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Applying Behavioral Interview Techniques to Your Resume

Behavioral interviews ask situation based questions and focus on getting the job seeker to talk about specific examples of their performance. The technique was developed because past performance is the best indicator of future performance. If a hiring manager can assess how you performed in a number of key situations relevant to the job, they will be able to better assess your potential in that job.

The behavior techniques provide a great opportunity for a job seeker to set themselves apart from their competition. Creating this same impression in your resume can help propel you to the top of the pile. Right now, companies are receiving hundreds of resumes for every position. The vast majority of resumes look alike and do nothing to differentiate the job seeker. You can use the lessons from behavioral interviewing to upgrade your resume and make a powerful impression.

Focus on Accomplishments: The cornerstone of a successful behavioral interview is showing the hiring manager past successes. You need to do this on your resume too. The focus of your resume needs to be your successes and contributions in past positions.

Be Specific: Behavioral interviews ask questions designed to get the candidate to tell specific stories from their experience. Be specific on your resume too. A few very detailed stories of your past success will make the best impression.

Keep it Simple: The most important aspect of showing your accomplishments is not showing the biggest impact. The key element is making it easy for the hiring manager to picture what you did. This requires explaining the basic and providing simple, easy to understand examples.

Detailed Results: For an accomplishment to be impressive, you need to show the results you achieved. This requires specific numbers demonstrating the scope of the accomplishment.

Make it memorable: The accomplishments on your resume are the short highlight film clips that summarize your career. How are your favorite actors and athletes remembered? Often, an actor who starred in dozens of movies will be remembered for one movie, and possibly one scene from that movie. An athlete is often summarized by a single play. These isolated events create a power memory that makes it easy to remember the person. Most job seekers have completely forgettable resumes. A single accomplishment that creates a strong, specific image can make you memorable and give you an edge in your job search.

A few accomplishments explained in detail can set your resume apart from your competition. Most job seekers fail to show accomplishments on their resume. Adding a few accomplishments will greatly improve the success of your job search.

As important as it is to include examples of your accomplishments, you also need to tailor them to the position. List a few accomplishments that directly relate to the job you are applying for. Ideally, you will provide answers to the top two or three questions a hiring manager would ask in an interview.

Our book on Interview Preparation teaches behavioral interview techniques in a quick, easy to learn style. The book is set up with short chapters that each cover one step in the preparation process. Each chapter is followed by exercises for you to complete that move you toward your goal of mastering behavioral interviewing. Get our book on behavioral interviewing.

Accomplishments that Hurt a Resume

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Retiree Seeking Employment

I’m helping a retiree find a part time or full time position to supplement his retirement income. He decided he wants to work, and with the drop in the stock market, could use some supplemental income. His search is different from most job seekers. He isn’t looking for a position similar to the job he retired from. That was a VP level position. He’s looking for a much lower level position.

I’m helping a retiree find a part time or full time position to supplement his retirement income. He’s decided he wants to work and with the drop in the stock market, could use some supplemental income. His search is different from most job seekers. He isn’t looking for a position similar to the job he retired from. That was a VP level position. He’s looking for a much lower level position.

The challenge for this candidate is three fold. First, he hasn’t worked in more than five years. Extended gaps in employment can cause a hiring manager to pass on a candidate. It raises a question about the candidate’s commitment and motivation to work. If the candidate does not offer clear value, it can be the deciding factor.

Second, the candidate’s last position was in a senior management role. He is not looking for a similar role. He’s seeking an entry level customer service or administration position. This is a vast departure from his experience. Although he has the skills to do these positions very well, a hiring manager may prefer a candidate coming from a role similar to the job being filled. The concern is that the candidate will not like the job and will quit soon after being hired.

Third, the job seeker’s age will be a factor. Age discrimination is illegal and most companies will not discriminate based on age. Despite this, the candidate is at a stage in his life where he has been retired for five years. He’s looking for supplemental income to make up for stock market declines. A hiring manager may conclude that the candidate would quit as soon as the market rebounds. It really isn’t the age of the job seeker that is the issue – it’s the stage in his life that he’s reached. It can be difficult to tell if the candidate is really serious about returning to work.

These three challenges can sink a job search. They are not insurmountable, though. If the candidate is really serious about finding and staying in a job, he can sell through the challenges. The key is framing the candidate’s skills and abilities in a way that is impressive.

Past Skills

The candidate is proud of a number of high level management skills and accomplishments from his career. These are great, but have nothing to do with the jobs he is pursuing. If he emphasizes the scope of responsibility and size of his accomplishments too much, he may hurt his chances. Even if they aren’t a negative, the accomplishments probably won’t help. A hiring manager is going to assess and hire based on the specific skills required to do a job. For example, Tiger Woods may be the highest skilled golfer in history, but those skills wouldn’t mean a thing if he wanted a Network Administrator, Manufacturing Engineer, or Emergency Room Nurse job. Each of these positions has a completely different skill set.

Relevant Skills

The skills and abilities that are most relevant for a retiree looking for an entry level position to supplement their income relate to the concerns of the hiring manager. Reliability and honesty are significant factors. A commitment to learn and accept feedback are also important. How will this candidate adjust to working for a manager that might be half or even a third of his age? Does he “know it all” or will he strive to learn? The other factor the hiring manager will want to assess is the energy level and motivation of the job seeker. A candidate who really doesn’t want to work is unlikely to be successful over the long term, and will be passed over by hiring managers.

Writing a resume and preparing to interview require addressing the concerns of the hiring manager. That means focusing on reliability, maturity, honesty, quality and a strong work ethic. If you do this, you will give yourself a chance, and a lot of hiring managers will value the experience you bring to the table. If you focus on other skills unrelated to the job, it is unlikely these skills will be valued.

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.

How to Present a String of Short Term Jobs on a Resume

Some industries naturally foster high mobility, while others have undergone major turmoil causing businesses to come and go quickly. Regardless of the cause, if you held a number of short term jobs, presenting your work history can be a challenge.

The challenge comes balancing two priorities. First, you want to highlight your current experience and skills. Second, you want to emphasize your stability and reliability. Putting the jobs at the top of your resume satisfies the first priority but also highlights the lack of stability.

There are a couple of solutions. First, you can choose a functional or hybrid structure. In these structures, you focus the resume on your skills. Near the top of your resume, you list the key skills you want to promote and provide a detailed description of your experience and accomplishments with each skill. This can be very effective in technical careers.

Your goal with a functional or hybrid structure is not to hide your work history. You still need to show where you worked with start and end dates. The goal is to craft a sales presentation for your background focused on your strengths. Trying to hide your work history will backfire. At some point, a hiring manager is going to ask about your work history. If you have created a false perception, when the hiring manager learns the truth, it will cast doubt on everything else in your background.

A second option to consider is listing your work experience and explaining the reasons for leaving each job. If you have worked for a series of companies that all closed or downsized, explaining this situation can help. It explains to the hiring manager why you didn’t stay where you were. You should keep this brief, only a few words. Provide just enough for the hiring manager to understand the cause.

Choosing which option to take will depend on the elements you want to emphasize. You may want to highlight one or two employers because of the reputation of the companies. This requires a chronological resume with your work history near the top of your resume. If you want to emphasize technical skills, consider the functional structure. If you choose the functional structure, this doesn’t preclude you from also explaining why you left each position. You can do both.

Improving a Resume Summary Section

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

Below are the first few lines of the executive summary:

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

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

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

I would rewrite the summary section in this form:

Veteran Military Officer with extensive aerospace industry experience.

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

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

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

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

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

Resume Layout – Use Tabs Not Spaces

Many people put a lot of time into spacing out their resume so it looks perfect. Then, they send it to a hiring manager and the formatting changes completely. Often, the problem is caused by the font the person used to write the resume. You can’t guarantee the reader is going to see your resume with the same font you used.

Below are eight examples of one line of textthe same resume text. The first four examples are formatted using spaces and the second four are spaced with tabs.

Even though the different fonts are significantly different sizes (even though the text size is 11pt for all of the choices), the text formatted with Tabs still lines up.

One of the challenges I find job seekers run into is knowing how their text is spaced. There is a tool in most word processors that makes this easy. The button with a backwards “P” will display all of the formatting markers. This will show you have text is spaced on your resume. Below is the same text from above with the markers displayed. A dot is a space and an arrow is a tab.

In case you have trouble finding the button that shows the markers, it looks like this:

Just click it once to turn this feature on, and click it again to see your resume without these formatting markers.

Our book on Resume Writing provides numerous formatting recommendations. The examples use resumes from manufacturing careers, but the techniques are applicable to any career field. Get our book and learn resume formatting techniques.

Resume Writing Webinar

Next week, I’m going to conduct a webinar on resume writing. The “Resume Writing Basics” class will be held on Monday July 6th at 11AM EDT. The session is free and I invite any job seeker interested in writing or improving their resume to attend.

My goal is to start offering a regular series of webinars. I currently have plans for a Job Interview Basics class and a Job Search Basics Class, and am hoping to schedule these for the week of July 6th.

All three of the planned classes are based on seminars I have taught in the past. They focus on giving specific advice job seekers can use right now. I explain why the advice I give works – focusing on the perspective of a hiring manager. There is a lot of advice out there that sounds good but just doesn’t work in practice. In these webinars, I’ll show you why some techniques work so you can build an effective job search plan for yourself.

Resume Writing Basics

The “Resume Writing Basics” webinar will focus on teaching how construct an effective resume in this one-hour session. The class will cover the following topics:

The Purpose of a Resume
How Hiring Managers Assess Resumes
Content: What to Include in a Resume
Choosing the Right Resume Length
Choosing the Right Resume Structure
How to Stand Out By Including Accomplishments
How to Customize a Resume
How to Review a Resume

Each topic will include specific and straight forward instructions along with an explanation for why the techniques are effective. The webinar starts with the basics and will benefit individuals who have never written a resume, as well as others who need to update an old resume. Register for Resume Writing Basics

Check back tomorrow for the schedule of the other planned webinars. I also have several classes planned at address advanced job search topics and will roll those out over the next month.

A Resume to Guarantee a Failed Job Search

A resume I received recently virtually guaranteed the job seeker will not land a job. I see a lot of bad resumes. Most have significant opportunities for improvement. Despite this, the resume I read stood out as a disaster.

The resume failed to include anything to demonstrate the ability of the job seeker to succeed in the field he is pursuing. Even more troubling, there was almost nothing on the resume to indicate what the job seeker was seeking.

The job seeker had held several entry level jobs in a variety of industries. Each field involved vastly different skills. The job seeker packed the first page of his resume with all of these skills. There were dozens.

This is common. Many job seekers try to include every skill, just in case one of the skills is important to a hiring manager. The problem with this strategy is how a hiring manager assesses a resume. A hiring manager will look for the skills the job seeker is strongest with first. If there is no differentiation between the skills, the hiring manager won’t be able to determine, which are especially strong and, which are weak. All of the skills get discounted to a low average proficiency level.

The skills listed on the resume had little to nothing to do with the field the job seeker was pursuing. The job seeker was interested in changing career fields. There is no way I could have known this from just the resume. If I had a position that fit this person’s goals, I would never have thought to consider him for it. It’s almost impossible to land a job if your resume won’t get an employer to even consider you for the right position. Unfortunately, this mistake is common.

What You Should Do

Prioritize Your Skills – What are your three most marketable skills? These are skills that relate directly to the position you are pursuing. They are also skills where your skill level is high.
Review the Top of Your Resume – Read the top half of the first page of your resume. Are you three most marketable skills mentioned prominently in this area? How many other skills are mentioned? Do you have any accomplishments showing your ability to contribute using your skills?
Emphasize Your Marketable Skills – List your top three skills in the first couple lines of your resume. You want these skills to be so obvious a hiring manager will never miss them. Move your other skills down. Your less marketable skills may still be beneficial on your resume but should be placed throughout the body of your resume or listed at the bottom.
Add Accomplishments – Make sure you include at least one accomplishment where you used a skill to make a specific contribution to a company.

If you follow these four steps, you will give yourself a chance. The steps are just guidelines, though. You may decide to emphasize only two key skills or may settle on four or five closely related skills. The important thing is to focus your resume on the marketable details from your background that will get attention.

What Does Your Resume Say in the First 10 Seconds?

Your resume’s first impression – the first ten seconds it is read – is critical to your job search. No other point in a job search will have a greater impact in such a short time.

The first ten seconds are critical because the first impression will drive the assessment of your resume. Before the hiring manager begins to assess your potential, he needs to choose the assessment criteria. This requires categorizing the resume very quickly. The hiring manager will identify the job type, experience level and professionalism of the candidate and decide where in the company the candidate might fit. The goal at this stage is to categorize the candidate.

To make this determination, the hiring manager will only read a small portion of the resume – the first line or two of the resume, the most recent job title and the first thing listed in the education section. The hiring manager will also look at the overall presentation.

This first assessment allows the hiring manager to decide how to assess the job seeker. Like all first impressions, you can overcome a bad start, but it’s tough.

The best first impression will present a professional image for the job you are seeking. You want the hiring manager to immediately develop a basic understanding of who you are. A lot of resumes create an impression that doesn’t match the candidate’s. Some job seekers prioritize the wrong information on their resume leading to an impression that the job seeker is more or less qualified than they really are. This is especially problematic if your career has followed a non-standard path.

One of the most significant elements of your resume is the job title of your most recent job. If this title is not representative of your background and potential, you risk making the wrong first impression. To remedy this, you need to include information at the top of your resume to make the right impression. Often a one or two sentence summary can make a huge difference.

There are two main problems with creating the wrong first impression. First, you could be rejected before the hiring manager understands who you really are. Many resumes get rejected in the first 15 to 30 seconds. You need to make the right impression immediately. Second, making the wrong first impression will make it more difficult for the hiring manager to assess your true potential. Every second the hiring manager spends trying to figure out where you fit is time they are not spending looking at your potential. The faster the hiring manager can decide how to assess your background the better your chances.

It is extremely difficult to assess the first impression of your resume by yourself. You can’t make a first impression with yourself. To assess the impression you are making, show your resume to someone that hasn’t seen it before. Ask them for their first impression.

You can also review the information the hiring manager will look at first. If gave someone only the first two lines of your resume, your most recent job title and the first line of your education section, what impression would they get? Is this the impression you want to give?