelance graphic designer with a specialty in digital photo editing.  The job seeker is pursuing a full time digital photo editing position.  The position is a close match to the individual's background and skills.  The key is getting the resume to reflect this match.

Original Resume

Below is the original text of the job seeker's most recent position.

FREELANCE PHOTO EDITING  2003 – present
•   Create logos, business cards, brochures and a wide range of literature pieces for various businesses.
•   Photo editing for websites, books, special occasions, sales; each for both public and private clients.
•   Specializes in combing photos, replacing backgrounds, and improving overall appearance of photos.

This employment listing has a lot of problems, starting with being too brief and not specific enough. The first bullet is ok.  It's descriptive and gives a list of commercial work the individual has done, but none of it relates to photo editing and seems a little out of place. 

The second bullet has a different sentence structure – there isn't a verb in this bullet.  The bullet relates to photo editing but doesn't say anything about what the job seeker did.  It only lists the applications where the edited photos have been used.

The third bullet is the meat of the description.  It lists specific photo editing skills – combing, replacing backgrounds and improving appearance.  This is very general and will not impress a hiring manager.  Every job seeker that applies for this position will say something about their ability to "improve the overall appearance of photos."  If everyone says the same thing, it will not differentiate you to say it also.  It is essential to be specific and show how you are different.

Revised Resume

We revised the job description to be much more specific.  Below is the new description:

    FREELANCE PHOTO EDITOR/GRAPHIC DESIGNER 2003 – present

  • Creates logos, business cards, brochures and a wide range of marketing materials for various businesses.
  • Provides photo editing for websites, books, special occasions and sales materials.  Clients include both individuals and commercial businesses.
  • Photo editing specialties include:
    • Replacing backgrounds  
    • Cropping photos 
    • Removing wrinkles, background objects/people and reflections 
    • Compilation photos: merging people from different photos for holiday cards, switching people from group photos so everyone is smiling and with their eyes open 
    • Adjusting tint, color and lighting 
    • Creating video slideshows from still photos including text, menus, transitions, and music 
    • Stylizing photos with a wide variety of techniques 

We changed the job title to show the greater scope of experience, making the first bullet fit better with the job.  We added a verb to the second bullet and reworded the description of the clients.  The big change was made to the third bullet.  We scrap the text and replaced it with a skills list.  This is still a general listing of skills but we added extra detail in a few places.  In particular, we added a clear description of the compilation photos. 

If we had listed just “compilation photos,” this would not have been as effective.  By describing clearing a couple of the project types in this category, we demonstrated the job seeker's skill with photo editing.  These are more advanced skills.  By just listing that the job seeker has completed projects requiring these skills, they establish credibility with these skills and with all of the photo editing skills.

Another advantage of listing all of these skills related to the hiring manager's goals.  It is likely that a few of these skills are a higher priority than the others.  If they have one significant priority, they will screen resumes by looking for this skill.  Listing all of the job seekers' photo editing skills increases the likelihood that the job seeker has mentioned the exact skill the hiring manager wants.

Other Changes

To make room on the resume for the added information, we deleted information from past positions.  There were some bullets that demonstrated skills and experiences that do nothing to support the graphic design and photo editing skills.  Since these didn't add value, we deleted them.  If the job seeker decided to apply for a position focused in these areas, they would need to add them back and deleted some of the detail from the photo editing. 

We made a lot of other changes to the resume.  One of the most important additions was to add a link to the job seeker's online portfolio.  It is important to show your past performance.  Most people can do this by describing accomplishments.  In design fields, it is often much easier to show what the job seeker has designed.  An online portfolio does this very well.

How Will Your Resume Be Remembered

After a hiring manager reads your resume, how will it be remembered?  It is likely your resume will be read along with dozens or hundreds of others.  The person screening the resumes will only remember a few, perhaps only five or ten.  If your resume doesn't stand out, it's unlikely to be remembered.

Some people worked for a highly respected company or went to a top tier school.  These can make a good impression and are often remembered by a hiring manager.  If you didn't go to a top school or work at one of the most respected companies, your background may still standout to some employers.  Direct competitors of an employer may consider your experience exceptional.

Another way to standout is to present impressive accomplishments.  This is possibly the best way to be remembered.  Accomplishments show what you have done and demonstrate what you can do for a potential employer.  Giving good examples of your successes will help you stand out.  The key to being remembered is creating a picture that is absolutely clear in the hiring manager's mind.  This requires giving specific details of what you did and what results you achieved.

You can also stand out and get remembered by showing you have a skill that is in demand.  Most fields have skills that are rare and difficult.  If you can show a high skill level in these areas, you can make a very strong impression and get remembered.  The key to making an impression with a skill is to demonstrate your skill level by showing what you have done using that skill. 

There are others ways to get remembered.  Your resume could have a highly unusual style or structure.  You could add information that is rare on a resume.  You can also have glaring mistakes and typos.  All of these will get attention and help the hiring manager remember you.  Unfortunately, being remembered for these reasons isn't going to help you.  In fact, it will hurt your chances since you will be remembered for a negative reason.

The main reason you want to be remembered by the hiring manager early in the process is to become one of the front runners.  If you are qualified and competing against other qualified candidates, you need to find a way for the hiring manager to think of your background in a simple manner.  In essence, you are providing the hiring manager a way of giving you a title or nickname – the Harvard grad, the SAS expert or the operations executive that turned around a plant in under a year.  These are simple tags that can help a person remember your background – much more than just what the tag conveys. 

You don't want to be a nondescript person that is qualified but doesn't bring anything unique to the table.  This will make it tough to beat out your competition.  Additionally, if you do beat out everyone else, you still need to convince the company to hire you.  They have the option of leaving the position open to continue looking.  This makes it essential to show why you should be hired and give the hiring manager a simple way to remember this.

Good File Formats for a Resume

When you submit a resume, it is important to provide it in a format that is useful to the company. Most companies have a database system that will pull the name, contact information and other data out of a resume.  This is done automatically, saving the company the time it would take to key this information in manually.  These systems are the backbone of a company's hiring process.  If your resume isn't compatible, it may be rejected without ever being read. 

The most common format for a resume is Microsoft Word – a .doc format.  Any hiring manager should be able to open this format.  One concern with Word is the version.  Most people have not upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 yet.  2007 uses a .docx format that cannot be opened in earlier versions of Word.  It is much safer to use the Word 97/2000 file format.

Another common format you might consider is the Rich Text Format – a .rtf format.  An .rtf file can be opened by a very large range of programs.  It's a safe bet if you don't use Word.

A less utilized but very safe options is a plain text file – a .txt format.  This is probably the most compatible format, but it does have a significant drawback.  Plain text files do not offer any formatting options.  There are some recruiting database systems that are limited to importing plain text.  Usually these systems will require you to copy your resume into text box as part of a registration form.

A common format that you should not use for your resume is the Portable Document Format – the .pdf.  PDF's are great to ensure that the reader sees exactly the same layout and format you created.  The problem with a pdf is that most database systems cannot extract the content.

One final type that is rare and should be avoided is an image file.  Image files are even worse than pdf's.  They can't be read by the software that processes resumes and the text can't be highlight and copied manually.  This makes entering the data from a resume into a contact management system completely manual, and will often lead to the resume being discarded.

Bottom line: Stay with standard formats – Word 97/2000, rich text or plain text.

Consultant Objective Statement

I reviewed a resume that had an objective statement that illustrates several mistakes. The job seeker was an experienced consultant. I can't tell you the exact experience level because their resume didn't have employment dates (a major problem). I would guess the person had close to 10 years of experience.

Below is the objective statement:

<University Name> MBA seeks Contract Possitions anywhere in the US or Internationally will travel anywhere as long as per diem is provided. Will consider permanent/direct hire possitions in the <Metro Area> area only.

The first problem is the spelling of “Possitions.” This doesn't bother me much. The job seeker is from a non-english speaking country and spent a portion of their career in that country. Additionally, the job seeker is a technical consultant, making communications skills less important than in other roles.

Another problem is way the candidate states the value they offer. The job seeker makes their MBA the only feature important enough to highlight in their objective. For a recent graduate, this would be ok, but this candidate has significant experience. They should emphasize their experience, skills or accomplishments instead of their education.

The biggest problem with the objective is that it doesn't say what the job seeker wants to do. There is a goal regarding geography – they won't relocate permanently, but they will travel anywhere for a contract position. This doesn't narrow the possibilities that much. The objective doesn't say what type of job the person wants. From their resume, I can make an educated guess based on their experience, but you don't want to make a hiring manager have to work to figure out what you want.

Finally, your objective statement should not specify your compensation or benefits requirements. The statement that per diem is required doesn't help the impression. Although this is a very reasonable expectation, stating it this prominently in the resume objective gives me the impression that this person is going to be very demanding and difficult to manage.

Resume of a Failed Business Owner

I read a resume today from an individual that had been running a company they started more than five years ago.  The company was in the movie industry.

The job seeker had successfully started their company and kept it alive for over five years.  They also have produced several multi-million dollar films in that time, raising the required capital along the way. 

This is good experience and shows the scope of this individual’s responsibility.  The problem was that the performance of the company was never discussed. 

Having a large budget doesn’t make someone a success.  Controlling costs and producing a profit are critical to a business’s success.  This information was left out of the resume.

It’s likely that the job seeker is looking for a job because their business has failed or is in the process of failing.  This isn’t a career stopper, in fact, keeping a business running for as long as this individual did and going through the decline and failure was probably one of the best learning experiences in this person’s career. 

So what should they do?  The first thing is to not hide what happened.  By not saying what happened to the company, a hiring manager is going to assume it failed – so confirming that isn’t going to make a worse impression.  It’s likely that the reality of the situation isn’t as bad as the image a hiring manager will imagine.

The next thing to do is discuss some of the successes along the way.  When a person has a business fail, it’s easy to dwell on the failure. Getting hired requires recognizing and promoting the successes. A business doesn’t survive as long as this one did if it never turned a profit.  Talking about the specific projects that were successful will help demonstrate the capabilities of the job seeker.

On this resume, there were lots of numbers stating how big the projects where and how much was spent.  There was nothing about revenues or profits – just expenses.  Anyone can have expenses – generating sales and profits are the key.

The job seeker should emphasize their strengths.  It is likely the individual was very good at one or more aspects of the business – promotions, production, administration, etc. – unfortunately, their resume isn’t clear on this.  Identifying these strengths and highlighting them in the resume will help make the case that this individual could be a valued employee.

The job seeker didn’t highlight any successes and they didn’t explain the failure.  All we know is that they worked on building this business and it didn’t last.  That’s not a selling point. 

If you are in this situation, highlighting your strengths and accomplishments will help you get interviews. In an interview, it will be important to show what roles are good for you and what roles are similar to the failed venture. You and the employer will want to match your skills to the right role. If you can clearly explain this, the failure will not be career killer.

Editing an Objective Statement

I reviewed the resume of a job seeker yesterday that had a fairly typical objective statement. Here’s how the statement read:

To advance toward a <Job Title> role in a large <business type and industry> while developing valuable experience that will be benefit my career advancement.

This is ok. It’s clear and concise. Most importantly, it gives a specific objective. The worst objectives are the very general statements that really don’t say anything. For example:

To obtain a position that will utilize my skills and abilities and provide profession growth while benefiting the company.

Writing a general statement like this is a wait of space. The example from the job seeker is a vast improvement over the general one, but it’s still not great.

Let’s look at how we rewrote the objective. The first thing we did was change the “Objective” section to the “Executive Summary.” The job seeker had a number of very impressive accomplishments buried on the second page of their resume. We moved them to the top and grouped them with the objective statement.

We then rewrote the objective to be a sales pitch instead of a wish list. Your resume is designed to sell you’re background and potential to an employer to get you an interview. Focusing the most prominent sentence on your resume on what you want isn’t a good sales pitch. You need to include what you are pursuing, but wrapping in a statement of your qualifications is a good way to go.

Here’s the new executive summary we developed:

Exceptionally detailed and organized <Current Job Title> with a seven year track record of accomplishment in increasingly challenging roles with a large scale <business type and industry> interested in advancing towards a <Job Title> role.

  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment
  • Bullet with an accomplishment

This statement is much better than the original. It focuses on the strengths of the job seeker, while still mentioning their career goal. It reinforces the pattern of success the job seeker has had with a statement of their “track record of accomplishment” and “increasingly challenging roles.”

Most importantly, the exec summary doesn’t just say that the job seeker is good – it shows how successful the individual has been with the accomplishment bullets. Each was two to three sentences and described a significant project or challenge that showed the job seeker’s success.

The 8 Biggest Resume Mistakes

Make sure you don’t make these mistakes on your resume.

1. No Accomplishments

The biggest mistake job seekers make is to omit their accomplishments. If you don’t show how you have been successful, hiring managers may assume you haven’t been successful. When you are considered for a position, you will be competing against others with similar experience. If you only list your responsibilities and another candidate with the same experience as you lists their accomplishments, they are more likely to get an interview.

2. No Customization

Resumes should be customized to the position and company. This is a small step that can pay big dividends. Often, changing just a few small details is all that is needed. Research the requirements and priorities of a position, then emphasize your strengths in meeting those requirements.

3. Large Blocks of Text

A resume should be easy to read quickly. Large blocks of text can make a resume difficult to read. The worst offenders contain just one of two paragraphs that are each a page or more long. Break up text into smaller blocks that are easy to scan and read.

4. Poor Formatting

The formatting on a resume gives signposts to what is the most important and draws the reader’s attention to these elements. Poor formatting can draw the reader to less important information.  To make the best impression, you want to lead with your strengths and have the hiring manager drawn to the most marketable skills and accomplishments in your background.

5. Too Long

The vast majority of resumes should be one to two pages. Resumes that are five, ten or more pages will make a poor impression and won’t get read. The worst examples are written by copying and pasting the job descriptions for every job the individual held.  Focus on your skills and accomplishments, highlighting the most significant elements from your background.  The most impressive information should be on the first page, with additional important details on the 2nd.

6. Unclear Objective

Many resumes fail to make it clear what type of job the job seeker is pursuing. This is especially problematic with job seekers that have changed careers several times. If you are making a general application to a company, a clear, specific objective on your resume or in a cover letter will help.  If you are responding to a specific job posting, an objective statement is less important.

7. Grammar/Spelling Errors

In our research, we have found that approximately 5% of resumes have spelling and grammatical errors. These can make a very poor impression. Make sure you have someone proofread your resume.

8. Extraneous Information

Adding information unrelated to your career won’t help your resume and may hurt your chances. Avoid personal information like hobbies.  There should be more important details in your background that demonstrate your skills and abilities.  Do not sacrifice this information for personal details that are unrelated to the job.

All of these mistakes can hurt your chances of getting an interview and ultimately hired.  If you are in a competitive field with a lot of job seekers going after the same positions, it is important to maximize your chances.  None of these mistakes, individually, will keep you from getting interviews every time.  What they can do is reduce your odds of landing interviews and lengthen your job search.  A little work to avoid these mistakes can give you an edge and help you get hired faster.

Cool Resume Checker

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day!

I’ve been thinking about something for a long time and finally got around to exploring it more fully this weekend. It’s a tool that can help you check your resume in a completely different way – I think you’ll find it helpful in giving you a different perspective on your resume.

The tool I’ve been interested in is Wordle (www.wordle.net).  It’s a free website and allows you to create word clouds.  If you’re not familiar with the term “word clouds” – don’t worry.  They’re pretty simple.

The idea is to create an image from the word frequency in a piece of text.  Every word is listed once in the image and the frequency determines the size of the word.

The advantage of this for job seekers is to see what words are emphasized on their resume.  This has an obvious benefit for search results in resume databases and ensuring your keywords are prominent – but this is only a secondary benefit.

What is really important is the impression your resume creates. The words you use and their frequency can affect this.  Since were talking about an imaging tool, we need to take a look at an image.

Below is a word cloud created from a job seeker’s resume (all references to the job seeker’s name, company and location were deleted before creating the image).  The resume is from a transitioning senior military officer.

What is most prominent here?  Here are the top 10:

Support ~ Logistics ~ Program ~ Provided ~ Requirements ~ Command ~ Army

From this list, it’s pretty clear the individual works in a field that does project or program management.  Beyond that, there is only one verbs – provided.  This is far from  impressive.  You have to look hard to find action verbs that demonstrate accomplishments.

Overall, the word cloud is pretty bland – a lot of detail of responsibilities and not much substance.  What’s really interesting is that the resume has the same problem.

 

One final note… the job seeker whose resume I used above is actually a very strong candidate.  Their track record is excellent with a consistent pattern of success and achievement. Unfortunately, the resume they sent me and are using for their job search does a terrible job presenting their background.

Keyword Summaries on Resumes

If you are planning on posting your resume on the internet or applying to large corporate sites, it’s important to include keywords in your resume.  It will be tough to be found if your resume doesn’t appear in the search results.  This is even more of a problem if the company uses database software to conduct the first screen of the resume.

It’s easy to put keywords into your resume.  They should naturally occur within the text.  To ensure you appear in every search that matches your background, you may want to include a keyword summary section. 

Here’s what I saw on a resume today.  The resume started with an executive summary, then had a keyword summary and then the work experience.  The job seeker was from a non-technical executive position.  The keywords listed included things like training management, organizational development and project management. 

The order is the first place where the job seeker got it wrong.  The keyword summary isn’t important enough to go at the top of the resume. Having the words "organizational development" at the top of a resume do nothing to differentiate the candidate. 

The other big mistake was calling the section a keyword summary.  The keyword summary is essentially a listing of skills.  Call it a skills section and write it in a format that appeals to a human reader.  The content will still help with search results and it won’t detract from the presentation. 

What if you’re in a highly technical field?  Then you may want to put your technical skills near the top of your resume.  For technical roles, the technical skills can be the most important information on your resume.  They are one of the primary selling points for you.  For most job seekers though, the skills section is information that is important, but a much lower priority than the work experience and education.