Down with Generic Resumes!
One popular strategy for job hunting is to build a nice generic resume (or have some resume agency build it for you), then blast it out to all the employers that you can find. If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that this is about the worst strategy you could adopt. Think about it:
- the hiring manager has a particular job in mind
- that job needs a particular skill set
- he or she gets 10-20 resumes per day for the job
- they’re all generic resumes that sort of address his job, but not well
- why should he choose yours over any of the others?
Instead, try building a semi-custom resume that has the boilerplate stuff like your work experience and education in place, but leaves blank the “career highlights” section. Now, read each job description carefully and ask yourself,
“What problem is the hiring manager trying to solve with this requisition, and how can I make myself look like the perfect person for that job?”
Try to think like the hiring manager and try to imagine the resume that would make him or her sit up and say, “At last! I’ve found a 10-for-10 match!” Now you know what to write in the rest of your resume and in your cover letter. Believe me, this will get your resume to the top of the manager’s stack and make all the other generic resumes fade into obscurity.
So stop thinking that one size fits all when it comes to resumes and become efficient at writing resumes that are custom-tailored to fit the job you’re applying for. Trust me on this, it’ll work much better than blasting out your luke-warm generic resume.
About the Author
Bruce Taylor is the Owner and Principle of Unison Coaching, and provides corporate and executive coaching to a wide variety of businesses including engineering, human resource, consulting, and recruiting firms. Mr Taylor has extensive background in Psychology, Human Resources, and Software Engineering. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from Duke University, a Masters in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts, and a Certificate in Job Stress and Healthy Workplace Design from the University of Massachusetts. He can be reached at http://www.unisoncoaching.com or bruce_taylor@unisoncoaching.com
Tags: hiring, job, job description, job search, manager, recruiter, recruiting, resumeResume WorkShop — Resume Content Is King
We’ll now take a good look at how to build the heading, job objectives, summary of qualifications, and work history sections of a r
Tags: career, employment, hiring, job interview, job search, jobs, resumeResume WorkShop — Organizing Format
There are some fundamental rules for writing a r
Tags: career, employment, hiring, job interview, job search, jobs, resume, resume helpThe Purpose of a Resume To Win an Interview
Your resume must be better than anything your competitors have to offer if you are going to get an interview. A well-written resume generates phone calls. Those phone calls are from prospective employers who want to interview you for a job. If you are not getting phone calls and you are sending out resumes, then you need to take a closer look at your resume.
Any resume can list employment dates and job position titles, but only the best resumes speak the language employers want to hear.
THE LANGUANGE OF RESULTS
If you just list the job duties you performed and hope the prospective employer makes the leap that you are a good employee, you are probably going to be in for a big surprise. You see, they don’t have time to read your job responsibilities and then ponder how you managed to accomplish all that you did. Hiring managers simply do not have that kind of time. They are scanning a resume for the words that show results.
MAKE IT EASY FOR EMPLOYERS.
You have to show them that you are a cut above the rest of the crowd by providing concrete examples of your successes. Do the thinking for the employer and give them what they are looking for.
First, use action-oriented keywords that reflect your ability to solve problems, take initiative, are performance-driven and goal-based.
Second, quantify your statements with numbers that define your desire to affect the bottom line. Give examples of how you saved the company money or time (relates to money) or how you earned money for the company. Numbers have meaning and are easy to latch on to. Employers love to read quantifiable statements (that are truthful) as it paints a picture that SHOWS what you accomplished rather than the dubious joy of your words telling them what you did.
Resumes can work FOR you or they can work AGAINST you. When you list the information employers want to see, then you will have a great deal of success. You will be one of the ones to get a coveted phone call for an interview. If you don’t take the time to prepare a resume in a way that grabs a hiring manager’s attention, it is actually working against you.
Take the time to write an excellent resume. It may take a little longer to think of the right words to use, but in the end, when you are enjoying the benefits of an excellent career, you will be SO GLAD you did.
Best of Luck!
Carla Vaughan
http://www.professional-resume-example.com
Carla Vaughan is the owner of http://www.Professional-Resume-Example.com, a web site devoted to assisting candidates in the job-search process. She holds a B.S. in Business from Southern Illinois University and has authored a book titled, “The Do-It-Yourself Resume Kit” soon to be available on her site.
Tags: employer, employment, example, hiring, interview, job, quantify, results, resume, resumes, searchWhy is It so Important to List Accomplishments on Resumes
Your accomplishments are what distinguish you from your competitors in the job-search process. All things being equal, if a hiring manager were looking at two identical prospective employees who could handle the tasks of the job perfectly well, but one had accomplished more than the other, who do you think is going to get a phone call? Obviously, the person who accomplishes the most “wins”.
What exactly IS an accomplishment?
An accomplishment is when you do something successfully. If you make a positive difference at work, you are accomplishing something. From an employer’s standpoint, it is even better if you can state your achievements in a measurable or quantifiable way.
What does that mean? Use numbers whenever you can to state HOW you achieved the results you are affirming. Being able to quantify your skills and abilities makes other people perceive you in a very positive way. Why? Quantified accomplishments mean RESULTS.
Employers are all about results. Employers are all about the bottom line.
For instance, if you increased production of the best selling product at your company, by HOW MUCH did you increase it? 15% 20% 25% Quantify your statements whenever possible. Numbers SHOW results.
Remember being in kindergarten? Wasn’t it great when you could bring something to school for SHOW AND TELL? Lesson #1: It’s awesome to be able to bring something that no one else has. You get more recognition. Lesson #2: If you show your classmates something, it has significantly more meaning than if you tell them something. They literally have something to grab a hold of.
In your resume, you have to show the employer why you are the best person for the job. SHOW the employer that you have something to offer that no one else does. You have to be credible. You should never lie. You can, however, make yourself look better than your competitors. Use descriptive active language to engage the employer when reading your resume. Make your words jump off the page and grab the reader’s attention.
At the same time, you have to guide the employer through your resume clearly and eloquently so that only one conclusion can be reached: YOU are the best candidate for the job. if you simply state your previous job title and the duties you performed, you are not helping them to SEE who you really are. You’re just telling them. Quantify your accomplishments and let them see just what you can do for them.
Let your accomplishments sing your praises for you. When writing your resume, let yourself shine through the job duties in a way that resonates with employers. Show results by quantifying your accomplishments.
You will be the one getting the phone call for an interview - and isn’t that what it’s all about?
Carla Vaughan
http://www.professional-resume-example.com/accomplishments.html
Carla Vaughan is the owner of http://www.Professional-Resume-Example.com, a web site devoted to assisting candidates in the job-search process. She holds a B.S. in Business from Southern Illinois University and has authored a book titled, “The Do-It-Yourself Resume Kit” soon to be available on her site. Resume blog:
http://professional-resumes.blogspot.com/
Writing Your Technical Writing Resume A Practical Guide
If anyone in the entire universe ought to have a perfect resume, it’s a technical writer. Tech writers are supposed to be expert writers and fanatically obsessed with technical accuracy and relevance. Does this describe your resume?
A tech writing manager we know developed a 30-column spreadsheet to assess technical writing candidates. Three of the criteria are about resumes. Let’s talk about them:
Accurate and organized - as a document, a sample of your writing, is your resume scrupulously accurate, down to the smallest details, and organized in a clear and logical way? Is the writing really good, so that it grabs the reader’s attention without relying on empty buzzwords? Did you format it so that it looks clean and neat? Remember that tech writing managers know how to look behind the scenes into your document - they can run spell checks, view nonprinting characters, and even see whether you wrote it on your home computer or at the office.
Error-free - is your resume absolutely, without the smallest exception, free of typos, errors of fact, misspellings, and any other error that will proclaim to the reader, “I’m not as careful about checking things as I’d like you to think”?
Proper tool use - Did you format your document using spaces and extra carriage returns? Or were you able to use styles and other features of your authoring tool effectively and efficiently, as a mark of a pro? Does your document contain evident use of advanced tool expertise, such as macros or protection, to show that you really know how to get the most out of the tool?
Note that these are in addition to content. If the content of your resume shows no experience or aptitude for technical writing, never mind the above. The days when anyone who could open a Word file could get hired as a tech writer are, thankfully, gone.
Now, a word about content: remember that your resume is your initial sales opportunity. So sell! Keeping in mind all of the above - including the scrupulously accurate part - make your words show what you can do, based on what you have done. “Updated a manual using Frame” doesn’t tell a hiring manager much at all.
Why not instead say what you did to overcome the challenges of that project to deliver your updates on time, on budget, to user acclaim, or whatever scrupulously accurate measures of success you can legitimately claim? Remember that the hiring manager, and even more so the HR person who does the initial resume screening, may have no idea what Frame is. So don’t focus on the tools.
Mention tools in their proper context, but focus on what you got done. Show measurable achievements where you can. Show that you understand the business or scientific context in which you worked. There’s nothing more valuable, because this is a good indicator that you will understand a new business or scientific context if you get hired.
For more information and resources, see Tech Writing Jobs, from which this article is adapted. Reprinting is permitted provided that no changes are made to the article or to this bio.
Steve Schwarzman is a technical writing consultant with over 15 years of experience. Among the web sites he writes for are Tech Writing Jobs - a site devoted to tech writers and job searches, and Writers Book Mall, a site with resources for writers of all kinds.
Tags: advice, career, careers, hiring, hr, interview, job, jobs, resume, resumes, tech, technical, Tips, work, writer7 Ways to Make Your Resume Do Its Job Tips to Avoid Mistakes and Get that Interview!
Job-seekers everywhere ask what hiring managers look for in a resume. While the answer varies per industry and position, here are some guidelines to follow - illustrated by some bloopers that show what NOT to do! (And yes, all of these gems are real, with only identifying details removed.)
Don’t disqualify yourself
One resume I received for a writing position said “I have no writing experience at all, but I was born in Scotland.” In other words, this person was telling me that, aside from speaking English, he or she had no qualifications for the job. You should never stretch your credentials beyond what they are, but don’t do the opposite and make it clear to one and all that you can’t do the job.
Use your resume to sell your strengths
One would-be writer said, “I am current responsible for standardizing.” In other words, while this person saw herself as someone who could help an employer standardize the work of many people and processes, which is often a good thing, she undermined her claim by showing she didn’t even standardize what she had written to the rules of grammar. (She should have said “currently.”) So she got to stay current where she was!
Show you can do good work
In most documents you write, typos might not be critical. But on resumes, where you’re trying to explain how good a worker you are, it’s counter-productive if you don’t check your work. One resume I received claimed the author was “Able to set and meet goals in a fast past environment.” Now, “past” is a perfectly good word, but what he meant was “paced.” And his spell-checker didn’t catch the typo, since “past” is a word. So this resume announced to hiring managers, “I don’t check my work.” Is that what you want to say on your resume?
Sell your skill set using logic
Sometimes people put silly things on their resumes that aren’t incorrect and might even be true. But they’re still mistakes, like the person who wrote, “Maintain 98% total quality accuracy.” It was meant to sound good, but what it means is that she’s promising to make errors 2% of the time. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective, but 98% fat-free milk is another way of saying it has 2% fat. Sure, nobody’s perfect, and you can’t claim that you don’t ever make mistakes. But if you want to sell a manager on how accurate you are, use logic, and come up with a better way to illustrate your obsession with quality.
Tell me what you can do for me
While many people think the purpose of resumes is to say what you’ve done, the real purpose of a resume is to convince a manager that you can do what they need you to do. You should never, ever, stretch the truth, and you should never, ever, speak ill of your former or current employers. (Managers don’t want to hire liars or back-stabbers.) So summarize the key elements in your previous work in an interesting way that shows how you tackle assignments. Write about what you did and how you did it. And you don’t need to include belittling details, like the guy who wrote that the company he was trying to leave “is a company started by a friend of mine.” What that told me is that the reason he got hired was because his friend, not him, had initiative and started a company, and worse, that he was paying back his friend by deserting him.
Don’t overdo it
Stick to the facts and present them in a way that shows managers you can do the job. Give examples, preferably using numbers if that makes sense. And let the reader draw her own conclusions, unlike the resume that said, “I am superior at …”. I wanted to thank the writer for, um, sharing that information with me, but that’s not someone I wanted on my team.
Write clearly
Whether you are a truck driver or a neurosurgeon, work on your resume until it’s clear. Keep in mind that for most jobs, several different kinds of people will read your resume before you get an interview, ranging from secretaries to HR staff who may not know your professional jargon, to hiring managers who may or may not know the lingo of your specific profession. And please, skip the buzzwords of the day, unlike the candidate who wrote, “I am interested in a position where I can develop a synergistic relationship.” She must have read somewhere that synergistic relationships were the buzzword du jour, but couldn’t say on her resume just who or what she intended to develop such a relationship with.
Make your resume do its job
Your resume has a job - to get you an interview. So give your resume the ammunition it needs to get that job done: stick to the facts, present them clearly and persuasively, give examples of your accomplishments to show what makes you stand out, and ruthlessly hunt down any mistakes of typing, writing, fact, or logic. Do this, and your resume will start to work for you!
For more information, see the career books at TechWritingJobs.com - a site devoted to job searches for technical writers, from which this article is adapted. Reprinting is permitted provided that the article and this author bio are unchanged and printed in full.
Steve Schwarzman is a technical writing consultant with over 15 years of experience. Among the web sites he writes for are Tech Writing Jobs and the Writers Book Mall.
Tags: advice, career, careers, hiring, hr, interview, interviews, job, jobs, resume, resumes, Tips, work, writer