7 Tips for Improving Your Resume

One consequence of this long recession is the struggle individuals are faced with when dealing with the question, How should I present my experience when there are:

• gaps in employment periods
• unpaid jobs
• positions requiring a lot of experience alongside those requiring minimal skills
• jobs held that are unrelated to each other and perhaps seemingly unrelated to the current opening.

Although recruiters and hiring managers are most comfortable reviewing the traditional, chronological format, perhaps you’ll need to be creative in telling your story, and go beyond the traditional style. Please note: I’m using the word creative not in the sense of telling white lies, but in designing professional categories and information in a way that helps the reader understand what you’ve been doing, as well as how your skills are just what they are looking for.

Resumes are all about telling the story of your educational and work life experiences. In addition to what you already know about traditional resumes, consider these 7 tips:

1. Opening - There continues to be a lot of controversy about whether to use an objective statement or not. Here’s why I come down on the side of "Yes, it’s critical."

You want to be able to help the reader understand where you are trying to take them with your story. The objective statement, Headliner, opening - whatever you want to call it - sets the tone for the reader to understand why you are presenting your resume.

You can take a technical approach to noting the position you are qualified for, i.e., Human Resource Manager with Organization Development experience, or you can be more personal in your opening, i.e., Senior level Human Resources professional who values strategic alignment, collaboration and technology integration.

2. Clustering – Tom Washington and Gary Kanter wrote a book that explores the concept of resume clustering. The idea is to bring together and showcase the past experiences you have to offer in the most favorable light. This can be highly effective in those situations where you’ve have period of unemployment or temporary assignments with a variety of companies.

A cluster for example could bring together the Contract or Temporary Jobs you’ve been doing. Or if you’ve been volunteering in a line of work you did professionally, you could cluster in a way to explain your Sales Management and Temporary and Contract Sales Engagements.

3. Length of Experience – Although there is no need to indicate months on a resume, a lot of resumes still reference month and year of employment. As a result of the increase in business closures, layoffs, and temporary assignments, it is much wiser for candidates with these types of situations to focus on only indicating the year in which the work was done, trying to avoid highlighting any gaps between jobs.

4. Broaden the Experience Category – Don’t overlook taking credit for the "non-employment" or "volunteer" work you may be focusing on while you’re waiting for the market to bounce back. If you’re in a program at school, call that out in your experience area, providing an overview of the program and how it is enhancing the skills you have to offer.

If you’ve been freelancing, or running your own business, put that in the experiencecategory and provide a brief position description of the tasks and functions you’ve been managing and the results you’ve achieved.

Often candidates overlook mentioning the volunteer work they are doing, experience which often matches the skill sets needed for a paying job. Make sure these types of opportunities are also listed as most current, so the reader of your resume recognizes what you’ve been doing lately.

5. New Categories – Resume writing is challenging, I know. But try not to get hung up with the notion that you can only use the categories you see utilized in examples found in books and on the internet. If you have a unique situation, a major project you want to highlight or an achievement you think lends strength to positioning you for the job opening, create a new heading such as Key Project or Distinguished Achievement to call attention to it.

6. Update – Make sure that every resume you are sending out is up-to-date and reflects the activities, workshops, classes, part-time jobs, volunteer work, etc. you’ve been doing since the last time you submitted a resume.

It’s easy to fall behind and forget what you’ve accomplished. Make it a good habit to review your resume every few weeks and update it with the latest information. Keeping track this way will help you avoid having to explain gaps in the future.

7. Second Set of Eyes – We’ve all been there. We’ve written something and think it’s clear, concise and has no grammatical or spelling errors and then… we pick it up after we’ve sent it out and right there in the first line is a misspelled word. Horrors!

Avoid this problem by asking a friend to proofread your resume every time you make a change. Remember, your brain knows what it meant to say, so your eyes may play along – totally missing a sentence that doesn’t make sense or reflects poor grammar.

Resumes should always be looked at as a work-in-progress. They’re never finished. Keep yours up-to-date and highlight what you have to offer in the best light. And, in the meantime, keep challenging yourself to stay busy, productive and upbeat.

If you need additional resources, check out prior Career GPS articles, review my website, www.evolutionmgt.com, consider ordering a copy of my book Position Your Next Move for a Successful Job Search, and evaluate if our personalized career coaching would be of assistance to you.

Job Seeker Questions and Answers

I’ve always heard that being a member of a professional association aligned with the type of job you are seeking is an important job strategy. Well, I’ve joined two groups this year and nothing! No leads, no job! What am I doing wrong?
- Izabella

Check out Dear Job Seeker for my answer to Izabella's question.


　

This article was written by Deborah A. King, SPHR, CEO and Sr. Organizational Effectiveness Consultant with Evolution Management, Inc. Debbie and her team provide customized career transition coaching, including the development of resumes that get action. Contact EMI for more information about how we can assist with your career transition and outplacement needs: www.evolutionmgt.com, 770.587.9032.

A Non-Scary Look at Resumes

Maybe it's the influence of Halloween, or maybe it's the reality that individuals get frightened by the overwhelming task of updating or creating a strong resume. Whatever the reason, I think it will be helpful to many to examine what makes for a strong resume – one that gets results.

Before we get into the resume framework, let's take a look at the meaningful message that must be sustained throughout the process.

Purpose: the purpose of a resume is to introduce your capabilities to a potential hiring manager or networking acquaintance. Your goal is to make them want to know more about you. By sharing the highlights of your knowledge, skills, and experiences as they relate to the position you are interested in, you start the exploration of how you fit and what expertise you can bring to their organization.

Therefore, please be aware that unless all the openings you are responding to are for exactly the same responsibilities, within the same industry, within companies with the same type of culture, one resume will not be appropriate. You need to get comfortable adjusting your resume so it speaks exactly to what each employer is looking for.

Remember, in the market today there is a lot of competition. Your resume has to make it easy for the person reading it to quickly assess where you fit and how you can add value. Today it’s likely that your resume may be initially read by a computer. Make sure you are using the language and keywords they are looking for. Make it easy for them to get excited about what you have to offer. Make them pick up the phone and call you!

Getting Started

Objective or not?

There seems to be a debate these days among career coaches and resume developers about whether it is appropriate to include an Objective Statement at the beginning of the resume. I happen to be in the camp that supports offering some direction to the reader about the talents you are most interested in offering. People are very busy. Your resume may only be viewed for 10-20 seconds before a decision is made, up or down on your being a match. Don't add the task of having to read your entire resume to see where you would fit to serve the company; give them a place to start.

On the other hand, I do believe that it is not appropriate to list a particular job title, especially since you don't want to be excluded from other positions you are qualified for - unless, of course, you are only interested in one job.  Instead, I think it is appropriate to include a sentence that highlights your interest and those primary competencies you can offer to help the organization achieve their goals and objectives.

Example: Over 16 years experience guiding organizational improvements utilizing organization development expertise in strategic planning, leadership development, project management, and meeting design and facilitation.

Qualification Summary

This may be the only section of your resume that gets read, so make it dance! This section is most often set up in a two- or three-column table. The table contains bulleted "keywords" that quickly illustrate the relevant competencies and characteristics you bring to the job. This is also the area where you will want to highlight key technical skills and primary functional areas you have knowledge in. The bullets should be brief, often just one or two word descriptors. Naturally you will also use applicable keywords used in the jobs posting that match your experience.

This section will determine the information you will include in the rest of the resume. The remainder of the document should offer strong examples to support how these competencies were applied in past positions, along with the quantifiable results you achieved.

Experience - Reverse Chronological Order

Some of our competitors prepare "functional" resumes rather than reverse chronological. You want to avoid functional resumes unless of course you are working with a headhunter or a recruiter who will be supplying the hiring manager with additional information about your background.

Functional resumes are fast and easy to construct; however, they are very difficult for the hiring manager to sort through. Information is not provided in a logical manner to allow a map of your career to be drawn. These resumes require a lot of work on the part of the employer, so they often end up in the trash. Recruiters and hiring managers want to see sharp, concise reverse chronological resumes. These start with the last job and work back to the first job you held, or at least your career over the last 15-20 years.

Headline each position you've held by providing the following information, in bold: name of company, city, state, and the years (no months) in which you worked for this firm. A job title that is understood by individuals outside of a particular firm or industry should also be noted. NEVER lie about anything on your resume, but if your title was Chief Number Cruncher, it's perfectly alright to indicate your title as Accounting Specialist, or Accountant, whatever is the most recognized equivalent title to the outside world.

Next, the experience information shared for each job title held while at each company should be begin with a statement such as, "Responsible for managing the day-to-day accounting operations for a national IT consulting firm with revenues of $10 million per year."

Now that you stated the overarching responsibility that you held, the following 8-10 bullets should highlight the primary functions you performed and the results achieved in each area. This is also the section where you would note awards. Each bullet should begin with an action word, such as achieved, coordinated, managed, analyzed, etc. Follow this formula for each bullet: responsible for = quantifiable result.

An example would be: Supervised and managed a team of six Accounting Specialists consistently recognized by management for their high levels of productivity and employee engagement.

As you detail job experiences after the most current job, you will begin to have fewer bullets. It's very important that each bullet is never a repeat of a task or function you have already detailed. Make each bullet a new fact about your background and experience. Make sure you include results that speak to improving elements of the organization such as results and processes, saving money, managing organizational change, and building teams. These are all points that are very important to potential employers. If you have global experience or can speak another language, highlight that as well.

Education

I often have clients ask me if they should include their high school information. The answer is, it depends. It depends on whether you have a college degree to list (if yes, than no to high school). Or perhaps you have college coursework that you can note. Everyone will assume if you took college courses, even if you didn't graduate, that you completed high school. Depending on the number of years you've been out of high school, it isn't necessary to note the date. You will complete that information when you complete the application.

Don't forget to also list all the training classes and workshops that are applicable to the type of position you are applying for. Also include certifications, licenses, etc.

What Not to Include in Your Resume

Be careful about putting too much personal information into the heading of the resume, especially if you are posting on a board where you don't know who will have access to it.  Take all precautionary steps to protect against identity theft.  Be mindful of the information you have included in your resume and where you post it, as well as the comments and information shared on Facebook and LinkedIn.  Thieves are very clever about pulling all the pieces together from various sources.

Don't take up space noting that references are available upon request. We all know that you will supply references prior to getting hired, so be ready with that information when you are called for an interview.

Your resume should not be longer than two pages, with margins of at least an inch, and a font no smaller than 10 pt.; 11 is preferred. The process will take a few iterations, so be patient. Get all your information down, and then start editing. Have someone else read through what you've developed and give you suggestions. It's hard to write a resume alone; that's why so many people use resume writers and coaches. It's a challenging process to get to the right level of detail, but you can do it. Please check out some free examples on my website that may be helpful to you and check out the links on the right side of this blog for additional resources.

A solid resume is critical to your job search and career development plan. Take the time to think through how you want to brand yourself and the skills you have to offer. If the industry you have come out of is struggling, examine the skills and talents you have to offer and reframe those experiences for a different industry or line of work. Help the reader see how your skills transfer regardless of industry.

Have a Reflective Journey

The process of searching for a job is a journey.  Although it can be frustrating at times, be open to learning more about your skills and passions and how you identify and articulate who you are.  The reflections you make during the process will help align you with the right position, prepare you for the interview, and help you be more authentic in the new job.  Best of luck with your resume process and job search journey.

Do you have specific questions related to the job search process?  Visit my Dear Jobseeker page for answers.

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770.587.9032