Resume Tip: Avoid overly dramatic language that tries to make something sound much more impressive than it really is.
Resume Tip: Avoid overly dramatic language that tries to make something sound much more impressive than it really is.
Saying something in a very unusual way purely to sound impressive will backfire. Your resume should highlight your strengths and accomplishments. It is a sales pitch for you. Just make sure you avoid being overly boastful or all hype and no substance. You want your presentation to be credible.
The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowing what to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.
The military provides a tremendous number of educational opportunities, ranging from short training classes up to year long programs. Knowingwhat to include on you resume can be a challenge. Many people transitioning from the military include too much information.
I’ve read a lot of resumes from military personnel that include a page or more of classes and workshops the individual completed over their career. Most of these are routine classes that do not differentiate the candidate. Additionally, many military personal include courses with no relationship to the career they are pursuing. For example, listing a large number of classes and certifications for various weapons will not help a person land a leadership position in manufacturing (except, perhaps, with a firearm manufacturer).
Including significant detail of your training in unrelated areas will not help you land a job. It may also hurt your chances. When a hiring manager reviews your resume, they may only spend 15 seconds looking at it. Any time they spend reading details that don’t sell your background is a waste. They may move on to the next candidate before they get to the impressive parts of your background.
To determine the elements of your education and training that are significant and should be included in your resume, you need to focus on the core challenges of the position. Identify the most significant skills that are required. Then include the courses that relate to these skills.
As an example, let’s contrast two positions.
The first position is for a leadership role, a supervisor or manager, with a manufacturing firm. A candidate pursuing this position should emphasize leadership, communications, strategic planning and organizational skills. A routine safety or hazmat class, that all military personnel complete each year, is irrelevant for a position like this. Training classes like this focus on conferring basic knowledge of safety issues. They won’t set someone apart. It is much better to list and emphasize training in leadership and communications skills.
The other position is a health and safety manager for a chemical firm. In this role, technical experience and skill with federal regulations is very significant. Leadership and communications skills may also be important, but technical ability will usually be the highest priority for a hiring manager. In this case, emphasizing safety and hazmat courses is good idea. Although you want to emphasize safety courses, don’t go overboard. Focus on significant courses, not the routine ones everyone completes. You want to show you are an expert, not just someone that showed up for the annual one hour safety refresher.
The key to selecting the right items to include in your resume is prioritizing what is important to the reader. If a training class isn’t especially impressive, you are better off putting more detail in your work experience section and leaving the training class out.
For civilian positions, your resume should be two pages or less. This makes it essential for you to prioritize the content of your resume.
Resume Tip: Avoid using acronyms in your resume, especially terms that are unique to your employer.
Resume Tip: Avoid using acronyms in your resume, especially terms that are unique to your employer.
Most organizations develop terms and acronyms that are unique to the firm. Using these terms on a resume will usually confuse the reader. You are better off replacing terms with more general words that have a similar meaning.
If you are unsure if the terms in your resume are widely known or obscure, get an opinion from someone outside your company or industry.
Resume Tip: When writing about accomplishments, minimizing a loss can be as significant as generating a profit.
Resume Tip: When writing about accomplishments, minimizing a loss can be as significant as generating a profit.
The economy is down. Many companies are seeing declining incomes, lower sales and declining performance. It is still possible to be successful. If a company breaks even this year, and all of its competitors have large losses, the company would be considered very successful. Look for aspects of your career that demonstrate how you performed well compared to your competition and include examples of this performance on your resume.
Resume Tip: Show specific actions you have taken and the results you have achieved on your resume.
Resume Tip: Show specific actions you have taken and the results you have achieved on your resume.
The more specific you are on your resume, the easier it will be for a hiring manager to understand what you did. You may find a less significant accomplishment is better to highlight on your resume than a more significant one because the less significant example can be explained more clearly and concisely.
Resume writing for supply chain professionals, particularly in sourcing careers, requires addressing specific challenges and goals that are important to the target employer. By highlighting these topics in your resume, you can standout from your competition.
Resume writing for supply chain professionals, particularly in sourcing careers, requires addressing specific challenges and goals that are important to the target employer. By highlighting these topics in your resume, you can standout from your competition.
Sourcing careers manage the identification of suppliers, the purchasing of materials, and the logistics of purchased materials and components. In our modern global economy, sourcing provides the foundation of many companies. More than any other function, sourcing can change the financial condition and competitiveness of a company quickly.
A number of companies have capitalized on their sourcing expertise to build powerful competitive advantages over their competition. Wal-mart and Dell are both known for the efficiency of their supply chain operations. Slight improvements to the sourcing function can dramatically affect the bottom line performance of a company.
The significance of sourcing roles to the success of an organization makes finding exceptional talent in the sourcing field a critical component of a company’s success. During the hiring process, most companies will have specific goals and expectations for the position. To be successful, a job seeker needs to demonstrate an ability to make an impact on these specific goals.
Many job seekers find it difficult to identify the goals of the company and the hiring manager. You may be able to research and determine the priorities, but often this won’t be possible. Instead, you need to address the major challenges that are most likely to be priorities based on the industry and company.
There are a number challenges that are likely to be important within the materials field, including:
Vendor Identification
Vendor Qualification
Quality Monitoring
Legal and Contract Concerns
Transportation
Customs
Scheduling
Inventory
Supply Interruptions
Issues With Political or Economic Instability
This is a partial list but can give you a starting point for marketing your background. On your resume, you should mention a variety to challenges and goals. It is important to include more than just a list of keywords. Provide details of your experience and accomplishments for each area of expertise. You may choose to emphasize a selection of skills, but try to mention most of them in your resume.
One way to highlight your sourcing skills it to start your resume with an executive summary. The executive summary should include two or three of your most significant accomplishments. This will draw attention to your strongest skills and accomplishments, highlighting a few key elements of your experience. You can then work the remaining elements you want to mention into your resume under your work experience section.
If you show significant experience in the sourcing arena, and mention the key topics that a hiring manager is seeking, you are likely to get a phone screen. You do not need to guess the top priority of the hiring manager and emphasize this in your executive summary. As long as you mention the topic and show significant sourcing expertise, you should generate sufficient interest to motivate the hiring manager to want to learn more. If you do not focus on a topic critical to the hiring manager, the phone screen will usually explore this topic in detail.
The list of competencies above omits one very common topic. In fact, it is by far the most common topic of accomplishment, and a critical element you need to cover in your resume. The omitted element is your experience with reducing costs. Reducing raw material and transportation costs are one of the biggest opportunities most companies have. Cost reductions through better sourcing can offer the best ROI. An investment of time and some travel costs for a sourcing professional can often yield millions of dollars in savings.
There’s an important reason why I omitted cost reductions from the list above. The reduction of cost is the result of an activity. It is not the core activity. For example, picture a sourcing professional that includes this accomplishment on his resume: “reduced the purchasing costs of a key raw material by $3 million.” This is a good accomplishment but doesn’t say anything about how the individual achieved this result. Another candidate, with a similar background, lists the same accomplishment, but with additional key details: “Identified two dozen new potential vendors for a key raw material. Assessed and qualified three to be suppliers. Negotiated international contracts with two of these sources, resulting in $2 million in savings from lower purchase costs and $1 million in transportation savings.”
These could be the same accomplishment, but the second presentation is much more specific and makes a much stronger impact. If the hiring manager is focused on identifying new sources, assessing potential sources or reducing transportation costs, this accomplishment should peak their interest.
Show what you did with the results you achieved. When we assessed resumes in our resume benchmarking survey, we found nearly half of the resumes didn’t list any accomplishments. Many of the resumes that did list accomplishments, only included cost savings numbers – accomplishments similar to the first example provided above. If you give a detailed presentation of what you did, how you did it and what the results were, your resume will standout for the vast majority of your competition and your chances of landing an interview will be much higher.
Need specific resume writing advice tailored to Supply Chain Careers? Get our book, Resume Writing for Manufacturing Careers. It is packed with examples and advice of production management, scheduling, purchasing, logistics and transportation.
Resume Tip: Include the continuing education you have completed on your resume.
Resume Tip: Include the continuing education you have completed on your resume.
It is important to update your skills and continue to improve throughout your career. List major continuing education events: classes, workshops, conferences and certifications. Don’t go overboard with this. Many companies provide annual training of basic procedures, safety practices and government compliance topics. Usually, listing all of these is a mistake. Focus on significant training events that will separate you from your competition.
Resume writing tip for job seekers. Palladian provides expert resume writing services to help job seekers stand out and land interviews.
Resume Tip: Your resume should be clear and easy to understand.
A good way to simplify your message is to include a positioning statement that clearly shows who you are and what you offer in one or two short sentences. This statement needs to be focused and tailored to the job to be most effective.
Many job seekers highlight the breadth of experiences and skills they possess. A diverse background offers multiple perspectives on problems and strategies, and can be valuable to an employer. Despite the benefits of wide range of skills, focusing your sales pitch on your diverse background can be a mistake.
Many job seekers highlight the breadth of experiences and skills they possess. A diverse background offers multiple perspectives on problems and strategies, and can be valuable to an employer.
Despite the benefits of wide range of skills, focusing your sales pitch on your diverse background can be a mistake.
The problem with this approach lies in how different experiences are presented. You should emphasize the elements of your background that directly related to the position, showing your strongest skills and abilities prominently.
When a person highlights a wide range of skills and experiences, it becomes very difficult to assess which elements are strongest. When a large number of skills are put on equal footing, a hiring manager will often conclude the job seeker is average at each skill. Average will not get someone excited to hire you.
You need to show how you are exceptional. The initial focus of your resume should be on the aspects of the job you are seeking. You need to demonstrate how you will be success in the core functions of the job. This targeted approach will make a strong impression and give you the opportunity interview. Early in the hiring process, companies typically have dozens if not hundreds of candidates to consider and need to screen a large percentage. Focusing on the core skills of a position and screening out candidates without exceptional experience with these skills is a common approach.
As you progress through the hiring process, the diversity of your experiences can then help you get hired. A breadth of experiences is a benefit to an employer. This background can be the deciding factor when a company is comparing to equally qualified candidates. The additional experiences you possess can be the selling point that gives you an edge to get hired.
Let’s look at an example – this candidate is Vice President of Supply Chain for a manufacturing firm. The company is looking for someone that can lead their supply chain function and is most concerned with reducing costs through better vendor management with Asian suppliers.
The candidate has five years of experience sourcing in Asia, ten years of supply chain management, 5 years as a manufacturing manager and 3 years as a quality engineer.
General Presentation: Successful supply chain executive with experience managing purchasing, logistics and scheduling. Excellent manufacturing management track record, with significant quality engineering experience.
Focused Approached: Successful supply chain executive, specializing in purchasing and vendor management of off-shore suppliers, with extensive experience sourcing in Asia. Experienced with logistics, scheduling, manufacturing management and quality engineering, allowing effective anticipation of problems from vendors that will affect downstream customers.
The difference between these two presentations is small. Most resumes I read are similar to the general presentation. All of the skills and experiences are put on equal footing and none standout as a result. This presentation requires the hiring manager to connect the dots and recognize the value of the different experiences.
The second presentation positions the candidate much clearer. It is targeted to show the supply chain experience, and more specifically, the experience sourcing in Asia. The addition experiences are still presented, but are placed in a secondary, supporting context to the supply chain and sourcing experience.
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In college, I majored in Mechanical Engineering and my senior design project was to design and build a remote controlled airplane for a competition. Our project team had six students and a number of advisors, some were professors and others were designers at Bell Helicopter. Early in the process, we meeting at the Bell Helicopter facility with the designers. Discussion was about airplane design, but the basic premise is applicable to resume writing too.
In college, I majored in Mechanical Engineering, and my senior design project was to design and build a remote controlled airplane for a competition. Our project team had six students and a number of advisors, some were professors and others were designers at Bell Helicopter. Early in the process, the team met at the Bell Helicopter facility to plan the project. Discussion was about airplane design.
We reached a point in the discussion where were we trying to decide what type of plane to build. We considered a traditional design, swept-wings, T-tails, Delta wings, canards and other variations. The more unusual the design, the more excited and interested “we” were… the we being the students and some of the professors. We wanted a winning design for the competition, but also wanted the plane to be cool.
After a lengthy discussion, the senior engineer from Bell Helicopter, who had been quiet during the debate, spoke up. This guy had been designing airplanes and helicopters for more than forty years and had seen it all. He broke into the conversation and said, “What you need to do is ride over to Philadelphia International Airport. Take a look at the planes. They all look alike. Build one that looks like what you see there.”
The discussion was over. We didn’t need to visit the airport. All of us knew what we would see. The designer was right. The basic design of an airplane has been refined over decades and works well for almost all applications, even our senior design project. The key to a successful design was not being radically different from every other design. The key was to optimize every detail and get the little things right.
When you write your resume, keep this lesson in mind. There are conventions and design elements to resumes that are very common and recur. These conventions continue to be repeated because they work. You are not going to discover some new resume writing design completely different from has been tried in the past.
You also need to satisfy the expectations of the reader. Our design project didn’t have to persuade customers to buy a ticket and get on our plane, but commercial aircraft manufacturers need to consider how a plan looks. A great airplane design that doesn’t look “right” will not inspire confidence, and ticket sales. If you resume doesn’t meet the expectations of the reader, you may be rejected before the content of your resume is adequately considered.
It may be boring building a design that is standard and ordinary. What is important is not how innovative your resume is. The important thing is to get results. This requires a design that can be easily understood and read quickly. A standard design will do this. Your focus needs to be on optimizing each element of your resume to create a consistent, easy to read message selling your potential.
So, go to your local resume database. Look at the resumes sitting on the runway and build one like those. Then focus on the little details throughout your resume and build a winner.