How to Create a Functional Resumé that Gets Results

 

 

 

First Impressions

The first 30 seconds are crucial when convincing a potential employer to read your resumé. Is the name of the position correctly spelt and reflect what has been asked for? Your resumé also needs to be clear, concise and well-formatted. It should summarize your skill sets, accomplishments, work experience and credentials that are important to the potential employer.

You can save your prospective employer's time and effort by emphasizing up front your skill sets and professional capabilities specific to the position you are seeking. Your organized and considerate approach will be appreciated and make you more memorable if you have what they're looking for.

Resumés Two Parts

Resumés are actually composed of two parts:

• The first part is the resumé is all about you. It  describes your accomplishments, experience, and background. Often, your LinkedIn profile can help you reformat your profile into a resumé form.
• The second part is the cover letter which is customized to each employer you are approaching. This letter contains more specific information that speaks directly to the employer's needs based on your specific accomplishments, experience, and skills and how they relate to the employer's needs. It should also have a Call To Action which is described below. It encourages the prospecitve employer to contact you.

You can save your prospective employer's time by emphasizing skill sets and professional capabilities related and specific to the position you seek. Your organized and considerate approach will make you more memorable if you have what they're looking for.

Your Resumé will not get you a Job

Your resumé will help you get to the next step in the hiring process which could be a telephone interview, a screening interview, or a series of interviews with different managers, or any one or more of the preceding.

Locale Differences

Locale differences affect almost everything about a job. Marketing on the East Coast of the U.S. is different from doing that on the West Coast which different from doing it in England or Germany. Of particular interest are the laws, languages, and customs. Depending on the type of work you wish to do, your resume or CV must reflect these differences.

Resumés versus Ciriculum Vitie (CV)

Resumés and CVs have different formats and emphasis different things:

• In North America
  • A CV is used when applying for academic, educational, scientific-research positions, fellowships and grants. It includes a summary of your education, academic background, teaching and research experience, publications, presentations, awards, honours, affiliations and other significant details.
  • A resumé is used for professional positions outside of academia and research. While information on education is required, it only needs to be the name of the educational institute and the degree obtained, the most advanced degree first. Work experience and accomplishments are more important because they imply you have the skill set they need.
• Outside of North America
  • CVs are used for both academic and professional positions, and the resumé format is seldom used.

Hiring Process

A resumé will not get you a job. It is meant is to get you an interview. The first interview is a screening one, often done on the phone. If you pass that, you are usually called in for a series of interviews with different managers. Amongst themselves, they will decide whom they want to hire. 

Today, a general resume for all positions will be ineffective. You must use the covering letter to customize it to the position sought. (The only time you would want to use a general resume is when you are posting it on a job site because you often won't know who is looking.)

Top Tips and Tricks

1. Have complete contact info. You want hiring managers to contact you instantly. Provide your full name, cell phone, primary and secondary email addresses, etc.
2. Check for errors. Spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors are killers.
3. Use clear and consistent formatting.
   • This is the very first thing a reader sees and it forms their first thing impression of who you are.
   • Space your sentences and indent your paragraphs so the reader can skim information and find the important points easily.
4. Vocabulary and grammar
   • Use the vocabulary that is suited to the position, industry, and company.
   • Use short sentences.
     • Short sentences are clearer, more positive, and powerful.
     • Use the active voice (the cat ate the mouse) and avoid the passive voice (the mouse was eaten by the cat). The active voice makes the sentences shorter and more powerful.
5. Include your accomplishments and achievements for each of your past positions.
6. If you are multilingual, be sure to list all those languages in which you are fluent.
7. List your social media involvement
   • List blogs - yours or others, to which you have contributed, especially if the blog and blog posts demonstrate a relevant skill set, an interest in, or discussion of, a subject related to the position you are seeking. In any or all cases, your reasoning and communications abilities are on display; more so, if your posts have provoked comments.
   • List your IDs for each relevant social media to which you contributed if you feel your input to them adds value to your resumé presentation.

Formatting

When formatting your resumé, you should use:

• Bullet points for unordered lists.
• Numbered points for lists of things that come in order.
• A font based on the media your resumé uses.
  • Use sans-serif fonts (Arial, Tahoma, Verdana) for on-screen reading.
  • Use Times New Roman for paper-based communications.
  • Use a font size of 10-12 points.
  • Use high-quality paper if you are mailing your resumé.

The structure of your resumé should:

• Start with your full name and complete contact information
• List your skill set. It should be relevant to the position being advertised.
• List your major accomplishment and achievements. That is, the value you delivered to your previous employers. This is not a list of the positions you held. That comes next.
• List your work history, with the most recent position listed first.
• List your social media involvement. Do you have a blog, LinkedIn profile, a Facebook page, etc.
• Education with the institutions and degrees obtained.
• If you are multilingual, be sure to list all the languages in which you are fluent. If you only speak one language, omit this section.
• List outside interests, if they bear some relevancy to your job. Again, accomplishments are important. For example, leadership role in volunteer organizations that increased the number of people served, or member of winning sports team.

Readability

To make reading easier and to speed things up:

• Write the same way that you speak so that if you meet your potential employer, they will recognize that you are the same person who wrote the resumé. If others to write your resumé, make sure they use language that reflects your vocabulary and grammar.
• Be clear and concise
• Avoid run-on sentences and those longer than 20-25 words
• As a rule, use the active voice (the cat ate the mouse) and avoid using the passive voice (the mouse was eaten by the cat) as it is longer and less forceful
• Apply appropriate (business) action phrases & verbs but don't be excessive
• Use bullet points to list things or numbered points for sequences
• Spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors are killers. Use grammar and spelling checkers
• Sans-serif fonts, such as Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana, are most often used for on-screen reading and shorter subjects, while Times New Roman is the business font more for paper-based communications
• Uses a vocabulary suited to the position, industry, and company
• Formatting matters. So does the feel of the paper when mailing in a resumé. At first glance, your resumé can impress or depress the employer, so use good quality paper when mailing resumés and CVs
• Contact info - Be instantly accessible: provide your cell phone, primary and secondary email addresses, and physical address
• For emailed resumés, use sans-serif fonts (Arial, Tahoma, Verdana) in font sizes of 10-12 points, as they are most often used for on-screen reading.
• If you remain unsure of what format to use, check out what fonts the employer uses online
• Space your sentences and indent your paragraphs so that information is easy to skim and read
• If you are multi-lingual, be sure to list all those languages in which you are fluent.
• Social Media
  • Blogs - list yours or others to which you have contributed, especially if the blog and blog posts demonstrate a relevant skill set, an interest in, or a discussion of a subject related to the position sought. In all cases, your reasoning and communication abilities are on display; more so, if your posts have provoked comments
  • List your Twitter (X) Id if you feel your tweets add value to your resumé presentation
  • Try to ensure that nothing embarrassing is posted about you online.

LinkedIn

Today, LinkedIn is essential to finding a job in a professional field. It is the first step that recruiters and HR look at when hiring personnel. As such, you will need a LinkedIn profile that separates you from your competition. When creating one, keep the following in mind:

• A LinkedIn profile is an ad. It is not the same as a resumé or CV. So, don't use your profile as a resumé or CV.
• Most people have a single profile that they write to appeal to a wide audience. It is understandable since you don't know who is looking for your skills and background. This means a profile must appeal to different audiences, positions, and skill sets.
  •  The problem with this approach is that it appeals to everyone and to no one. This does not allow you to distinguish yourself from others looking for similar jobs.
  • Most profiles include keywords and key phrases. Almost everyone looking for the job that you want uses many of the same keywords. At best, keywords help put you on a shorter shortlist. Again, it does not distinguish you from the competition.
• Distinguishing yourself
  • The most important thing you can do is list your relevant accomplishments. It will distinguish you from others. List things such as:
    • Have you increased revenues?
    • Have you solved a relevant problem?
    • Have you written books, articles, or papers important to your chosen audience?
    • Have you spoken at conferences on these topics?
  • Simplify the organization of your profile. Here is an example:
    • Let's say your current profile is grouped into:
      • Experience in industries A, B, and C and
      • Skill sets that include expertise in X, Y, and Z
    • In a revised profile you would group the profile into:
      • Industry A using skill set X;
      • Industry B using skill sets Y and Z; and
      • Industry C using skill sets X and Z.
    • That new organization makes your profile more relevant to the hiring managers in each industry. It also makes their jobs easier when hiring someone relevant to their needs.
  • Include a Call To Action. For example, "Call me if anything I have done is relevant to your needs".
  • Create your own short list of where you wish to work.
  • • Research these places by finding their needs and who will need your skills in the organization. Try to discover something about the organization's culture.
    • If anyone calls you from one of these organizations, you can ask them intelligent questions about their important issues. This gives you the ability to ask more in-depth questions, which illustrates your experience and background.
  • Another way to distinguish yourself is with a well-written cover letter that is "personalized" to those you are trying to reach. The research you have done above will show that you care about what they do and give you the ability to tailor your cover letter to their needs.

Call To Action (CTA)

A CTA is part of the cover letter. It distinguishes you and encourages a prospective employer to find out more about what you can do for them. Here are some examples:

• If you are applying for a sales position, then your cover letter should contain a true statement of the form:
  • "I increased sales by 20% during the last economic downturn. How I did this is a bit involved, but I would be happy to discuss this with you if you are interested".
• If you are applying for an executive position, then your cover letter may contain a true statement of the form:
  • "I managed to solve our supply chain problem like you may have faced and prevented a shutdown that would have cost us millions. The situation may be slightly different with you situation, but if you are interested, please contact me and I will be happy to explain how I did this."
• If you are a student or someone changing careers, then a true statement of the form may work:
  • As part of my work study, I found that some of the new techniques I was taught helped speed up the development of our existing workflow without causing a major disruptions. I received a commendation for my work. If you are interested in this with regard to the record keeping that you need to do, please feel free to contact me."

Scannable

Large, well-known companies may get hundreds, if not thousands, of resumés a month. They use resumé-scanning software to go through all these submissions. There are two main things to keep in mind about making your resumé scannable:

• The format of a resumé should be simple, clear and somewhat standardized. Avoid things such as fancy fonts, italics, underlining, embedded graphics, and most things that are not textual in nature.
• Scanning software looks for keywords in your resumé. These keywords take 2 forms:
  • General category keywords such as chemist/chemistry, programmer/programming, sales/account executive, video/movie producer, etc.
  • Specific keywords such as bioluminescence , C++/Java, medical devices, documentary, etc.

These keywords should be used in context so the resumé reads as a coherent document. Typically, there should be one or more specific keywords for each general keyword. Use of general and specific keywords back each other up and make you more real.

Historically, there used to be a section called "Keywords". It is no longer needed and only clutters up your resumé. This section is often ignored since it is too easy to "pack" irrelevant words into this section.

Assessment Criteria

The following are the current assessment criteria used to judge professional resumés:

• Clear and well formatted
• Impact on audience
• Clearly state the objective of the resumé, if needed
• Highlights relevant skills and experience
• Appropriate vocabulary
• Accomplishments listed and described
• Concise and to the point
• All major sections covered
• Use of active verbs
• Correct spelling and grammar
• Effective use of social networking, if applicable
• A LinkedIn profile
• Scannable

Legal issues

In North America, the resumé should not mention age, race, gender, disabilities, family status, or anything irrelevant to fulfilling the employer's needs. For example, your date of birth, or the date of your graduation need not be given. For this reason, you may also choose not to include a photo or video. In some cases, you may need to mention one of these attributes. For example, applying for the government's small business loans to minorities may require that you mention your race to qualify.