Career Cube Blog

You feel like you’re submitting your resume to every possible job under the sun, but you just can’t get any traction.  In the back of your mind is this nagging suspicion that it’s not them, but your resume that could be the problem.  But what should a good resume have? You’ve got your past jobs on there with dates, shouldn’t that be enough?

Uh.  No.

A resume needs to be an attractive, readable, interesting document that makes the employer want to get to know you more.  Think of it like an enticing description of a dish on a menu.  When you go to a restaurant for the first time, you have no idea what you’re going to order.  You have to rely on the descriptions to entice you and steer you in one way or another-ideally for the restaurant toward the highest priced item.  They don’t just list the ingredients of the dish, but the description pulls the whole thing together and makes it sound appetizing.

Is your resume enticing to an employer?  Here’s what turns them on.

RESULTS:  Employers have GOT to see that you get results for the work you do.  How effective are you?  There’s a difference between not increasing sales at all, and seeing a 34% increase–so put that on the resume!  How have you affected the company since you’ve been there?

CAREER SUMMARY: This takes the place of the Objective at the top of your resume.  A career summary should give an employer a thumbnail view of who you are as an employee-think of it as a thesis statement on your old high school research papers.  DO NOT simply provide a shopping list of qualities such as:  hard working, dedicated, loyal, or the phrase attention to detail.  They are on EVERYONE’s resume-trust me, I’ve seen my fair share.   Instead paint yourself as if you’re an enticing dish on a menu and write something truly descriptive like this:   “Syndicated/qualitative research professional with in-depth, customer service experience across a variety of industries.  Successful track record of client retention, strong contract negotiation skills and increased sales through up-sell opportunities and new product development.  Specialized experience in analytical category analysis, internal data management and written/verbal client presentations.”  This describes the person behind the resume and paints a detailed picture of her experience in a short period of time.

BRIEF JOB DESCRIPTIONS:  Under every company, job title and dates (and yes, in most cases, you should include months as well as the years), you should provide one or two sentences to describe what the company does (in case the name isn’t well known), and the basics of your job description.  That’s it.  Employers need to understand the industries you worked in, and the basic responsibilities of your past positions.  They do not need to see your duties spelled out-your accomplishments will answer those questions in their mind.

So take a look at your resume.  Does it pass the test?  If not, email it to me for a FREE 10 minute critique and we can strategize where you should go from here.

Isn’t it worth it to have that nagging “is it my resume?” question answered?

Popularity: 93% [?]

The most problematic part of a resume for people seems to be crafting their accomplishments. The confusion between an accomplishment and a responsibility is the difference between generating excitement by selling what you can do, and making a bland statement that elicits the question “So what?” It’s the difference between being invited in for an interview…and getting no response at all.

A responsibility reads as if it was taken from your job description. It fails to distinguish you from any other person that held that title before you, or holds that title at any other company. It says your function, but it doesn’t speak to your ability to perform that function.

By contrast, an accomplishment is what differentiates you from any other person that does, or has done, that job. It not only indicates how well you perform your job, but what type of person you are.

How does a factual accomplishment reveal something as subtle and subjective as a personality trait? Measured with the length of time you were at a company, your number of accomplishments indicates the degree to which you are a go-getter. It says if you’re motivated to go beyond the average job, and how much pride you take in your work.

It tells the hiring authority if you look for problems and find ways to solve them, or if you are content with saying, “That’s good enough.” And it also tells him how well you know your job by how well you solved those problems. Let’s look at a basic example. If you’re a teacher, a responsibility might read:

* Developed innovative, education-based curriculum

Which leaves the following questions:

* For what classes did you develop a curriculum?
* Why did it need to be developed?
* What was going on before it was developed?
* What was the result of the development?

Interviewers want answers, not questions. Since the responsibility statement doesn’t indicate how well you performed your job, it’s easier not to invite you in for an interview. Interviewers don’t know if you have accomplishments hiding behind your responsibilities. They assume you don’t have anything to say, because you didn’t say it. They don’t care that perhaps you didn’t know how to say it. If your resume doesn’t sell you, it’s not their problem. It’s yours.

By contrast, the accomplishment version of the same statement might read:

* Created and implemented innovative, education-based curriculum that engaged students more actively, resulting in 75% of student body raising grades by average of a full point.

This says you’re worth talking to. Then at the interview, it opens the field for the interviewer to ask you for more information about what types of programs you implemented and how you implemented them.

An accomplishment is a results-oriented statement. It shows the benefit of hiring you by telling what you can do. What you’re saying is, “I know what you want done, and I’ve done that. I’ve done it successfully for my previous company; therefore, I can do it successfully for you. When you hire me, you aren’t risking an unknown. You’re hiring someone who has a proven ability to do the job successfully.”

That’s what interviewers want to know. That’s what they want to hear. They don’t want to wonder, and they don’t want to figure it out. And if your resume leaves them wondering and causes them to ask questions, the won’t figure do either. So if your resume doesn’t indicate what you’re capable of, the chance of an interview in which to sell yourself is very slim.

If you’ve been sending out resumes and getting nothing in response, take a look at your bullets under each company name. Do they just say what you did, or do they say how well you did it?

You’re selling a product, and the product is you. The interviewer is the buyer, and your resume is, in effect, your marketing brochure. But if the buyer isn’t interested, you can’t close the sale. And that’s your problem, not theirs.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Several times each week I receive resumes. Well, that’s obvious, of course I do. It’s one of the things I do: fix resumes. But these resumes just land in my inbox. There’s no note of explanation, no introduction, no polite request to look at it and see what I think, no paragraph on the problem. Just….the resume.

My point isn’t, “If you’re going to send me your resume, don’t do that.” I’m not an employer, so I don’t care. I just email back and ask if they wanted me to look at it or what. Sometimes it’s one of those resume blasting services and somehow I got on their list. That means some person has paid good money to have their resume blasted all over the place to who know who and who knows where.But the employers, now that’s a different story. They’re deleting the email. The same people who wouldn’t dream of sending their resume by snail mail without a cover letter, will do exactly that by email.
Read more

Popularity: 10% [?]