The rules have changed. Shopping for employment is a hybrid of automated filter applications, on-line search engines and good old fashioned human interpretation. To be effective you need to make sure that your resume is designed to perform in all of these areas. In the hunt for a new job, a better job, or just keeping your Resume current, use these ten simple steps to draft a stellar resume.
1. Create a Personal Portfolio
This is the easy part. Begin by making a list of accomplishments, education and previous positions. This is your own private list. Do not be concerned with the order or the appearance. You can use scratch paper, word processor or collection of documents. Gather, create, collect and document your history with important facts, figures and milestones. Collect the relevant highlights from your life, education and career.
2. Choose a Standard Outline
Select a standard Template to use as your outline. Resist the urge to be creative or unique in the format of your resume. Do not waste time with colorful bullets, images or watermarks. Why? Web sites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com provide the option to upload a resume in standard format and can automatically identify job titles with associated accomplishments. Your resume gets cut and spliced into pure text data and loaded into a “Monster” database that can be accessed by recruiters, human resource departments and agencies. Many companies and organizations either use the on-line database application or have similar software for managing the pure text from resumes. These filters do not support colorful bullets, images, icons or watermarks. If you do not want to spend your time copying and pasting pure text for every on-line opportunity, then make your life easy and use a standard template.
Organize the documents and thoughts from your personal portfolio into a chronological timeline and type them into a standard resume outline. Be sure to keep track of the accomplishments that best define your ability.
Sample Professional and Standard Outlines can be found at
http://www.executiveblueprints.com/executive_jobs.htm
3. Work Backwards
The typical resume starts with a short paragraph about you, followed bullet by points of your highlights, and then lists your career starting with your current or latest job. While that is meaningful to a potential employer to see the most current and relevant information first, it is opposite of the order of events. Most people tend to reflect on their life with greater precision in chronological order, like a story unfolding and progressing through the eyes of your memory.
Start at the end of your resume and work toward the beginning. This will enable you to follow your own career path and build up to the current status. It will make more sense to you as you put it together. Like building blocks of personal development, it will make more sense to someone reading the final product and understanding how you got to where you are today.
Start with your education. Then update the bullet points for the first job or oldest career position that you are going to include. Keep working forward in time, from the end of your resume to the beginning. Pay attention to how the responsibility and experience of each position contributed to the success of the subsequent one.
4. Concise, Precise and Measured
Bullet points with short sentences and specific measurements are excellent. For each job, use a series of bullet points to make your statement. Punctuate the highlights with measurements. “Good sales skills” should be “Increased sales 45% in first Quarter”, “Increased sales 15% year-over-year” or “Directed Regional Sales Growth of 7% in Sixteen Months”. Service related measurements may be related to “Improved Customer Satisfaction from 87% to 95%”, or “Managed a Call Center with less than 2% Abandon Rate”. Accounting and Finance may include estimated average size of portfolio managed, outstanding receivables in days, or similar measurements. Dates, Completion and Milestones are also a method of measurement. The bottom line is that every position can be measured. Identify measurements and provide quantitative details.
Do not make up measurements. Include the data if you have it or you are confident in the accuracy. Do not make up numbers if you do not know them. Use bullet points to be concise, do not use paragraphs. Avoid using “I” or “We”. Use personal accomplishments with supporting data.
5. Select Your Highlights
Select highlight from your personal portfolio. These may or may not be included in your career bullet points. You can emphasize specific accomplishments from your career, or you can use this opportunity to highlight outside achievements. For example, this might be your opportunity to mention volunteer work for charitable contributions. Use highlights to draw attention to specific individual talents, skills and experience. Highlights should also be listed in bullet form, above the individual career descriptions.
6. Keywords and Buzzwords
Above the bulleted Highlights, create a section of bulleted Keywords and Buzzwords. What are keywords and buzzwords? These are common words associated with your desired profession. For example, a programmer might include reference to “UNIX”, “LINUX” or “ORACLE”. An administrative assistant might include expertise in “WORD, POWERPOINT, EXCEL”, or the number of “WPM”. If you know which skills, tools, degrees or experience are relative and important for your profession, then be sure to list your capabilities. Do not take this for granted or assume that this is common. The recruiter and employer can not assume that all applicants have the necessary skills, so make sure that you include as many as possible.
Why is this so important? The on-line tools and application filters will search your resume for keywords related to specific jobs, just like search engines search for keywords to identify relevance in a web page or web site. The more matches to keywords, the higher your score. Typically the highest scores are used to select individuals for personal interviews, and the lowest scores are discarded before a human ever reads the resume. To avoid being discarded by an automated attendant, improve your score with relevant keywords.
7. Make Your Own Headlines
Create a short paragraph to define yourself and use this as the opening of your resume. It should only be four or five sentences long, chock full of keywords and buzzwords. Use action verbs like “Managed”, “Directed”, “Accomplished”, or “Achieved”. These are sentences, not bullet points. If you get beyond the automated applications and filters, this will be the first thing that a person reads. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so summarize yourself in the opening paragraph in such a way that the reader would be compelled to scan the rest of your work history in you resume.
8. Add Spice
Review the entire document from start to finish. Modify your bullet points with action adverbs and exciting adjectives where appropriate. For example, “In charge of four employees, reduced expenses 12%” can be more effective and exciting worded as “Managed a dynamic department that dramatically reduced overall expenses by 12%”. Which description sounds more appealing and energetic to you?
Read each sentence as if you were the big voice of a radio announcer. If the bullet points sound exciting, then you have written them well. If the description sounds ridiculous in your big announcer voice, then you might need to write the bullets again. Just in case, don’t use that big announcer voice in public until you are really confident about your resume.
9. Check Your Name and Contact Information
Make sure that it is easy to find your name, email address and phone number. It would be a shame to have a stellar resume that is a perfect match for the job of your dreams, and the employer can not get in touch with you. Don’t laugh, it happens. Make sure that your name, email and phone number are prominently visible on both pages of your resume.
Do not include personal or private information like a social security number. Do not use more than two pages for your resume, no matter how many jobs you have worked. If you are using a professional resume format, you will be prompted for placement of your contact information. Make sure that it is your contact information on every page.
10. Review and Repeat
Review your resume for correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. Nothing says careless better than a resume that is full of errors. I have seen managers promptly discard resumes due to spelling or grammar. The resume is a reflection of you, and the employer assumes that you took time to craft this document with great care. Your future opportunities may be based on your resume, so it should be treated that way. If you do not have confidence, then it may be well worth the investment to hire a professional to correct these errors and spice up the document for you. Consider it a one time investment that will bring you continual rewards by earning a better job and better pay.
Once you have a resume that gives you satisfaction and confidence, then it is time to change it. Save that version of your resume, and make another copy that you can modify with a different theme. Use the copy of your resume to change keywords, buzzwords and highlights from a different perspective. In many cases there are aspects of your experience that may be more closely associated with different job markets or industries. Adjust the language of your resume according to different job markets so you can submit a fitting resume to a target position. Do not try to make your resume “one size fits all”, but rather make several variations of your resume with different themes.
For examples of how to use different themes, compare the following on-line versions of these actual resumes:
Sales and Marketing Theme
http://www.executiveblueprints.com/resumes/johnmkt.htm
Service and Operations Theme
http://www.executiveblueprints.com/resumes/johnsvc.htm
References
Do not distribute a list of references unless asked. References should only be presented during an interview, not distributed in advance.
Ask permission from each person to be a reference for you. Do not ever list someone without prior consent. Employers are obligated to call and verify references, and you do not want it to be a surprise.
Be courteous to the people who are generous enough to be a reference, ask them for a written endorsement or letter of recommendation. This enables the reference to endorse your capability or experience without the interruption of a phone call until it is time for an employer to check and verify references. This is a courtesy to your references as it will minimize the potential number of people who may call. It also gets your endorsement in the hands of the potential employer that much faster. It is a great way to be courteous and build credibility at the same time.
Submit Your Resume
Don’t be shy. Upload your resume to the on-line web tools and be prepared for quick response. Check your email every day and respond quickly to opportunity. Do not think of it as being over-eager, it is being enthusiastic and responsive. Recruiters and employers have a need and incentive to fill positions with qualified individuals in a prompt and efficient manner. They do not have time to wait if you take your time, so be at the front of the line and demonstrate your aggressive and enthusiastic desire.
Prepare for Your Interview
If you took this much time and care to prepare a stellar resume, then do the same preparation for your interview. A professional resume will get you past the on-line filters, the company internal applications and the front-line reviews. If you get to the personal interview, make sure that you are adequately prepared.
You need to be confident in the final versions of your resume. If you are not sure, ask for review from trusted and respected colleagues. If you do not want to do that, you might want to consider using a professional service to assist you. Remember, the time that you spend on your resume is an investment to open new doors to career opportunities that could dramatically change your life. Invest a little extra time for long lasting rewards.
Still looking for a little motivation, inspiration or guidance?
Look for “Executive Jobs, A Guide to Managing Your Career”, a free eBook from http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com
John Mehrmann is President of Executive Blueprints Inc., an organization devoted to improving business practices and developing human capital.
http://www.ExecutiveBlueprints.com provides resource materials for trainers, sample Case Studies, educational articles and references to local affiliates for consulting and executive coaching.