What does your resume say about you?

Saturday, January 19, 2008

What does your resume say about you? by Mike Anderson

I have read thousands of resumes in my career as a C-level executive. To be honest, I usually read the first couple of lines and scan the job titles of the candidate in an effort to glean what I am able to as quickly as possible. Do you know why? Not because I am too busy or too lazy to read them. No, it is because they are often so boring and poorly formatted that I can hardly get past the first few lines.

To get hiring authorities to read your resume, candidates must find ways to create an eye appealing format. Whether you are an entry level candidate, or a senior executive, the first two people that read your resume are generally completely unqualified to make a determination as to whether or not you are qualified for the position for which you are applying. Executive Recruiters or internal HR staff only know on a superficial level whether your qualifications match up with the requirements of the job. Normally, knowing that is that is the job of the hiring authority, but only if your resume has passed on to them through the hands of the first level gate keepers.

I have always maintained that a resume is not a chronological listing of your employment history. No, it is a sales brochure, and the product your are promoting is no other than you. Imagine you are a door to door salesman. You cannot bring samples of each product you sell with you, but you can bring a healthy stack of three color, high gloss sales brochures that contain all of the highlights of the product. The sales brochure contains every technical spec, the colors, any competitive advantages that you can imagine. And, you are going to stuff the mailboxes of prospective customers to let them read it over and over in the hope that they like what they read and call you back!! Oh joy!

Now imagine the same scenario, but this time all you have a is a white piece of paper, with no color, not much of a product description, but only a plain, boring list of the attributes of the product. Imagine what that customer might think about the product. My guess is that they will not think too highly of it. They might be a little skeptical that if the sales pitch is so weak, so might be the engineering behind it. I am thinking it goes right in the round file.

You too may suffer the same exact result. The sole intent of a resume is to get an interview. Nothing else matters. You need someone to read those pages and be caught up in the formatting, the structure, the use of color and bold print. If you have a particular skill you need to be able to highlight that, and call major attention to it. If on the other hand you have a problem with your resume, you need to low light it to draw attention away from it.

So many times I have read resumes with all of the common problems like misspellings, grammar, poor sentence structure, or glaring mistakes. I will normally just toss those into the DNC pile, as in “Do Not Call”. Why? Because if you can't give me a perfect resume with all the time in the world to prepare and check it, how the heck are you going to react to a pressure deadline I give you with no time whatsoever? Do I need to answer that?

Also, you must take credit for your major accomplishments and call out tangible results in an active voice. Executives especially need to take credit for financial results - increases in sales, reductions in spending, or any other metric that will demonstrate the business acumen of the candidate. I love resumes that say things like “reduced operating expenses by $3.5 million”, “increased sales by 12.5% in six months”, “surpassed sales targets 6 out of the last 8 months”. Get it?

I hate resumes that say “affected change through strong leadership” or “eliminated staff turnover”. What? What the heck are you telling me? I have no clue what you did, how you did it, or why you did it! By the way, eliminating staff turnover is normally a bad thing. We need to occasionally thin out dead wood and that comes in the form of turnover. Higher than average turnover might indicate you are a hatchet man, but unless that is the job for which you are applying, leave that out too. For gaps in employment, do not try to explain that in the resume. Ignore it. Don't lie, but ignore it. Make the interviewer ask, but be prepared with a solid, proactive answer. I have seen resumes that try to explain terminations and layoffs in the resume when I hadn't even noticed it yet. When I was in the Navy, we used to joking say that Navy stood for Never Again Volunteer Yourself. Well, never volunteer negative information in a resume or interview. Never, ever lie. Let me say that again....never, ever lie, but resumes and interviews are not Catholic confessionals. Once the company wants you, they will often overlook small problems, but if you offer it up, everyone now goes into CYA mode which means you are out on your A.

For my Gen X and Gen Y readers �" you need to use correct English and no slang. Make sure your email addresses are not inappropriate like “bigswinger@aol.com” or “beerstud@yahoo.com”. You see, as cool as they are, they say something not so great about you. You may be just a great guy who I would love to hang out with, but I am not so sure I want you interacting with my customers, or creating a financial analysis on Monday after a great beer bust weekend. No, I you need to use your name as well as you can for your email address. Something like JohnSmith@aol.com is perfect, but I realize there are a lot of John Smith's, so just try very hard to get an address that is not offensive, sexual, too funny, or just plain dumb. And lastly, get rid of all voice mail greetings that suggest you are anything less than serious. For example no rap tunes, country tunes, celebrity voice overs, or profanity. They are really funny with the right audience, but when the HR Department calls to schedule an interview and hears something offensive, she might just hang-up before leaving a message. So, delete them and simply change your greeting to say “Hi, this is John. I can't take your call right now, but please leave a message and I will call you back as soon as possible.” I know that is boring, but it will save you a lot of explaining later.

Well that is about all the room I have for this little story. I would be happy to help you more if you have any questions. This article was not intended as primer, but more of a thought provoking introspective on how you should present yourself. If you would like more information, or a free resume review, you can contact me at mike@directyourcareer.com or read my blog at www.directyourcareer.com/blog .

About the Author
Mike Anderson is a C-level executive, author and internet entrepreneur with more than twenty five years of experience. You can read his blog at www.directyourcareer.com/blog and email him at mike@directyourcareer.com.

Source: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=739329