Resume Writing Archives - Page 3 of 13 - Palladian Career Resources

Using Metrics to Write a Resume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resume Writing for Manufacturing Careers - Front Cover

Demand Forecasting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sustainability on Your Resume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are You Engaged in Your Career

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

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

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

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

Accomplishments

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

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

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

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

What You Can Do

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

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

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

Resume Without Job Titles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Should You Do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Five Reasons to Avoid a Functional Resume

A functional resume can be effective in a few rare situations, but more often, this structure will hurt your job search chances. Job seekers like the functional format because it allows them much greater flexibility in highlighting the information they think is important. Unfortunately, using a functional resume can cause a hiring manager to eliminate you from consideration before they understand your potential.

The basic structure of a functional resume separates a job seeker’s experience from their work history. In a chronological resume, experiences and accomplishments are grouped under each job. Functional resumes break this pattern. Experiences and accomplishments are grouped under functional areas, mixing experiences from different jobs. The job seeker’s work history is then presented as a list jobs.

The functional structure makes it easy to tailor a resume to the key elements of a job. It also emphasizes significant experiences and accomplishments. This makes it a tempting choice. If you are thinking of using a functional structure, consider these five reasons to avoid a functional resume first:

1. No Context for Accomplishments

Accomplishments establish your performance track record and provide the best selling point for your potential. A job seeker who shows a clear, easy to understand and significant accomplishment in the past will help show a hiring manager what they can accomplish in the future. This makes presenting your accomplishments a critical element of your resume.

For an accomplishment to be impressive, the context of the accomplishment must be clear. This requires showing the job seeker’s role, scope of responsibility, the actions the job seeker took and the specific results delivered to the organization.

In a chronological resume, listing an accomplishment under a job provides some of this context. The job description provides the scope of responsibility and can imply some of the actions that would ordinarily be taken. A functional resume detaches the accomplishment from the job, making the scope impossible to determine.

2. Job Responsibilities Are Unclear

Understanding the job seeker’s scope of responsibilities throughout their career is important for a hiring manager to understand their performance. A functional resume often omits this information. The experience and accomplishments of the job seeker are listed throughout the functional areas. They are not tied to the jobs. The job listing is just a list of employers, job titles and dates. If the job title doesn’t make the scope of responsibilities clear, there’s no way to know what the job seeker did. Most job titles are ambiguous. Even commonly used job titles vary in their scope from company to company, and some job titles are unique to a single company. You cannot rely on a job listing to show what you did.

3. Mismatches Hiring Manager Goals

Hiring managers review resumes with specific goals in mind. The hiring manager will look for key data points – skills, details of past jobs and accomplishments. The hiring manager will also have a priority for each element. For example, the first time a resume is reviewed may only involve a simple check for the number of years of experience in a role, the education and the years of experience with a key skill. In this situation, the hiring manager is likely to read the first few lines of the resume, and then skip to the employment and education section. Because these sections are just a listing of names and dates, they won’t do much to sell the job seeker.

You want to present information in the order that a hiring manager wants to read it. This requires focusing on the hiring manager’s goals – not yours. Functional resumes turn this upside down. It encourages a job seeker to focus on what they want to promote, and can make it more difficult for the hiring manager to find the information they want to see first.

4. Implies You Are Hiding Something

Hiring managers are naturally very skeptical. They know a resume is the best sales pitch a job seeker can write, and a resume emphasizes the positives and de-emphasizes the negatives. This can lead to mistrust and doubt any time a job seeker presents information in a way that makes it difficult to decipher. Using a functional structure to obscure an element of your background will usually backfire. The uncertainty in a key detail of your experience leads to the hiring manager to assume the worst. Instead of improving your odds, you have now created a situation where the hiring manager has a significant doubt.

5. The Least Common Resume Format

Chronological resumes are the most common format used. In our resume benchmarking surveys, we found roughly two thirds of all resumes are chronological. Functional resumes are rare and offer a vastly different presentation from the typical chronological resume. Being unusual has drawbacks (implying you are hiding something), but there is an even greater problem. Hiring managers are much more familiar with assessing chronological resumes. They will feel more comfortable with a chronological resume and will assess chronological resumes more efficiently. This can lead to a hiring manager missing a key detail in your resume because they don’t know where to look. It would be great if every hiring manager read every word of every resume but this is never going to happen. Hiring managers skim resumes quickly. If they don’t know where to look for key information and skip over it as a result, they will assume you don’t have the experience or skill they want. You then get rejected. Using a chronological resume makes this process easier for the hiring manager.

When writing a resume, job seekers want to “stand out” from the competition. The key is differentiating yourself for the right reasons. Innovative, unusual or creative designs obscure the substance of a resume. It is this substance that will get you an interview and ultimately hired.

Provide a clear presentation of your experience and skills. Including several significant accomplishments demonstrating your track record of success. Package this information in a clear, easy to read structure. Although following functional structure should usually be avoided, strictly following a chronological format is not required. There are numerous hybrid variations that incorporate functional elements into a chronological resume. This can often offer the best of both structures.

ASCII Resumes

Making a resume look pretty can be important. Unfortunately, one format will not work in every situation. You will need an ASCII version in addition to your MS Word version.

An ASCII file is a pure text file with virtually no formatting. You can’t bold, italicize, change fonts or font sizes, center or justify the test, or do anything else common in word processing programs. Think of an ASCII file as a text file similar to what an old typewriter could do. The only characters you can put in an ASCII file are the upper and lower case letters, numbers, punctuation and a limited number of symbols – generally, only the characters you can see on a standard keyboard.

ASCII files are important because there are a number of computer systems that can only read ASCII files. You are most likely to run into these when you fill out an online form. The form will have text boxes that do not allow any formatting. Making your resume look good in a text box like this is tough, but it can be done.

The first thing you need to do is use extra lines to space things out. You can’t use indents, changes in font size or bolding to identify new sections. This requires using a new line to add space. Your resume will get longer, but this is a small concession to make it readable.

The next formatting trick you need to use is bulleted lists. You have to manually create bullets in an ASCII file. To do this, you should select a symbol or combination of symbols for your bullets. A few options to consider are: *, @, #, >, ->, –>, =>, and ==>. I’m not a big fan of the @ or #, but I do see these on a lot of resumes. My favorite is a single equals sign and a greater than symbol: =>. This stands out in a resume and really calls attention to a line without being overwhelming.

You can also add some underlining by using dashes, underscores or equal signs. Be cautious when using them. The lines will draw the reader’s attention. If your resume has a bunch of them, the lines will be distracting and make it difficult to read.

An ASCII resume will never be a pretty as a resume formatted in a word processing program. You would not submit an ASCII resume if you didn’t have to. Despite this, there will be times when you will have to have a plain text resume. Below is a sample of how you can format an ASCII version of your resume:

Work Experience
—————

Job Title, Company Name, Start to End Dates
City, State

Text describing the positions with a summary of your responsibilities. Keep this to two or three lines max.

=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment

Job Title, Company Name, Start to End Dates
City, State

Text describing the positions with a summary of your responsibilities. Keep this to two or three lines max.

=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment

Job Title, Company Name, Start to End Dates
City, State

Text describing the positions with a summary of your responsibilities. Keep this to two or three lines max.

=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment
=> Bullet point demonstrating an accomplishment

Education
———

Degree, School
Major

Skills
——

=> Skill
=> Skill
=> Skill
=> Skill
=> Skill
=> Skill

Describe Your Work Experience So a Child Can Understand It

One of the most common mistakes job seekers make is over complicating their background. Unless you are seeking the same job from a similar company, it unlikely the hiring manager will understand all the details of the job. This problem is magnified if the hiring manager is an individual outside your functional area.

It is common for a team of people to assess candidates. At least one will be in your functional area, but the others could be from completely different departments. They may understand the basics of the job being filled, but are unlikely to be experts in the career field you are pursuing.

Most people assessing your resume and interviewing you will not understand what you have done if you don’t explain it clearly. Surprisingly, some of the most confusing and difficult to comprehend resumes are also some of the longest resumes. The problem comes from the detail. Providing a ton of details, staying in the weeds so to speak, will make it difficult for a reader to understand your experience.

The solution is to keep it simple. Explain each role you have had in a sentence or two simple enough that a person with no familiarity with your career field could understand. How would you explain your job to a child in middle or high school? If you can explain your background very briefly in a way that is easy to understand, your resume will be much more effective.

Making your resume easy to digest for anyone requires you to explain very technical terms and to use few if any acronyms. Use terminology most people will understand and your resume will be easier to read.

Keeping your resume simple doesn’t mean you discard every technical detail. If you need to provide technical details of what you have done, explain them a little. If you provide a simple general explanation of what you did and then provide the technical details, most people will be able to understand the significance of what you wrote, even if they don’t understand every detail.

Bottom line: If you don’t write about it on your resume, it never happened, and if you write about it a complicated, confusing way that is difficult for most people to understand, it never happened. Make your resume accessible to as wide an audience as possible. If it can only be understood by the primary hiring manager, it is unlikely it will ever make it into that person’s hands. Resume screeners are likely to delete it before it ever gets to the person that can understand it.

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.

Turn Your Resume Into a Billboard

One advertising media that can teach an important lesson about resume writing is a billboard on an interstate. Billboards can be effective because they are seen by a huge number of people who have little else to read. They also pose a significant challenge. Drivers only have a second or two to read the billboard.

A resume is an advertisement for you. It needs to contain some specific information about your background, but at its core, a resume is designed to make a sales pitch. Focusing on this aspect of resume writing can greatly improve the effectiveness of the document you produce.

Imagine designing a billboard version of your resume. You would have to shorten the content to a few words. Adding too much will hurt the overall effectiveness, even if the added content is important and impressive. The reason for this is simple. A driver may only have time to read five or ten words. You can’t count on them starting at the beginning of the message. This means that any content beyond the most important five or ten words will reduce the chance the most important content will be read.

Your resume faces a similar challenge. A hiring manager will only look at a resume for a short time. Often, it will only get a 15 to 30 second look initially. This prevents the hiring manager from reading more than few a sentences. If they read content that is of little importance, the odds your resume will be rejected go way up.

To write the best resume, you should not assess the value of each piece of content in isolation. This will lead to a resume that is too long. You need to assess the relative value of the content and delete the elements that may be valuable but distract the reader from the most important elements.

One of the biggest challenges in this process is detaching the emotional ties to specific experiences. Deleting something from your resume does not reduce the significance of the experience. It only reflects the lower importance of the element to a specific audience. For example, billboards for restaurants, hotels and other destinations always list the exit number. The exit number is a very minor detail in assessing the quality and value of a restaurant in every situation except for a passing driver who doesn’t know where the location is. In this case, details about the quality of the food, the selection, the cost and the overall attractiveness of the restaurant are less important details and are usually omitted from the billboard.

Approach your resume from the same perspective of the billboard designer. Imagine a hiring manager speeding past resumes, only getting a quick glance at the content and deciding in an instant, whether they are going to get off the exit and take a long look, or keep driving. If you catch their attention quickly, you will greatly improve your odds of getting an interview.