Combine an interview winning resume, a strategic marketing campaign and a powerful interview presentation and you have the ingredients to orchestrate a successful career transition.
DOOR-OPENER, NOT DOORSTOP
Resumes that look crisp, clean, professional hold recruiter’s eye
By Alison Grant, Plain Dealer Reporter
Since your resume is the essential calling card for landing a job interview, it has to declare that you are somebody worth meeting. Too often, though, it lands in the reject pile on a hiring officer’s desk.
“It’s actually very difficult to write a resume that gets you noticed,” said Gershon Bergwerk, co-founder of resume.com, which charges $95 to $500 for a resume written by one of 125 freelances across the country.
Resume pros say they have honed the technique of writing an attention-getting document-one that strikes a balance between overly humble and a complete braggart, lists achievements instead of just dates and jobs, and avoids grammar and spelling errors.
Making a resume stand out in a company’s in-box is a challenge, but standing out for the wrong reasons is a problem, too. Avoid outlandish type fonts and high-test paper colors. Resume writers recommend a clean, crisp look that uses an easy-to-read font-size (11 or 12 points) on a conservative white or cream-colored paper.
Jamie Schunan, senior editor at Resume.com, which is based in New York, spends her day critiquing resumes, a free service aimed at convincing job seekers they need the company’s help. When it comes to content, Schunan said, wordiness is the most common pitfall.
“Some people almost write biographies. They use complete sentences,” she said. “They use pronouns. They use articles.” All of that should be trimmed away. A resume’s critical information has to be relayed very quickly. How much time do you get?
“Under a minute or two,” Bergwerk said.
“Fifteen or 20 seconds to make an impression,” said veteran resume write Susan Barens of Highland Heights.
Resumes don’t have to be as succinct as haiku, though professional resume writers say the old guideline that a resume should fit on a page is outdated.
“There are many, many occasions when two pages or more are appropriate,” said Frank Fox, executive director of the Professional Association of Resume Writers in St. Petersburg, Fla. “We’ve had examples where nine and 10 pages may be appropriate.”
For the most part, though, it’s best when resumes are short and sweet, said Barens, owner of the consulting firm Career Dynamics. Two pages is the appropriate length for 98 percent of her clients, although one page works for recent college graduates.
Human-resource managers say a common weakness is failing to quantify accomplishments. That means saying, for example, that you “increased productivity by 20 percent in one year,” or “taught a five-part computer skills program to a staff of 500.”
The most pertinent information for marketing yourself should be at the top of the first page, resume coaches say. And there the most important thing is not to sell yourself short.
“You sort of lose insight to what your abilities are,” said Paul Ripper, an LTV Corp. manager who lost his job in mid-April. “Sometimes you take a lot of things for granted that you do, that from another person’s perspective are probably key points that you need to mention.”
Barens said a resume coach has to help clients figure out not only their natural talents, but also what they have always wanted to do. “Sometimes I think people’s biggest hurdles lie within,” she said.
Ripper, a maintenance engineer who was among the last to leave in LTV’s wind-down, met a career coach recently to draft his first resume in practically three decades.
“We’ll sit down and actually develop the answer to the question, ‘Tell me a little bit about yourself,’ ” said Tina Fisher, owner of Exclusively Resumes in North Royalton. “I call it my 90-second informercial.”
After a meeting that lasts about an hour, Fisher takes the mass of information from her client and figures out how to present it. She says the interviews usually yield “treasures or golden nuggets” to highlight, which she assembles in a flattering, but truthful light. If a job hunter has had nine jobs in the last 12 years, Fisher said she would make “a strategic decision” to omit some of the dates.
That kind of artful approach can go too far. Fisher said clients should not be left in a position were they have to backpedal an interview.
“Interviewers are trained to look for holes in stories,” she said.
Some job seekers cross the line from finesse to exaggeration and lies. Cleveland-area executive recruiter Jeffrey Christian said about 71 percent of the people with whom the agency has contact misrepresent the number of years they’ve had in a specific job. Also common are exaggerations about accomplishments, company size and salary, the chief executive of Christian & Timbers said.
Nowadays, when professional resume writers finish their work, they get a client’s resume posted with top search engines on the Internet, besides delivering paper copies. Waiting to see if the Internet generates any nibbles, Fisher said, is the only passive thing a client should do in a job search.
The Plain Dealer Tuesday, May 14, 2002