Resume Writing Archives - Page 13 of 16 - Palladian Career Resources

Highlighting Poor Computer Skills on a Resume

On a resume of a financial services professional, I saw something that surprised me. It shouted “poor computer skills” because of a single omission.

The resume was for a sales rep in a financial services firm – someone that sells investment and insurance products to individuals and businesses. This is a field requiring excellent sales skills along with good quantitative and technical skills.

The resume had all the stuff you would expect… state and NASD licenses, sales numbers, client numbers and other details relevant to the industry. At the bottom, the resume had a Technical Skills section. This is what caught my eye. Here’s what the section contained:

Microsoft Windows XP and Word
Act! Contact Management
Proprietary in-house systems

The reason this caught my eye is that it doesn’t list Excel. I find it hard to believe someone could work in the industry without some Excel experience – it’s a basic tool that is almost fundamental to financial analysis.

Now if the resume didn’t have a technical skills section, I wouldn’t have noticed. It was the overt statement that the job seeker knows Windows and Word, without mentioning Excel that made this odd.

There’s a chance that this individual knows Excel and just forgot to list it. I’d probably give them a call to check, given that the rest of the resume is pretty strong. This wouldn’t kill the job seeker’s chances but it would cause me to question their technical skills more than I ordinarily might, since I would assume the skill level is low.

There are situations where this could be a deal killer. If the hiring manager considers Excel expertise a key priority, the resume has a fair chance of being discarded.

Remember that if you are highlighting your skills, create a complete picture of the skills relevant to a position. Listing Excel experience isn’t what’s important, it’s listing software that is a primary tool within the industry.

How to Update Your Resume

It’s been a few years and you’ve decided to brush off your resume and start looking… what now?
Many job seekers will simply tack on their current job and send it out. The problem with this is that your old resume might not be the best sales pitch for your current situation.

When you update your resume, you should reassess every bit of it. Start by looking at the structure.

Review the Structure – Did you have a functional or chronological structure last time? Is this still the best choice? The reasons you chose the structure may not be relevant today. For example, if you used a functional structure, there’s a good chance you chose this structure because you were changing career fields and wanted to highlight your skills over your progression. Hopefully, you’ve gained some valuable experience making your progression more impressive. Switching to a chronological format would make sense in this situation.
Add New Info – Write a description of your current job, along with accomplishments you want to highlight. At this stage, don’t worry about where you put the information you write. You may put skills or accomplishments in an executive summary, a skills section, an accomplishments section or somewhere else. For now, just add it all to the work experience section.
Prioritize Information – Identify the most important information that you want to highlight. This is the content that best sells you. The priorities will change over time. Two factors will affect this – time and relevance. As time passes, a very significant aspect of your background may lose importance. For example, for a recent college graduate, their education is probably the most significant thing on their resume. Ten or twenty years later, it’s still important, but not the top priority. The relevance of something may also change. As your career progresses, your responsibilities will change and the skills and accomplishments that demonstrate your potential to succeed in new roles will change.
Review the Structure Again – In step 1, you assessed the overall structure. Now that we have the prioritization of information, it’s time to review the order of information. Should your work experience go at the top, or your education? Do you want to add/remove an executive summary? How are you going to present your accomplishments?
Add/Delete Information – Over time, you will want to trim down descriptions to make room for newer content. Review everything on your resume and ask the question, is this important enough to keep? This will help you avoid preserving information that has no importance to your current career. For example, one job seeker I assessed was a senior executive with 30 years of experience. At the bottom of his resume he listed several accomplishments from the start of his career, including being an Eagle Scout. 30 years ago, this was fine to include. Today, it is almost comical… in 30 years, I would hope you have accomplishments significant enough to displace this.
Customize your resume – It’s unlikely you are pursuing the same job today that you were seeking the last time you sent out your resume. Make sure you are highlighting the skills and experiences that are most relevant to your current search. Are the skills you deemphasized before, skills that you now want to bring to the forefront? For example, if you were in a technical role and have since moved into a leadership position, you may want to deemphasize your technical skills in favor of highlighting your leadership.

Follow these six steps, and you will be well ahead of the majority of job seekers that only do Step 2 – pasting their newest info to the top of the work experience section.

Examples of Resumes that Link to a LinkedIn Profile

In yesterday’s article, I outlined pros and cons of adding a link to your LinkedIn profile to your resume. This got me thinking and I decided to take a look at what some job seekers are doing.

I did a quick search of 585 resumes and found four job seekers that mentioned their LinkedIn profile on their resume. Of these, two of the people put the link on both their cover letter and resume. Here are the examples, with names and contact info masked for confidentiality:

Job Seeker 1 – From the cover letter:

You may read recommendations from my past employers at http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

Job Seeker 2 – From the resume heading:

First Last, 123-456-7890 / 987-654-3210 (cell)
## Street Ave. name @ emaildomain.com
City, ST 00000 http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

Job Seeker 3 – From the cover letter heading:

First Last
name @ emaildomain.com
http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

Job Seeker 3 – From the resume heading:

First Last
name @ emaildomain.com
Cell: 123-456-7890
http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

Job Seeker 4 – From the cover letter signature:

Sincerely,

First Last
123-456-7890
http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

Job Seeker 4 – From the resume heading:

First Last
Home: 123-456-7890
name @ emaildomain.com
http: //www. Linkedin.com /in/name

My personal preference is the first listing where the profile is included within the cover letter with a reason why it should be viewed.

LinkedIn and Your Resume

I read an interesting question on LinkedIn today…

“Would you put a link to your LinkedIn profile on your resume?”

There have been a lot of good answers posted by LinkedIn users – some advocating and some discouraging this. I think it really depends on your resume and your LinkedIn Profile.

Your Profile

LinkedIn is essentially a social network – except that it focuses on careers. A profile on LinkedIn is similar to a resume, but the content is slightly different. You can be much freer about what information you include and how you describe it.

You can expect that a hiring manager will Google your name while you are being consider, so there’s a good chance they will see your profile anyway. Just realize that this will be well into the hiring process. Many hiring managers will only put forth this type of effort once they are seriously considering making an offer. If you want your profile to be read early in the process, before interviews start, then you need to link to it.

What Value Does the Profile Offer to Your Resume

LinkedIn profiles have several pieces of information that may compliment your resume. The most obvious are the recommendations. Users can write recommendations for co-workers. This allows a hiring manager to read what is essentially a reference check long before they normally would conduct references.

Another benefit is seeing the connections you have. This can be particularly helpful for business development professionals where the largest rolodex wins.

The LinkedIn Answers is a place where you can answer questions asked by others. Having a strong track record of answering questions in a field may demonstrate expertise. I wouldn’t set out to answer questions just to highlight on your resume, but if you have a passion for participating in the discussion, it may help.

Finally, your profile personalizes your resume. Profiles usually focus much more on an individual’s interests and motivations than a resume does.

Why Shouldn’t I Add My Profile

First, if you have an incomplete or poorly written profile, don’t highlight it.

Second, are you going to leave something off your resume that is more valuable to make room for the link? If so, skip it.

Third, what message are sending with your profile? Is it creating a complimentary message to your resume and cover letter? Make sure it’s helping you in your search.

Bottom Line: Don’t add your profile unless it’s a really big selling point for the position you are pursuing. If you’re not sure, leave it off.

How Should I List It?

I see several ways of putting a Linked In profile on your resume. You can place the link in your contact information at the top of your resume.

Your could place it at the end of the resume under a heading indicating what you want to highlight. For example, after the last section of your resume, add a section titled “Recommendations” and place the link under it.

You could put the link in your cover letter, highlighting the information on your profile that you want the hiring manager to read. For example, you could call attention to the recommendations and provide the link.

Finally, you could imbed the link within another section in your resume. For example, if you had a great recommendation from a former boss on your profile, you might attach the link under that job.

Conclusion

For some job seekers, adding a link to their resume could be beneficial. For most, I wouldn’t do it. Make sure your profile is really good before doing this and have a clear plan for why you want to include it.

Check out the discussion on Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/answers/using-linkedIn/ULI/299873-11341068

I have close to 2000 direct connections on LinkedIn. Feel free to send an invitation to me ([email protected]) if you want to link.

Seven Things You Need to do Before Submitting Your Resume

Before you send out your next resume, there are seven things you need to do:

1. Check the content

Do you have all the information on your resume that you need? Is the important information easy to find? Need more information: Read my post on resume content

2. Customize your resume to the job

Make sure you customize your resume to the job requirements. The first screening step companies go through is to reject job seekers that don’t have all the skills they consider critical. If you fail to list a skill or experience that is critically important, the odds are that the hiring manager will assume you don’t have what they are looking for. The next step for your resume is the trash bin. Make sure your resume clearly shows your experience with each job requirement. Need more information: Check out my post on how to customize a resume

3. Spell check

Too many job seekers shortcut this step. Make sure you spell check your resume before sending it. Often, job seekers spell check a resume after the write their first version, but fail to do this after every revision.

4. Have your resume assess by a professional

Do you know how your resume is perceived by hiring managers? Hire an expert to review your resume. Many job seekers spend so much time on their resume that they can’t step back and assess it objectively. An impartial expert can help you fine tune your resume and give you a competitive advantage over other job seekers. There are a variety of services that provide resume assessments – some are free, while others require are fee based.

Palladian offers a thorough resume assessment service, where we examine 61 resume attributes and provide specific written feedback that will help you improve your resume.

5. Write a quality cover letter

A strong cover letter will help make a good impression. Spend the time to develop a good cover letter, or if you aren’t a great writer, hire someone to write a cover letter for you. There are a number of services that do this. Check out my research report on cover letter best practices to learn now to write a cover letter that is better than the ones your competition uses. Email us to get the report: palladian at palladianinternational dot com

6. Check your voice mail message

Make sure you have a professional sounding voice mail message. If you’re successful and the company calls you, you do not want to have an unprofessional or offensive message that you recorded for your friends.

7. Check your Facebook page

Do you have a public social networking profile? If so, review the content. It’s common for hiring managers to google the name of a candidate. If you publish information about yourself in a social networking site, make sure the information won’t hurt your career. You can either edit the site, or restrict access to only your accepted friends.

Resume Length

Usually, when I talk about resume length, I focus on the number of pages. Keeping a resume under two pages is a good rule of thumb, but this is only part of the story. The other thing to consider is the number of words in a resume.

Reading Rate

The average adult reads approximately 250 words per minute. This estimate is based on easy to comprehend material. More difficult, technical material requires a slower rate, with some estimates as low as 50 words per minute for extremely technical material when the reader wants 100% comprehension.

How your resume is written will affect how a person reads it. If it is very technical in nature, with very long complex sentences, the reader will have to read slower. If your resume is very long, you put the reader in a bind. Slow down to comprehend everything, or save time by reading fast and only skim the material.

Let’s say your resume is written so that it can be read fairly easily – say at 200 words per minute. This means that a 400 word resume (a fairly typical length) will require two minutes of concentration to read thoroughly.

The problem with many resumes is that they are not easy, light reading. Additionally, most hiring managers can only afford 15, 30 or maybe 60 seconds per resume. In that time, they may only comprehend a few sentences before determining if they are going to discard the resume or continue reading.

Long Resumes

I’ve seen very long resumes. We looked at one recently that was five pages and 1,600 words. It was full of technical terms and acronyms. It was work to comprehend and understand each detail. If I wanted to truly understand this job seeker’s resume, it might take ten or fifteen minutes (possibly longer, I can’t be sure since I quit reading early on).

Recommendations

Keep your resume short and concise.
Write in easy to read sentences and paragraphs.
Target a length of 400-900 words.
Use bullets, indents, bold, italics and other formatting cues to direct the reader to the most important information.

Qualifications on a Resume

I received this resume from an Engineer recently. At the top of the resume, the job seeker starts with section titled "Qualifications" with two bullets:

Qualifications

More than three (3+) years of engineering experience; proposal and project execution of air pollution control systems. Additional experience in production pilot plant, and research and development.

Former self-employed authorized retailer of Dish Network satellite television service, connecting hundreds of customers in the area of <metro area>.

These are the only two bullets under the qualifications section. The candidate’s objective states that they are seeking a chemical engineering position.

The first bullet is ok. It shows 3 years of experience in the industry, with a few specifics that may help – air pollution control experience and pilot plant experience. These aren’t great, but they’re better than nothing.

The second bullet is a waste of space and distracting. When I first read it, I was surprised. It doesn’t have any relevance to chemical engineering. Worse, it made me wonder why this individual didn’t have a single accomplishment after three years in the engineering field to highlight. Do you think an engineering manager wants to hire someone that had no accomplishments after three years? Probably not.

The self-employed experience does have a place on this resume. It shows independence, good business experience and initiative. The problem is that these attributes aren’t the key to an engineering position. The self employed experience should be covered in the work experience section (where it was detailed more fully) but not in the qualifications sections.

Top 6 Situations to Use a Functional Resume

A functional resume is a great format to use for some job seekers. Unfortunately, many people use it in the wrong situation, and others fail to use it when they should. If you are in one of these six situations, you should consider a functional resume:

Recent Graduates: If you are just graduating from school, you don’t have work experience to put in a chronological format. This makes a functional format a great choice.
Individuals Changing Careers: Moving into a new field presents several challenges. One of the most significant is showing that your prior experience is transferable to the new career. A functional resume can help demonstrate this.
Senior Executives: Many senior executives have extensive careers that can be difficult to summarize in two pages. Organizing information in a functional format can help in prioritizing the most important information without letting the resume get too long.
Project Specialists: Some careers, such as construction and consulting, are focused on completing projects. It can be difficult to write about each project in sufficient detail to highlight important accomplishments without having the resume get too long. A functional resume can make this much easier to do.
Stay at Home Mom’s Returning to the Workforce: Returning to the workforce after taking significant time off can be very challenging. A chronological resume focuses the readers attention on your career progression. With a large gap in your employment you want to focus on your skills and abilities, and a functional resume can help do this.
Transitioning Military Officers: Moving from a military to a civilian career is a very big change. Civilian employers rarely understand all the details of a military career. This makes highlighting your skills and abilities very important.

The important thing to remember when you select the format for your resume is to highlight why you will be successful. For some, this is their career progression and a chronological resume will work well. For others, their skills and accomplishments are a bigger selling point and a functional resume works better.

Check the Sentence Structure in Your Resume

Below are three consecutive bullets from a sales executive’s resume, exactly as they appeared on the resume:

Relationships were developed through networking and cold calling as well as face to face meetings to discuss business needs and the potential impact of our services on each organization.
Reached over 95% of annual sales goal in my first year in 9 months.
I was able to penetrate 7 new accounts within the first 2 years as well as maintain current established clients.

Each bullet has a different structure. The first has an implied subject and is passive voice. The second also has an implied subject but is written in active voice. The third bullet includes the subject and is written in passive voice.

An inconsistent writing style can be very distracting to read. The solution for this is easy to implement. The implied subject is the typical style and active voice is usually preferred over passive voice. Here’s how I would reword these:

Developed new client relationships through networking, cold calling and face to face meetings.
Reached over 95% of annual sales goal in my first year in 9 months.
Penetrated 7 new accounts within the first 2 years while maintaining established clients.

In addition to reading more consistently, the reworded version has a third less words. Remember, shorter text is more likely to be read.

How to Customize Your Resume For Each Job

It is important to customize your resume for each position you pursue. Every application should be tailored to best present your background. Although most job seekers know this, few understand how to go about it. Fortunately, it’s not that tough once you know what to do.

Cover Letter

Write a new cover letter for each application. The basic form will be the same. The main thing that will change is your explanation why you are interested in the position. So few job seekers customize their cover letters, and almost none include information that clearly shows they did some research. Doing this will make you stand out.

Objective Statement

If you have an objective statement, make sure it matches the opportunity. If it doesn’t match, the odds are that you will be rejected based on this. A hiring manager doesn’t want to waste time on a job seeker that isn’t interested in the job.

Accomplishments

If you have a job description, pull out the three or four most important requirements. Then, make sure you have an accomplishment demonstrating each requirement somewhere in the last two or three jobs you have held.

Skills

Look at the key technical skills for the position and detail your experience with each. You don’t need a lot of information on each skill, a few words may be sufficient. The key is showing you possess the skills and creating the interest with the hiring manager to want to learn more in an interview.