Resume Writing Archives - Page 12 of 16 - Palladian Career Resources

Editing an Objective Statement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the new executive summary we developed:

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

Bullet with an accomplishment

Bullet with an accomplishment

Bullet with an accomplishment

Bullet with an accomplishment

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

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

The 8 Biggest Resume Mistakes

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

1. No Accomplishments

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

2. No Customization

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

3. Large Blocks of Text

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

4. Poor Formatting

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

5. Too Long

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

6. Unclear Objective

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

7. Grammar/Spelling Errors

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

8. Extraneous Information

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

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

Answer the Obvious Question

I read a resume today from an individual that was well written and showed a significant pattern of achievement. It’s an impressive resume. Here’s how it breaks down:

Executive Summary: A clear statement of his objective and overall experience
Skills: List of about a dozen major skills related to his field
Accomplishments: Eight bullets, each with a specific accomplishment – several are very impressive
Professional Experience: Two jobs listed. The most recent was with a civilian firm, lasted 3 months and just ended. The other lasted 20+ with a government agency.
Education: Bachelor’s and MBA along with continuing eduction certifications – overall impressive education credentials.

Everything about the resume says that this person has been successful and is very capable. I would move some things around (shorten the exec summary and accomplishments, and move the skills section further down) but it’s a pretty good resume.

The thing that’s missing is an explanation of why this individual is on the job market. He spent more than 20 years with one organization. His next job only lasted 3 months. This is an obvious question every hiring manager is going to want answered.

There are a number of possible reasons why this happened. A few I consider likely are:

It was a short term contract
The company downsized and laid him off 3 months later
He misjudged the opportunity and quit
The company misjudged his abilities and fired him
The person had relocated for the civilian position (more than 1500 miles) and for family reasons, he had to move back to their original location

All of these are possible and none of them are deal breakers. The important thing is to address the question. The best place to address it is in the cover letter. This job seeker had a lengthly cover letter, but it was limited to a recap of his accomplishments.

By leaving out the reason why he’s on the job market, the tendency is to assume the worst. If I had a position I was trying to fill where he would be a fit, I would still call him. I would focus my interview on why he left the position after three months. His omission of a reason why he’s on the market would effectively shift the focus away from his 20+ years of achievement to a single event that hurts his chances.

Usually, when someone leaves an important detail like this out, I find they are uncomfortable talking about it. Instead, they guarantee they will end up talking about it a lot, with a very skeptical interviewer – someone that’s probably assuming the worst and will be reluctant to believe a simple reasonable explanation.

Bottom line: If there is something in your background that is giant red flag – address it upfront.

The Visionary’s Resume

I read a resume today of a successful IT executive that was a little over top today with their claims. The resume started with a Professional Qualifications sections with a half dozen bullets. I’m going to share a couple of the bullets that went a little too far:

Technology and business visionary with executive and hands-on experience creating robust IT architectures with the proven ability to bring the benefits of IT to solve business issues while managing costs and risks.
Information Assurance Guru with experience establishing secure enterprise systems.

Referring to yourself as a visionary or a guru doesn’t make a good impression on me. My first question is how did you earn these monikers? This individual has a lot of accomplishments on their resume. Unfortunately, they pretty much tell me what technologies were implemented and the size of the project. This is the same information on the resumes fo other IT executives. Without knowing the details, there’s no way of knowing if this individual is truly a visionary guru, or if they are just like everyone else.

The second problem with using language like this is that it raises the expectations of the hiring manager. I expect a person that is a visionary to be clearly better than others with similar experience. If they don’t stand out this way, I have to doubt the titles visionary and guru, and in turn, the rest of the claims on their resume. There’s no need to create an expectation that is excessively high that you then need to meet.

One more reason I would stay away from language like this is that it gives a strong impression of arrogance. Although it might not be a turn off for everyone, there are a lot of people that won’t like it.

You might think that language like this is rare. It’s certainly not on every resume, but I do see it from time to time. I did a quick search of 350 resumes I’ve received recently and 12 had claims of being a visionary. This was the only one in the group that said they were a guru, though.

Now lets look at a couple more of the bullets at the top of this resume. They’re much better, and if the job seeker had stuck to just these, they would have made a better overall impression.

Extensive vendor relationship management and negotiations, facilitating a partnering relationship generating better vendor performance and overall company performance.
Proven Leader with over 15 years of significant, progressive experience in IT leadership.

These bullets aren’t very specific, but they convey a better tone. They describe experience and accomplishment in a confident but not arrogant way.

Now, here’s the tough part of this. I’m sure the job seeker that wrote this resume was not trying to convey a sense of arrogance with first two bullets. They may have been called visionary and guru by friends and didn’t think much of it. The problem is being able see how your resume is going to be perceived by a wide audience.

Explaining Your Progression on Your Resume

Most resumes don’t explain how the job seeker made their career changes. They just list the jobs they have held, in reverse chronological order. This is fine for the vast majority of people. Most people have a career path that makes sense.

I want to share with you a resume that doesn’t make sense. The individual that sent me this resume had this progression: graduated with a bachelor’s degree, worked as a production coordinator in mfg, was promoted to production planning manager, was hired as national sales manager at another company and recently became unemployed.

This individual was looking for a sales management position and had some great accomplishments on their resume. Here are a few (I took out the numbers for confidentiality – the sales growth listed is very impressive):

Increased nationwide revenues from $# million to $# million per month in year one and to $# million per month in year 2 through product launches, new market penetration, and customer acquisitions.
Negotiated a multi-million-dollar contract with *** Corp., boosting revenue $# million dollar per month.
Raised <product> sales 40% by implementing marketing campaign for <brand name>, integrating television, radio, and field events.

Just reading that, I would say that this is someone I want leading a sales team. The problem is their progression. Let me explain.

I almost never see a person make a career move that changes their company, promotes them to a higher level and completely changes the type of work. It just doesn’t happen. I’ve seen people get promotions into a different field within the same company. I’ve seen people take lateral positions with another company in a different field. It’s just very rare to get promoted into a higher level role where you have no expereince. So, how did this person do it?

The other question is, why are they unemployed if they were so successful in leading sales for the company – more than doubling sales in two years.

There may be great reasons for this and this person may be a superstar sales manager. Unfortunately, with the information they’ve provided, I have a lot of doubt.

To address this, I would explain the transitions in a cover letter. This person has a well written cover letter, focusing on accomplishments. It didn’t say anything about how they got into sales or why they’re out of work. Another option would be to put an executive summary at the top of the resume that includes this information. I prefer the cover letter option, but both would work.

When you look at your resume, make sure it looks believable. That doesn’t mean you water down your best accomplishments – just that you should explain things that you know are going to raise really big questions. For many job seekers, their progression makes a lot of sense. In that case, explaining their transition probably won’t add any value.

Incomplete Education

There are a lot of talented job seekers that have not completed a Bachelor’s Degree. Many have started and are working towards their degree, but aren’t finished. How you present this on your resume can make a big difference in how you are perceived.

If you are working full time and trying to complete a degree – you can’t finish quickly. A bachelor’s degree could take six to eight years going to school part time. During this time, your effort and progress can help you job search.

List your progress towards the degree. You will have to provide a little more detail than normal, but it’s worth it. In addition to the school, degree and major you are pursuing, list the number of courses you have completed (or credit hours) and the number you need to complete your degree. You can also list specific courses you’ve finished, if they relate directly to your field.

If you have a schedule for when you expect to finish your degree, you can list that date as a projected graduation date.

All of this can help the impression you make. The discipline, commitment and motivation that are required to pursue and complete a degree while working full time are impressive and will make a very positive impression on many hiring managers.

Some companies that require a Bachelor’s degree may consider a candidate as meeting this requirement if they are close to completing the degree – say 12 to 18 months or less to finish.

Let’s look at how a job seeker presented their education on a resume I read today:

EDUCATION

BA-in-progress. University of <school name>, City, ST
Major: Law and Society (pre-Law), #.## GPA, ## units completed.

This is a pretty good presentation. It gives the degree and major, the school, location, GPA and progress completed. The one thing that’s missing is some indication of how close this individual is to finishing. The units completed helps, but I don’t know what this school considers a unit – it could be the same as credit hours or the number of classes completed. I also don’t know what the requirements to graduate are – they’re probably in the neighborhood of 36 classes, but there’s no way to know from this. A little more detail in this area would really help.

One more thing to consider, if you are working towards your degree and highlight that your graduation is forthcoming, an employer may expect you to finish. This is especially the case if the employer requires a degree and hires you without one. If you decide not to pursue your degree after getting hired, this could impact your position in the company. I’ve even heard of companies making the completion of the degree a condition of continued employment.

Planning Isn’t an Accomplishment

I read a resume today that reminded me of something I see from time to time on resumes from sales and marketing people.

The resume had some very good accomplishments and was pretty good overall. What caught my eye was one bullet that I don’t think served any purpose other than to take up space.

Spearheaded the development of a strategic sales plan, which projected sales in excess of $## million over a #-year time frame.

I see bullets like this on resumes a fair bit – a statement of developing a sales plan with high projected sales.

Developing plans in any business is important and sales plans are some of the most important. The problem with the bullet is that it doesn’t really say anything. It doesn’t say if the sales plan was approved and acted upon. It doesn’t say if the target was achieved. It doesn’t even say if it was a realistic projection.

I’m a big fan of specific accomplishments, but a bullet saying someone planned on succeeding doesn’t tell me anything – just that the job seeker arrived at a sales figure that they planned to achieve in a few years.

With something like this on your resume, you have two choices – expand or delete.

Expand: You can write a little more to change this from a waste of space to a really impactful bullet. You might have to combine other bullets to tell the full story. Here’s an example.

Spearheaded the development of a strategic sales plan projecting sales in excess of $## million over a # year time frame. Enacted this plan and led a team of ## sales associates. After # years, the team was $# million ahead of the projections.

Now, that’s someone on my team. They built a good plan. Managed the execution of the plan and exceeded their objectives.

Delete: The other option is to delete the bullet entirely. The resume that I got the bullet from had some good accomplishments. It didn’t need anything extra. Deleting this bullet would have improved the overall resume by making it more concise and easier to read.

It’s important to prioritize what’s important. If something isn’t helping you on your resume, change it or get rid of it. Keep the information you absolutely need and add the accomplishments that make a strong case for hiring you.

Cool Resume Checker

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keyword Summaries on Resumes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Employment Dates on Your Resume

While reading a resume today, I was reminded of a mistake some job seekers make with their employment dates.

When listing the current position the job seeker is in, the convention is the starting date to “Present.” If the job seeker is unemployed, they should list the starting and ending date.

The mistake I have noticed occasionally is listing the current date as the end date for job seekers that are still employed. This sends a mistaken message.

Here are some examples and how I would interpret them:

	12/94 to 4/08	Unemployed since April 2008
	1/00 to Present	Currently employed in a position since Jan. 2000
	2003 to 2008	Unemployed for part of 2008

These are three formats I commonly see. I don’t like the years only format. I prefer to have months listed. If the months aren’t listed, I ask for them in the interview – usually in the first phone screen. If the job seeker had a gap in their employment they were trying to hide, it’s eventually going to come out. When the gap is uncovered, it usually makes a worse impression than if it had just been listed on the resume. Part of the reason for this is that the job seeker is probably uncomfortable talking about the gap, otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to cover it up. They would have been better off to have disclosed it up front. If the gap is a significant factor on the resume, talk about it in the cover letter.

Ok, so back to the format…listing the years with an ending year implies the job seeker is unemployed. Although rare, some make the mistake of doing this while still employed. If you are employed, go with the 2nd format, listing the starting date to "Present."