Unbeatable Resumes (7 page)
Read Unbeatable Resumes Online
Authors: Tony Beshara
People sometimes confuse selling
themselves
with selling a consumer product. I call this “presenting yourself in an all-galactic fashion.” That is, many times candidates will “oversell” themselves in their
résumés, thereby coming across as overqualified and acing themselves out of good, solid job opportunities.
Of course, if you get laid off from being VP of finance for a multimillion-dollar Fortune 500 banking firm, it doesn't matter how “all world” you are; there are damned few positions out there for which you will be hired. That's regardless of how wonderful your experience is, how much responsibility you had, how many millions of dollars you have managed, or how many hundreds of people you've supervised. No one can do anything about the availabilityâor, should I say, lack of availability?âof those kinds of jobs. So, in a case like that, it's best to have a couple of different résumés: one that's “all world” and one that's “dumbed down.”
Sometimes you need to adjust your résumé so you can reasonably apply for opportunities that require less responsibility or experience than you have. For example, if you were an engineering manager of a hundred-million-dollar company with a staff of five, you may want to have one résumé that reflects the full-blown aspects of your job, where you describe every bit of leadership you've shown and every accomplishment that you ever achieved, and you would have another résumé that might downplay the extent of your leadership experience and focus instead on your engineering responsibilities.
In recent years, I've personally placed numerous VPs of sales, sales managers, and directors of sales in front-line sales jobs. In a difficult market, the level of management positions that most of these people were seeking simply wasn't available, and they found alternative solutions. Sometimes the earnings often are not much less than those of higher level managers. Only you can judge the viability of earnings relative to the job you have or no longer have. Most people would agree it's better to be an employed accountant than an unemployed controller.
Avoid the fancy-schmancy layout, font, and other special effects. Once in a while, I get a résumé written on colored paper, paper with a cutesy background, maybe with yellow balloons; others are printed in italics,
with some nontraditional script, or with flowers in the margins. Please don't do this! Unless you are in an artistic field, where appearance is pertinent, an unusual presentation may amuse the recipient but will likely eliminate your résumé automatically.
Stick to the traditional font of Times New Roman (or maybe Ariel), 9 to 12 point size, black type against a white background. You might want to vary the type size for your name, the companies you have worked for, and perhaps your titles. But try to be consistent. Too many variations in type size make the résumé look cluttered. Also, allow a reasonable amount of white space on each page. Some résumés are so “crowded” that they would never get read. Your résumé needs to be pleasing to the eye, whether printed out or on a computer screen.
Especially, go easy on the boldface type, italics, and underlining. Tables, text boxes, icons, and graphs on your résumé might impress you, but often they get messed up or eliminated when you e-mail your résumé. So keep the graphics to a minimum, if you use them at all. When a résumé can't easily be read online, it will likely be passed over in favor of the 100 other résumés that are easier to view online.
Do not place your résumé in a table format or use a template, especially if you are planning to give it to a placement service. Recruiters or placement services will always submit résumés with their logo at the top and a disclaimer on the bottom. When résumés come with a table/template format, they become distorted or lose their formatting if placed within the placement service's own template. Similarly, when you e-mail a résumé formatted in a table or template, your lines will show if the recipient's computer has the “show gridlines” button turned on. Just prepare your résumé in a simple Word format that can easily be viewed on most computers.
An unacceptable form of “spinning” the facts on a résumé is to take credit for successes that weren't all yours. I have had candidates claim on their résumés that they were individually responsible for megadollar sales deals. Often, though, a reference is checked and it turns out that the candidate inherited the sale or was part of a team that made
the sale. The candidate
embellished
by taking credit for something that wasn't all his own doing.
Think that you wouldn't embellishâor even lieâon your résumé? A large number of studies show that many people do embellish or even outright lie at least once every time they rewrite their résumés. Lies on a résumé run the gamut from statements of expanded duties and responsibilities, to factual matters of job titles, degrees, or length of time in a position. The most common lie is made to cover up a job or jobs that, for whatever reason, a person doesn't want to include on the résumé. Candidates simply extend the dates of employment for other jobs and hope the difference will never be discovered. Admittedly, these fabrications are the most difficult to detect or discover. Nevertheless, don't do this!
Another common lie is to expand on successes. As I mentioned previously, this involves taking credit for more than is realityâfor example, claiming an innovation that was the product of a team. Don't do this!
One of the most common lies is declaring to have a baccalaureate degree when that's not the case. I've never quite understood why people will lie about having a degree. It's so easy to verify this information. There are even clearinghouses that perform this task for hiring organizations. Don't do this!
If you lie on your résumé and it is discovered beforehand, it is unlikely that you will be hired. If you lie and it is discovered
after
you are hired, you will likely be fired. Many companies verify a candidate's dates of employment, especially the most recent employment,
after
the individual is hired. So if you put on your résumé “2007 to Present,” and you left that job six months prior to being interviewed, you'd best correct the dates before you accept the job. If you don't and it is discovered, you may well be fired.
In spite of our preaching about truth, at least twice a month we have candidates lose out on an opportunity because they lied on their résumés. Five or six times a year, we have a candidate get fired
after
they were hired because a lie on their résumé was discovered. Don't lie!
The Basic Résumé and Some Résumé Makeovers
YOU WANT YOUR
résumé to explain clearly what you have done, who you have done it for, and how successful you have been. It should be written in simple terms a high school senior can understand. This chapter offers a basic annotated example of what a résumé should look like for most professional job searches. Then, there are four examples of weak résumés and the corresponding makeovers to show you how to fix common problems, such as not sufficiently stressing your strengths and accomplishments or having a résumé that's too long or too detailed.
The following sample shows information organized in a way that employers will expect to see it presented in a standard résumé.
Your Address
Home phone number Cell number E-mail address
EXPERIENCE
April 2008âPresent Name of Company
[Short explanation of what the company does or explanation of the division of a large company, so that anyone can clearly understand its function]
Title:
[Make sure the title is commonly understood; if not, explain it in common terms] [A specific, understandable explanation of your duties and responsibilities, and highlighted specific
accomplishments
. Remember, the résumé is to communicate why you should be interviewed. Write all the way from one margin to another so that you can get as much information on one page as possible. Write
no more
than a three- or four-sentence paragraph that a high school senior could understand.]
January 2003âApril 2008 Name of Company
[Same as above]
Title:
[Same as above. If your title is “odd,” you may want to change it to make it resonate better: Just be sure to explain to an interviewing or hiring authority what you have done during the interview.]
⢠Remember,
numbers
and
statistics
get recognized and paid attention to. So if you can “quantify” what your successes and accomplishments have been, do so.
⢠Percentages of sales quota, cost savings, size of a department, even amounts of budgetary responsibility, are noticed. Highlight or boldface any outstanding “numbers” that will set you apart from other candidates.
August 2000âJanuary 2003 Name of Company
[Same as above]
Title:
[Same as above]
The further back you go in your job history, the less you have to explain about what you did and how you did it. But of course you'll want to mention any outstanding accomplishments.
How to Handle Previous Experience:
If your experience goes back more than fifteen years, you could summarize all of it in two or three sentences. You may want to highlight the names of the companies and the success you had with them, if it's appropriate to do so.
EDUCATION
[College or University, type of degree, beginning with the graduate degree first and year of graduation. If no degree was conferred, simply put the years of attendance. Any honors such as high grade point average, or scholarships, should be noted. Any formal school less than college doesn't need to be reported. Any continuing education (such as certifications, sales courses, or negotiation courses) could be mentioned here. Stay away from any “personal growth” programs that might be religious or politicalâmention nothing controversial.]
Note that if you want to include an Objectives statement, use only general terms such as
sales, accounting, engineering, production, administration
, and so forth. Make sure that what you say
means something
to the reader.
Writing your résumé is that simple. Make sure anyone can understand everything about your résumé.
One way of having a “quick” résumé, one that you can hand out when the opportunity arises, is to have a business card printed up with your name, contact information, and a line of copy about yourself. When you are actively looking for a job, you can give these to anybody you might run into. When I say anybody, I mean absolutely anybodyâthe barista at Starbucks, your barber, your doctor, anyone who might be able to get you an interview with someone who might have a job opening or know of one.
Here is the “business card” Terry McDonald had printed. Terry was one of the guests on
The Dr. Phil Show
whom I helped get a job. You will see his original résumé later in the chapter, but notice his abbreviated, “card” résumé. He gave one of these to just about anyone he ran into.
Terry's card is unique. It gets people's attention. It communicates a “visionary.” Even the descriptive words “dependable, hardworking, committed, and loyal” have a good effect. A way of improving it might be to write a brief and compact résumé of the last few years on the back:
'05â'09 State Farm Insurance, Brea, CA
SalesâIncreased agency residual by 30%
'93â'04 State Farm Insurance, Long Beach, CA
Office Managerâ#1 agent of health policy sales in the district
'86â'93 MetLife Healthcare Network, Long Beach, CA
Membership Representativeâpromoted three times
This kind of thing would easily fit on the back of the card and be a little more meaningful than what Terry had there.
A similar approach is to fold your résumé into a packet the size of a business card that has your name and contact information, along with any graphics on the front and an abbreviated résumé on the two inside faces of the card.
Again, you can give this mini résumé to anyone who might help to get you an interview.
