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Obstacle Course; the Journey of a Resume

Resume advice from columnist

The  track team starts competing next week; I am clued into this by the growing number of kids in shorts running endless loops around the cul-de-sac as I chase windblown oak leaves across my front yard. Maybe because I have been coaching careers since before some of these young athletes were born, I tend to connect everything to some part of job search, but track makes me think of resumes. To be more accurate, track reminds me of obstacle courses that remind me of resumes.

It sometimes seems when it comes to resumes that everyone has some problem with something to obstruct their progress to generate an interview.

It is intimidating that everyone in the working world is an “expert” on resumes. We have all read them, read about them and know what we like. Ferocious debates have been going on for years regarding their length, format and content. The overwhelming majority of my Job Guy clients come to me bearing some concern about their resumes.  It's a confusing topic. Throughout my 14 years as a career coach, I have interviewed hundreds of hiring managers and recruiters on best practices to discover that, while there is no consensus, there are patterns.

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I have also learned that it is important to understand the role that each person plays in the resume review process to keep their opinions in perspective.

A successful resume must navigate three barriers; it cannot often earn scrutiny by a decision maker until it makes it past a computer and, subsequently, a screening person. Use only decision maker input and you will likely build the best looking document never seen. As with an obstacle course, you can’t win the third leg without getting past the first two. Building a resume should start with step one.

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Step one, electronic scanning: Unless you still use snail mail, or can arrange to hand-deliver your credentials, you're probably going to use some form of electronic submittal or post your docs on a board somewhere. Using a computer to send or post a resume essentially puts your qualifications into a cyber pool of competitors, making it dependent on a piece of software or human keystroke to earn you an interview.

While there is no way to know for sure what parameters will be used to select resumes for review, prevailing wisdom suggests that using language from job descriptions, called key words, works best. To optimize “findability”, it is also a good idea to use a common font, like Arial or Times New Roman to allow for more certain scanning. Lavish fonts and formats can be badly scrambled by software, turning art into ugly.

While resume scanning software is becoming more sophisticated, most tools will still find and value keywords placed anywhere in the document. But it is getting harder to game the system. In the old days (2006 or so), some resume writers would type in tons of keywords at the end of the document in “invisible” white font; while this mess of words was indistinguishable to humans against white backgrounds, it was still readable by computers. Now many tools convert all text to black automatically, rendering a favorite trick passé and sometimes embarrassing.

As resume reading tools become more like Google, presenting key words in the context of the jobs will become more critical. Some companies already use weaponry like this, so it is good practice to get as much relevant content into the actual work history segment of the document as possible.

 

Step two, recruiters and administrators: These are the people who decide if you get an interview. Because of their importance, one must remember and respect a recruiter’s position in the applicant supply chain. They are being paid to protect the decision maker's calendar by finding square pegs for square holes. They are not usually encouraged to attempt to persuade a decision maker that the job requirements don’t matter. Indeed, many paid recruiters have been fired for this. Very few will think it is a good risk to present “out of the box” candidates or job seekers with obvious resume red flags.

Recruiter’s red flags include spelling and formatting issues, gaps in employment, job hopping, lack of recent and related experience, age, over-qualification, and geography. Your mission it to demonstrate as much recent and successful use of all requested skills as you can while presenting as few red flags as possible.

This task can be made easier by understanding that you have complete control over what you put in or leave out of your resume. While it is essential to be truthful with inclusions, resumes are not applications; it is completely ethical to leave stuff out that doesn’t support candidacy for the targeted position. The general rule of thumb is: if it fits leave it in; if it doesn’t, consider dropping it.

But be warned: recruiters hate that I advise this; it slows down the elimination process too much.

A local paid recruiter once told me that she disapproved of me omitting short-term jobs and unrelated job experience from resumes. She went on to complain that she gets surprises when she calls these prospects. When I asked if, had I included missing info, she would have been likely to call those candidates, she said no. When I asked if any of those had advanced in spite of the surprise, she said yes. Since most of us would prefer to take a call to defend a resume over taking no call at all, this served as positive reinforcement that the right decisions had been made.

Remember that paid and in-house recruiters are staking their political capital on everyone they submit. The more you can make a recruiter confident that the resume will be well received by the boss, the better. Demonstrating recent success using the skills that the target position requires is key. Consider how you would be measured in the new position and show that impact as accomplishments in the resume.

Quantifying accomplishments is great, provided the numbers are of appropriate scale and in context. Boasting that you managed a $50 million marketing budget to a start up employer will not help much, for example. Mentioning an award, and not sharing what the award was for, is another common problem.

 

Step three, decision makers: Be careful taking resume advice from hiring mangers. Many bosses live in an executive summary world and review only resumes that have made it through the first two filters; leading them to value presentation over content. Often, the preferences they share would have prevented a resume from getting to them in the first place.

One of the most frequent critiques I hear from executives is that resumes are too long. Some of them insist that a one page resume is best because it hits only the high points. But for most mid-level and senior candidates, one page resumes can’t possibly contain enough information to get past a computer and staffing person. These zealots aside, the overwhelming number of recruiters and decision makers prefer two pages. Resumes for jobs in science and higher education might be longer; investment banking and entry-level positions may be shorter.

My favorite piece of bad advice involves pulling accomplishments out of the chronology into a separate section to lead the resume. Because staffing people need to know what successes you had where, this ploy can short circuit a job search campaign in a hurry. Screeners will not bother working that hard if your competitors’ resumes have laid it out. This is a ploy used by candidates who haven’t done much of consequence in the last 10 years to get good content onto page one; using this approach leads to guilt (and elimination) by association.

To make a great impression on a decision maker, concentrate on demonstrating results. Decision makers love to see that an applicant has succeeded in areas in which they need wins. When building the resume, think about how your performance will be measured by your boss and other stakeholders. Use bullets to demonstrate that you achieved these results, and how, in your employment chronology. Lead the bullet with the result when possible. “Increased sales 140% in 2010 by developing new Healthcare channels” is a bit more effective than is “developed new Healthcare channels to increase 2010 sales 140%.”

Obviously, I would like everyone reading this article to hire me or my brethren to get their resume up, over, around, and through the obstacle course. But lots can be done on your own if you remember three critical things: focus on the future and not the past; demonstrate recent and successful use of critical skills; and emphasize results. Oh….and make sure to use spell check.

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