Resume Writing | JobTabs Job Search & Resume

January 9, 2009

Resume Writing [5 of 5] – Glow

Filed under: Job Searching,Resume Writing — Tags: Career, Employment, jobs, resume, Resume Writing — admin @ 11:31 am

Job seekers are bombarded with advice, tips and articles from every corner of the internet on how to write a fantastic resume. Some of the most visible resources are,

Alison Doyle from About.com

Randall Hansen of QuintCareers.com

Susan Joyce of Job-Hunt.org

Some people are obviously paying attention. We have seen wonderful examples of well written resumes that incorporate our basic recommendations as well as the recommendations of other professionals. Sadly, for many, for all of the effort that has been put into writing the resume it manages to read like a military specification for a lug nut. Our last article in this five part series covers selling your self as a competent professional who is appreciated by his subordinates, peers and management. Glow. Bring your resume alive by taking the following cues,

Make it apparent that you do your job well
Read the bullets from your most recent job and ask yourself one extremely important question, “Could some guy who got fired for doing my job badly say the same thing?” Really, look at your resume and ask yourself that question.

To illustrate our point, let’s look at some of the bullets that a SEC Auditor of Bernard Madoff, LLC could put on his resume,

Audited the books of major Wall Street investment firms for trading irregularities.
Investigated investment banking compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and FTC trading regulations.
Conducted detailed investigations based on transaction anomalies and whistle blower reports.
Monitored trading transaction streams for key variances that would point to a breach in normal trading behavior.
Worked closely with federal agencies to include the Department of Commerce, Office of the Treasury and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Apprised upper managements of audit schedules and resolutions.
Oversaw a staff of nine accountants.

For those of you unfamiliar with the case, as of this writing Bernard Madoff is accused of having masterminded the largest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street history. He emerged unscathed from as many as four SEC audits all the while bilking investors of more than $50 billion dollars. Yes, that is ‘b’ as in boy, $50 billion dollars. That Bernard Madoff is a crook is of secondary importance. What is of primary importance is that the SEC auditor of his books can’t possibly profess to have done a decent job yet can still put together a respectable resume even though the biggest crook in Wall Street history waltzed right under his nose.

Don’t be afraid to sprinkle some color to let it be known that you do your job well. For those subjective issues which you cannot quantify, you can complete bullet points with statements such as,

“Commended by management for demonstrating a clear understanding of regulatory procedure.”
“Received a non-periodic raise for performance.”
“Evolved as the go to contact for all issues pertaining to database architecture.”
“Mentored junior sales associates on working within the system to accomplish their professional goals.”
“Conducted workshops for peers on advanced programming techniques.”

A common approach to let the reader of your resume know that you perform your job well is the Problem – Action – Result (PAR) approach. This acronym varies from CAR (Challenge – Action – Result) to SAR (Situation – Action – Result) but the emphasis is still the same. Describe the Problem, the Action you took to fix it and the benefit that Resulted from that action. I will cover this in greater detail future blog posts.

Come across as a person who is easy to work with.
Remember, if your resume bores the reader, then they are not going to be able to appreciate your accomplishments. Add some color which brings you out as a person and and draws their interest. Consider,

“Oversaw the United Way fund drive for our division. Raised over X dollars by . . . . .” Suggests you have a heart.

“Mentored junior peers on succeeding in the organization by working inside the system.” This is a subtle way of making you look like a kinder, gentler employee as well as allaying any concerns that you will be an organizational anarchist if you do not get your way.

“Received non-periodic raise for outstanding performance.” This suggests that you work hard, get results and please your superiors.

These are our examples, but you get the picture. Whatever you have done that would instill confidence that you are a nice person who works within the system will do wonders. These are the testimonials which can vault your candidacy to the top of the resume stack. Whether you got the interview via a network connection, a recruiter or by knocking on doors, chances are there were plenty of candidates to choose from. Once you can prove you are qualified, the next concern on everybody’s mind is whether or not you are going to do your job well and fit in. This is just as important as having the right credentials. The right credentials is only the first hurdle; the assessment as to whether or not you will be a valuable and respected member of the team is a much larger hurdle.

John Coffey is the President or JobTabs, LLC the makers of JobTabs Job Search & Resume. Working as an IT Contractor for over fifteen years, he has the distinction of having been a professional job seeker. His success in the job search process and the computer program he wrote to manage his job search became the basis for JobTabs Job Search & Resume. He can be reached at jpcoffey@jobtabs.com or the JobTabs website at http://www.jobtabs.com.

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January 8, 2009

Resume Writing [4 of 5] – Let them find you.

Filed under: Job Searching,Resume Writing,Sell Yourself — Tags: Career, Employment, Job Search, JobTabs, Resume Writing — admin @ 5:26 pm

If action verbs are the subtleties of selling yourself, nouns are the over-bearing, in-your-face, loud mouths. The right verbs are there to help people see you as an action oriented person. The right nouns are there to help machines see you as a candidate. You need killer nouns to have a winning job search.

Allow us to illustrate. Let’s say someone in HR is looking for a self-starter, capable of working independently for an engineering project. If they typed in “self-starter” and “works independently” they would belabor themselves with sifting through the resumes of every former nursery school teacher, grounds keeper, sous-chef, and Phd candidate who would describe themselves in the same way. However, if they were to use the nouns which would unmistakably confine them to the genre of professional they were looking for – which is exactly what they do – then they would have much more pertinent results.

Nouns that describe job titles work well.
Integrated Circuit (IC) Design Engineer
Quality Assurance Engineer

Nouns that describe constraints work very well.
“. . . in compliance with MIL-STD-9858 and MIL-SPEC-2207.”
“. . . in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley.”

Nouns that have acronyms as well as the acronym spelled out.
“Designed Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) to modulate . . . .”
“Designed Unmanned Vehicle System (UVS) to explore . . .”

Nouns that describe tools.
“Developed solution using MS Visual Studio C# to . . .”
“Utilized the Fabius GS, and Narkomed 6400 gas machines in operating room . . . .”

Not only do you need killer nouns you need lots of them. Once the search engine finds the keyword it will typically sort resumes in order of relevance. Computers qualify poorly, but quantify magnificently. This means they can’t read, but they can count. Therefore, which ever resume has the highest number of keywords is the most qualified candidate for the search terms. That seems like a pretty inefficient way to find the best person for the job, however that is how it is done and until something better comes along this is the constraint you have to work within.

To make the best of the situation, do what you can to have plenty of the right words in your resume without ruining ease with which it can be read by people. One way to do this is to summarize keywords at the bottom of your employment period with each employer. You can do this by listing the tools you used, the technology you were exposed to, or the constraints you were in compliance with. Again, the emphasis here is to move your resume higher in the search results so that they will look at you more closely. Just make the information you summarize pertinent so as not to bore the reader or waste valuable space where you can sell your accomplishments.

This is a resourceful way of making sure you get enough of the keywords to make you a more relevant candidate. Another way of doing this is to simply have a summary of keywords at the end of your resume for the explicit purpose of making it easy for search engines to find you. Be careful. Some recruiters will strip these lists out under the impression that you are trying to game their system.

In closing, the right nouns are there to raise your visibility. Above all else your resumes need to show you doing your job and doing your job well. The final piece in our five part series is the importance of bringing your resume to life.

John Coffey is the President of JobTabs, LLC. Through JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder, thousands of job seekers have taken control of their destiny in finding new and fulfilling careers. JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder motivates job seekers by making the job search easier by a huge order of magnitude. John Coffey can be reached via his website at JobTabs Job Search & Resume Builder, by email via jpcoffey at jobtabs.com, and by phone at 404-255-0248.

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January 7, 2009

Resume Writing [3 of 5] – Put yourself in motion.

Filed under: Job Searching,Resume Writing — Tags: Career, Employment, Job Search, JobTabs, Resume Writing — admin @ 5:23 pm

Action verbs are a key form of salesmanship. You need look no farther than your workshop, pantry or under your kitchen sink to find clear examples.

Pick up a can of WD-40®, a common household lubricant, and you will read, “Stops Squeaks”, “Protects Metal”, “Loosens Rusted Parts”, and “Frees Sticky Mechanisms”.
Pick up a box of Ziploc® sandwich bags and you will read, “Keep your sandwich fresh by…”, “Use sandwich bags to decorate cakes. Fill the bag with icing…”, and “Fill sandwich bags with….”
Pick up almost anything under the kitchen sink and you will read, “Cleans, Disinfects, Polishes, Shines”.

While these products have little to do with each other they all have one thing in common. They define their qualities with proactive verbs at the beginning of the sentence. These are facets of salesmanship that are all around us yet they are so subtle we rarely take notice. JobTabs makes it easy for you to leverage this same form of salesmanship in your resume to convey yourself as a can do candidate.

The JobTabs word processor provides an action verb dialog, shown to the left, which lists powerful action verbs that can put your resume in overdrive. The verbs, with very little duplication, are grouped by nine cross-disciplinary categories which are,

Communication Skills

Creative Skills

Financial Skills

Helping Skills

Management/Leadership Skills

Organizational Skills

Research Skills

Teaching Skills

Technical Skills

What makes this collection of verbs so special is that they are ideally suited to resumes. Specifically, they are proactive, positive verbs that can easily be understood. What’s more is the verbs can be used across many disciplines. For example, just because you are in the financial services industry doesn’t mean that you have to confine your choice of verbs to the Financial Skills category. No doubt there were times when you had to help others, be creative, or use your analytical skills to solve a technical problem. You can pull action verbs from the respective categories to help you qualify your accomplishments.

For what its worth, we were surprised by the appalling quality of action verbs offered by competing products on the web. They offered a large number of verbs, but didn’t seem to have done anything to make sure they were resume grade, top quality verbs. For example, one product offered “Abandoned” in their list of action verbs. What proactive, can-do person would ever abandon anything? A proactive, can-do person would have,

“Optimized resources which increased profitability by 8%.”
“Reprioritized projects to maximize productivity, by…”

Optimizing and reprioritizing imply that something had to put in the back seat or possibly abandoned altogether, but you would never openly state that you abandoned anything. Always apply discretion to anything you put on your resume or seek the guidance of someone who can help you.

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January 6, 2009

Resume Writing [2 of 5] – Be Relevant

Filed under: Job Searching,Resume Writing — Tags: Career, Employment, Job Search, JobTabs, Resume Writing — admin @ 5:10 pm

Employers are interested in the value you can impart to their enterprise. As hard earned as your experience may be, they really don’t want to sort through your career looking for the nuggets they need to bring you in for an interview. There are typically so many applicants that they don’t have time to read anything that is not immediately pertinent to the position they are trying to fill.

Consider also, that typically the employing managers were not hired to screen and bring in new applicants as an end unto itself. They were hired to manage a team to accomplish something on behalf of the company. While they know that hiring the right people is very important, managers are still likely to regard the process as an administrative burden.

Your resume needs to cut to the chase and instill confidence from the get go. The employing managers would really like to get back to work with as much peace of mind as you can give them.

Let’s say we have an auto mechanic who excels at working on transmissions. He is applying to a job at the Mercedes dealership for a Transmission Specialist. Let’s consider the bullet points he could use to sell himself. First read the bullet points below in their entirety, then read them again. They do an adequate job of presenting his skills.

Transmission Specialist – Original Bullets

Successfully repaired transmissions of domestic and foreign manufacturers.
Generated additional business by calling customers with vehicles on recall and offering to do the repairs.
Conducted training seminars on BMW transmissions to the local BMW Enthusiasts club.
Received training from a wide range of vendors on the particulars of their products to include body repair, power train products to tire balancing.
Repaired alternators for Range Rovers by learning to read complex wiring diagrams specific to Range Rovers.
Completed all work within the allotted man-hour requirements of the company 97% of the time.
Completed advanced transmission instruction at DeVry Technical College.

Now read the bullet points he is using now that he is using JobTabs.

Transmission Specialist – JobTabs Bullets

Successfully repaired transmissions of Mercedes, Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi among others.
Participated in the fuel pump replacement recall for the Daimler 123SE.
Conducted training seminars on BMW transmissions to the local BMW Enthusiasts club.
Received training from Bosch on the specifics of clutch degradation and the materials manufactured by Bosch to prolong clutch life.
Completed training from Heinrichs GMBH on the variations of transmission fluids and the considerations for using each type.
Completed all work within the allotted man-hour requirements of the company 97% of the time.
Completed instruction on the new Advanced Overdrive Technology pioneered by Daimler Chrysler in an advanced transmission training class at DeVry Technical College.

As an aside, the reference to Porsche, BMW, Volkswagen and Audi among others adds value of the mechanic’s experience. The nature of automobile manufacturing is very nepotistic in that manufacturers on each continent by and large procure from manufacturers on that continent. Just as US automakers procure from US manufacturers, the European automakers procure from each other, e.g. it is unlikely any of these manufacturers procure spark plugs from any other source other than Bosch.

The JobTabs bullets differ from the original resume on several considerations. The JobTabs bullets intimate the mechanic to the needs of the Mercedes automobile. While the mechanic is not misrepresenting himself on either resume, on the JobTabs resume he is clearly intimating himself to all things Mercedes and downplaying a connection to anything else. By doing so, he is much more likely to appear as a Mercedes transmission expert. Clearly gone is any reference to Range Rover wiring diagrams. Instead of generalizing the training he has received from vehicle suppliers, he clearly specifies the training he has received related to transmissions or from European suppliers. Even the advanced training class he took is skewed to the demands of his prospective employer.

One of the best articles I have ever read on the importance of tailoring your resume is,

Don’t Make Them Think! from the job-hunt.org web site.

Author Susan Joyce, admonishes job seekers to not make them remember as well. I agree!

This job candidate has an edge. He has worked smarter – not harder. The organizational chaos that would usually result from this level of detail is nonexistent. If this job application doesn’t materialize, at the very least he certainly has a new arrow in his quiver with which he can use to easily qualify himself for new opportunities. To illustrate, if the Volkswagen dealership began canvassing for a new Transmission Specialist how many bullet points would need to be modified to make our applicant an ideal candidate? Only two,

Participated in the fuel pump replacement recall for the Daimler 123SE.
Completed instruction on the new Advanced Overdrive Technology pioneered by Daimler Chrysler in an advanced transmission training class at DeVry Technical College.

While the mechanic would have to draw from his experience with Volkswagen automobiles to intimate himself to the Volkswagen job requisition, even these two bullet points are not too far off from what Volkswagen might want. As we have stated and will continue to state, the more you qualify yourself for new opportunities the easier it will be to qualify yourself for subsequent opportunities. At the risk of being very bold, the job search will actually be fun.

Creating a slew of resumes this specific and being able to readily gather and sell the gist of the resume, would normally be untenable without a tool. While anyone can start out extremely organized, eventually the labor of maintaining that level of oversight for a prolonged period is simply too taxing. Invest in a tool to help you with your job search – the other people competing for the interview already have.

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January 5, 2009

Resume Writing [1 of 5] – Let ’em know their search is over!

Filed under: Resume Writing,Sell Yourself — Tags: Career, Employment, Job Search, JobTabs, Resume Writing — admin @ 4:49 pm

It is extremely important to have a bull’s eye resume when applying for a job. You will hear a lot of this as we expound on getting a great job in a short amount of time. In this five part series, we will tell you exactly what you need to do to knock them dead and get the interview.

In this first article we are going to provide a brief overview of the general structure of a bull’s eye resume. The main benefit of the structure is to let the resume reader know that the search for their candidate is over. You are the candidate they are looking for. In the following articles we will go into greater detail as to what you need to do to make sure you are called in for the interview.

Go Funky. Go Chrono.
Prior to the arrival of the internet, the chronological resume and the functional resume were the predominant format. The chronological resume listed your professional experience in reverse chronological order, that is from your most recent job to the earliest. Functional resumes were used to put an emphasis on talent and remove the emphasis on time and often favored by older job seekers trying to avoid age discrimination.

Then the internet happened. Like a giant meteor exploding into Yucatan peninsula the world was turned upside down and life as we knew it would never by the same. The one and only resume format we would recommend is the functional chronological hybrid. Simply put, the internet has opened a floodgate of candidates for every posted job out there. Employers don’t have time to review your work history and contemplate how that experience will translate into value in their organization.

The functional-chronological is essentially a combination of both the functional resume and the chronological resume. The beauty of it is it makes it easy for you to sell the gist of your qualifications in the top half of the first page of your resume thereby making your candidacy relevant. Done properly, this will invite the reader to read your resume critically and appreciate the talent you are bringing to the table.

The top portion of the functional-chronological resume is made up of the Professional Objective, the Professional Summary, followed by your professional experience.

Professional Objective
Add a Professional Objective statement at the top of every resume. It has to be a clear statement that is inline with what the employer is looking for. Do not state the exact job title and don’t feel like you can’t add a little bit extra if just to sound authentic. If they are looking for,

“Department store manager with strong accounting skills.”

You can still say,

“Seeking a position as a department store manager. Prefer environment which would allow me to leverage my education in accounting, finance, and audits.”

You don’t want to give them the impression that you typed up your resume in response to their job posting, although that is exactly what you should do for every job you apply to. Just don’t make it obvious. Let’s say this same candidate is applying for a similar position seeking different qualifications such as,

“Boutique store manager who understands the volatile world of women’s fashion.”

That candidate would say,

“Seeking a position as a store manager on the cutting edge of women’s fashion.”

The advantage of having a clear and concise professional objective is that it ,

Presents you as a goal oriented professional. You know what you want and are going for it. This is good!

It invites the reader to critically read your resume. If the objective statement is inline with what they are looking for, they will read on.

Believe me, if you have all the credentials they are looking for they would rather bring you in for an interview instead of reading the other 497 resumes that are piled up on their desk.

Professional Summary.
Provide a brief summary after your Professional Objective as to why you are so good at what you do. Remember, when people review resumes they typically have the attention span of a gnat. Be an in-your-face qualified candidate. This is where you are going to get the most value from the research you have done on the company, the position and the decision maker. Again, your strategy here is to hit them right smack between the eyes with the fit they are looking for.

A department store manager applying to the position seeing strong accounting skills would probably provide some bullet points along the lines of,

Successful department store manager distinguished with year over year increases in same store retail traffic.

Commended for successfully meeting all corporate audits with over 98% compliance for twelve years.

Outstanding forecasting skills demonstrated by integrating store traffic, mall, municipal and macro economic components.

While our hypothetical department store manager was involved in all aspects of running the store, she knows she needs make the value she can bring to the prospective employer readily apparent. Even though her forecasting skills are not intimately associated with accounting, they have the analytical slant that will give the impression that she can crunch the numbers when she has to. Again, anything short of being a stellar candidate is not an option.

In closing surely you are thinking, “Why would this person emphasize their accounting skills on one resume and then her knack for understanding the cutting edge of women’s fashion on another?” The answer is, it is entirely up to her. She may have worked her way up to manager because she was so good at moving women’s apparel. She may have loved working in women’s fashion. She may have hated the accounting aspect of her experience as a department store manager. It doesn’t matter. However, if she wants to apply for a position as a department store manager with strong number crunching skills then she has to sell everything she did in the realm of department store management. She needs to emphasize her accounting skills and downplay everything else. Its all about selling yourself. In our next article, we will cover selling yourself through your accomplishments.

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