Tag: Resume Writing

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.

The Designated Backup

I reviewed a resume this week that had a statement in the middle of the resume that was almost hidden. The statement appeared in a job description at the end of a long paragraph. When I read a resume, like most hiring managers, I scan the resume quickly to get a feel for the person and to decide how much time I want to spend on the resume. Sometimes, I make my decision in the first 15 seconds.

Placing important information at the end of a long paragraph almost guarantees that I won't read it. This is exactly what the job seeker did. It was only by chance that I read the line. There was something in the resume that interested me and I decided to look a little further for more information and found this:

"Designated back up for <department manager> when this individual is unavailable.”

This statement, by itself doesn't mean much. In the field that this job seeker is in, it is significant. The job seeker is in a role with a large number of peers, all managed by the department manager. This individual is in a role that does require someone to fill in for them on a regular basis. Finally, the manager's role is significantly more challenging than the job seekers regular duties.

This statement implies very strongly that the job seeker is the best leader out of all of his peers. This isn't something that should be buried or hidden on a resume. It is a type of recommendation from the individual's boss that they are the best in the department and designated as such publicly by placing them in the role of fill in.

As a job seeker, it is extremely important to recognize the elements of your background that set you apart and highlight you potential. This job seeker failed to do this. The information that they highlighted and was most prominent on their resume was much less important. It was essentially data about their job responsibilities and did little to sell the candidate.

Transitioning Military Resume Mistake

I did a number of resume assessments on Thursday for transitioning military personnel and ran into the same mistake several times. 

The mistake each of the individuals made was to not state clearly what their employment was.  This may seem like an odd mistake, but it is actually very common and something I have seen on transitioning military resumes before.

The Mistake

There are several key elements that these individuals left out. 

Name of the Employer:  Although it is usually easy to figure out who the employer is, it's a good idea to make this absolutely clear.  One of the reasons for this is the variety of employment options in the military.  There are number of roles held by civilian contractors.  Specifying the employer ensures that no misinterpretation develops.

Full Dates of Service:  The overall dates of the individual's service were omitted from many of the resumes.  References to 10, 20 or 25 years of service were included within the text of the resume, but this information didn't standout.  What was not included was an actual range of dates, such at “1990 to Present.”  This may seem like nit-picking, but without a clear statement of when the individual joined, the job seeker could create uncertainty in the mind of the hiring manager.

Rank:  Many of the resumes omitted the individual's rank.  It's important for military personnel to put their career in civilian terms and not use too much military speak.  Unfortunately, many people go too far with this and make up terms for what they did that others don't understand.  Listing the rank of each position does two important things.  It helps individuals with a military background understand the job seeker better and it shows a clear progression over the individual's career.

Presenting a career of consistent promotions is a big selling point.  Listing the rank of each position shows the hiring manager when a person was promoted.  Even if someone can't differentiate one rank from another, it will be clear that a progression to high level positions occurred.

Why This is Important

I have looked at a lot of resumes from military personnel that make the mistake of not presenting basic information about their career.  This makes it difficult to know what position would be a good fit.  It also misses an opportunity.  Demonstrating a long service record, with consistent pattern of promotions, establishes a track record of success. 

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.

Unrelated Work Experience on a Resume

I ran into a resume of a person that organized their work experience well. The job seeker had made a very significant career change 12 years ago. The prior career was a technical trade and the current career is sales role.

The resume was organized with the two different careers separated into a professional experience section and an additional experience section. Here's how he structured his resume:

Executive Summary

<One paragraph – four sentences>

Core Competencies

<List of a dozen skill keywords>

Professional Experience

<List of positions with descriptions and accomplishments – over the last twelve years – included employment dates>

Additional Experience

<List of positions with descriptions and accomplishments – did not include employment dates>

Education

<College degree and industry certifications>

I like to have detailed employment dates on a resume, and yet found this presentation, without dates for some positions, very compelling. The reason I like this presentation is it focuses the resume on the current career.  Additionally, I don't feel that the employment dates from this prior career add much value to understanding the job seker's background.

If the job seeker had changed careers more recently, I would want the dates. Employment dates give an indication of stability – they don't tell the whole story but do add valuable information. Further back in a person's career, they are less relevant.

If the job seeker had stayed in the same career, I'd also be more interested in the dates from further back. Understanding the progression and experience of a job seeker is important. Part of this is knowing how they got their start. Did they start at the bottom and work their way up slowly, or did they reach a high level without working in the trenches? There are advantages and disadvantages of both. Knowing how someone got started in a career is important for this reason.

In this case, the prior experience wasn't relevant and was more than 10 years ago. Separating it into a different section and providing less information was fine. It drew more attention to what was important – the experience of the last twelve years.

Dates for Each Job on Your Resume

I read a resume today that grouped the employment history in such a way that it obscured the job seeker's experience.  This person has spent the last 20 years with the same company in the auto industry and recently lost their job.  With such a long career with one company, it’s not surprising this individual held a number of different positions in different areas of the company.

The problem with this resume was how the work experience was presented.  The job seeker provided the years they worked for the company, but they didn’t list any detail for each position.  Here’s the format of their work experience:

Company Name – City, State   198x to 2008
Job Title One:  <short list of responsibilities>
Job Title Two:  <short list of responsibilities>
Job Title Three:  <short list of responsibilities>
Job Title Four:  <short list of responsibilities>
Job Title Five:  <short list of responsibilities>
Job Title Six:  <short list of responsibilities>

In another section of the resume, the job seeker lists a number of accomplishments, but doesn’t related the accomplishments to specific roles.

The problem with this is that it is very difficult to understand what the job seeker did.  The six job were actually in five different functional areas of the company, and have significant differences in skills and experiences. 

Knowing how many years were spent in each position would really help.  Plus, it’s impossible to tell which of the roles was the best fit for the job seeker.  The resume didn’t have an objective, so I have to guess which position is the best fit.  I would assume it's the most recent role – but I honestly don’t know and could be completely wrong.

It is important for your resume to tell your story.  A resume is more than a collection of facts – it’s a picture of your career and potential.  This resume gave me some facts, but did not show me the potential of this candidate.

Resumes with Too Much Information

I reviewed a couple resumes this week that were vastly different but made the same mistake.  Both resumes had a lot of unimportant information that detracted from their effectiveness.

The first resume was from a sales professional with extensive B2B sales experience.  For each job, the description of the position included a list of all the products the person sold.  This is the structure of one of the listings with identifying details masked:

<INDUSTRY> ACCOUNT MANAGER
Mo/Year to Present
<Information Technology Company>

Responsible for sales contracting activities in the <City> Metro area for <Company Name> communications products including <Brand Name> <Product Type> for <list of industries and customers>. <Brand Name> communications and data products such as <First Product>, <Second Product>, <Third Product>, <Fourth Product>, <Fifth Product>, <Sixth Product> and numerous other <Brand Name> products.

Accomplishments: Met or exceeded assigned quota every year in territory. $#.# M total for year end 200#. Major accomplishments in the territory include selling new <Product Type> to both <Customer Name> and <Customer Name>. Total number of <products> involved in these two purchases resulted in contracts for over #,#00 units for a combined total of over $# Million dollars.

The individual products listed had names much longer than the text I used to replace them.  They were things list "ACME Widget 3000 Ultimate Widgetizer." In fact, by replacing the product names, I shorten the paragraph by more half.  A laundry list of technical products doesn’t demonstrate sales skill. 

The second resume was from a senior executive – a Vice President of Operations for a mid-sized company. The bulk of the resume was good, but this person included lists of very general skills that added little to no value and hurt the over impression.  The first problem was near the top of the resume.  The job seeker included a list of core competencies – essentially a keyword list.  The list had 16 buzzwords, most very general.  Here’s the list:

Profit/Loss, Relationship Building, Team Building, Cost Control, Budgeting, Quality Assurance, Presentations, Recruitment, Startups, Call Center Mgmt., Turnarounds, Negotiation, Rightsizing, Customer Satisfaction, Restructuring, Productivity

Some of these are good – Startups, Call Center Mgmt, Turnarounds – these fine.  They relate to specific skills that are unusual and valued.  Some of the others are less valuable.  Relationship Building, Team Building and Presentations are few on the list that don’t help.  These should be a given for a senior executive. Now this individual may be an outstanding public speaker, able to deliver killer sales presentations.  Putting the word “Presentations” on the resume doesn’t sell this as an exceptional skill level.

If this keyword list was the only area with extraneous info, I really wouldn’t have a problem with it.  What I thought was really bad was the Computer Skills section at the end of the resume.  Here’s the list:

Microsoft Access, Supply Chain Software, CRM Applications, Microsoft Word, Net/Web Savvy, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Outlook, Search Engines, Internet Explorer, Microsoft PowerPoint, Sales Management, Microsoft Excel

This list has several problems.  It’s not organized, it doesn’t provide any assessment of the candidate’s skill level, and it includes skills that are impossible for the reader assess.  I don’t know what Net/Web Savvy means to this candidate.  I’m also unsure what it means to be skilled with Search Engines – is this candidate capable of googling a search term, or are they a Search Engine Optimization expert, capable of getting a website to the top of the google rankings? 

The real question is how this would affect a hiring manager’s assessment.  Do you think this list, and the list of core competencies above is going to differentiate this candidate and help them stand out from their competition? 

Bottom Line:  Don’t add a lot of extraneous information and buzzwords to your resume.  Make sure you include the the information that does the best job of selling your potential.

Where is the Job Market Going?

With the current financial crisis, there is tremendous uncertainty in our economy. This is most obvious in the financial markets after Monday’s decline.  The markets are worried and investors react to increasing risk by selling.

Now the decline in stocks doesn’t directly affect the job market. In some respects, it’s more of a symptom than a driving force. Unfortunately, because it is a symptom of the risk in our economy, we have to recognize the risk to the job market.

The Credit Crisis

For most people, the credit crisis has had no direct impact on them. The people are feeling this are the people that need to borrow money, and in reality, these people are not individuals, but corporations. The auto industry just received $25 billion in loan guarantees from the government. In a normal economic climate, it’s unlikely this would have been necessary. They could have borrowed from private entities, but today, that money isn’t available.  Banks are very reluctant to loan money.

The biggest problem with the credit crisis is how it is stopping the expansion that should be occurring. With the decline in the dollar, manufacturing firms are finding it much easier to export, and much easier to replace imports. We continue to see the job market in manufacturing hold steady (outside of areas with heavy auto industry concentrations). What we’re not seeing is a boom in expansion. Manufacturing has been at capacity for a while, but new plants are not being built on a wide scale.

The cause of this is two-fold. First, companies can’t borrow because of the credit crisis. Second, there’s a fear that the economy will get worse and an expansion won’t be needed. The effect of these factors is to limit the growth in the parts of our economy that are doing well.

The Job Market

The New York Times had an article Monday about how the job market could be affected in a significantly different way as compared to past downturns. The article, “Does the Financial Crisis Threaten Your Job,” discusses how in past recessions, companies cut back unskilled positions most. Skilled positions tended to be retained as highly skilled workers were too valuable in the long term and too difficult to replace.

The article predicts that this downturn will be exactly the opposite. Individuals with Bachelor’s degrees and more advanced degrees will be hurt much more than the lower levels of our economy. This poses a significant challenge for college seniors, as the job market in December and May could be bleak.

How to Adapt

Dealing with a tight job market requires a lot more work. Start by networking very aggressively. Try to find a contact in the companies you are targeting that will refer you for a position. This can greatly improve your chances.

One of the most important aspects of your search is to have a strong positioning statement. This is the core statement of value that you bring to the table. Many job seekers state that they are good at a particular job or skill. In a tight job market, being qualified and capable aren’t enough. Companies focus on hiring the best talent. This requires standing out from your competition.

With our interview coaching, we focus on uncovering the accomplishments and experiences that demonstrate how an individual has been successful and has added unique value to their employers. If you’re having trouble doing this, get help.

In interviews, you need to expand upon your positioning statement. You can do this in the answer to the Tell Me About Yourself Question. You should also reinforce the value you offer throughout the interview. Job seekers that can’t do this well often interview once and have the process stall. They don’t get another interview and they don’t get an outright rejection. The process just grinds to a halt.

The reason for this is that the hiring manager doesn’t have a great reason to hire or reject the candidate. They can see the individual could do the job, but they can’t get excited about hiring them. Instead, they say they will think about the person more but nothing changes. Eventually, the company finds someone that gives a compelling reason to be hired – and they get the job.

Bottom Line: Work on developing your positioning statement with a compelling reason why you should be hired, focused on the value you will provide the company.

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.