July 2008 - Does My Resume Stink?
And now, on to this month’s before and after...
This month’s “Does My Resume Stink” contest winner had a wealth of experience. Though an expansive background gave him a deep well to pull from, he was having trouble discerning what was important and what was not. As a result, he had included nearly everything - causing the document to be not only an extremely lengthy five pages, but also very unfocused and confusing for the reader. Our first task was to weed out what was not relevant and shift the focus to only the skills that would showcase his senior management status. Below is a summary of the problems we found - and resolved! - for this job seeker.
Me–Oriented
First, in the old resume, he used an objective statement, an old technique that removes the focus on what the job seeker can deliver and places it on what the job seeker is seeking. That is the nature of an objective - it describes the wants or needs of the job seeker. It is not a good idea to start out a potential relationship with a “what’s in it for me” type message.
Top Heavy
His summary was fair but, when combined with the objective, keywords and invention section, it made the entire top section much too long. The reader could not determine what he was “about” at a glance. To change that issue in the new resume, we developed a strong branding statement at the top that not only positioned him at a specific career level (senior management) but also brought in the specific types of jobs he was targeting, i.e. VP/Director of Sales, Business Development. Right away, we have given the reader a clear idea of what he is about and what can be expected in the content of the resume. We also positioned him for a specific industry (telecommunications) in the first sentence to provide clarity right from the start.
Voluminous
In the old resume, the professional experience section was too lengthy. His most recent experience was clumped into one chunk rather than showing career progression by dividing out his work over the past few years. The achievements were voluminous and more like mini–paragraphs than succinct accomplishments with great impact. In addition, it was impossible to tell what was achieved in which position since he had treated his entire tenure with the company as one big section.
Unaligned Accomplishments
We reorganized his experience section, dealing mainly with the most recent ten years experience and then shortening the earlier experience and placing it in a separate section. We broke out each individual position for his most recent experience, created role descriptions for each, and aligned the accomplishments with the positions under which they occurred. The new organization shows progression, displays breadth of experience, and gives a frame of reference to the reader for his accomplishments.
Lack of Metrics
Because he is in sales and business development, we made sure to bring in as many metrics and quantitative information as we could to show performance. Where metrics did not apply, we brought in a qualitative description of his accomplishments to show his successful track record.
Unfiltered
One of the biggest challenges in this resume development was information selection. Good strategy is built around knowing what to include to catch the employer’s attention. It’s also about knowing what to exclude because it is irrelevant or is less important than other information. Because he had so much information, weeding out the information was key to strengthening the overall document. Remember, you have only about 30–45 seconds to make your case with the reader. The old resume was a data–dump of information. In the new resume, we created more streamlined, focused content with a hard–hitting message and information the reader wants to see.
This client is the same person with the same experience he had when he first came to us, yet he looks like a different person in the “after” resume. In a perfect world, something like an improved resume wouldn’t matter, but in today’s real world, it surely does.
