5

Crafting an Effective Resume

Michelle Riklan

Today’s challenging job market demands that you are well equipped with stellar marketing tools. Did you know that your resume is one of the most crucial components in your marketing campaign? Most people think that it is simply a document that explains what you want to do and what you have done. That is a mistake. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to craft an effective resume, but first let’s start by defining what a resume is and its purpose.

What Is a Resume?

A resume is a personal marketing tool. Its purpose is to communicate the value that an individual has to a potential employer in such a way that the employer is compelled to call the individual for an interview. When written effectively, this strategic and powerful document will entice a hiring manager, search firm, HR professional, or another decision maker to take the next step and request a conversation. It sells the employer on the idea that the individual could be a good fit for an organization, company, or specific open position. A resume can be the difference between getting an interview and not getting an interview—it is a conduit for getting in the door. But when we say your resume is a marketing tool, what exactly does that mean?

The Applicant as “Product”

As a job applicant, you are a product that needs branding, marketing, and selling. To accomplish this, you need to construct your marketing tools. Your resume should be one a top priority.

We often hear in the job market that individuals need to clearly communicate their personal brand to potential employers. As they get ready to start creating their resumes, this is often the point where individuals panic a bit: “What is my personal brand?” “What does branding myself on my resume mean?” It does not need to be very complicated. Your brand is your promise to the consumer, who is your potential employer. Your brand lets a potential employer know what to expect from you; it differentiates you from the competition. It is a combination of who you are, who you want to be, and how others perceive you.

With this in mind, when I design a powerful and effective resume, I like to start by “labeling” the individual. I use this terminology to keep people in the “product and consumer” state of mind. After all, if we are shopping at a supermarket for soup, we need to be able to tell if we are buying chicken noodle or minestrone by looking at the packaging. Both types of soup may be Campbell’s, but they are very different, so the Campbell’s brand must quickly communicate to the consumer what is being sold.

Now picture this: You are in the soup aisle at the supermarket, and you decide that you want Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. There are rows of Campbell’s soup cans on the shelf, but instead of clear packaging listing the name of the product and a picture to show what you are buying, all the labels simply say “soup.” Perhaps ingredients are listed in tiny print and you can use that to figure out what kind of soup is in the can, but what a waste of time for the consumer! It would be enough to make you say, “Hey, I’m going to look at Progresso.” This is how potential employers feel when they pick up a resume and cannot immediately see who the person is, how she potentially fits into the organization, and what she has to offer. They will not go digging to find this information. Instead, they will move on to the next resume.

To avoid being passed over because the reader cannot quickly figure out who you are and therefore moves on to check out the next resume, begin your resume with a header and a subheader. For example:

Notice how the header defines the applicant, just as the word Campbell’s defines the brand of soup. The subheader gets more specific; it’s equivalent to chicken noodle or minestrone, telling readers what kind of general manager or chief operating officer they will get. This way, employers looking for an executive for a manufacturing plant will know immediately to move on and you have not wasted their time. Another example:

This applicant quickly communicated to readers who he is and how he could fit into an organization. Readers greatly appreciate this strategy because then they can continue reading and find out what value the person may bring.

Value Proposition Statements vs. Objective Statements

After creating a strong header and subheader, you need a captivating and engaging profile summary (also known as the value proposition statement).

I’m often asked, “I thought a resume should have an objective statement. Is this true?” While some career experts are divided on this matter, I don’t use them because they are applicant-centric and only talk about the candidate’s wishes or career target. Typical objective statements read like these:

What do you notice about these statements? It’s all “I want this and I want that.” There is nothing there to pique the interest of an employer.

While you need a career objective to help guide your search, recruiters or hiring managers are not particularly interested in what you want in life. The question they want answered is, “Who are you, and what can you do for me?” A career objective does not set you apart from the competition, because everyone wants a challenging and rewarding career with career advancement opportunities. It is a waste of prime real estate on your resume!

Instead, create a compelling profile section that displays your unique value. This is your value proposition statement. Use it to grab recruiters’ attention right off the bat by developing a hook to persuade them to continue reading. Keep in mind that because a recruiter will most likely start reading at the top of your resume, the top third of the page is crucial. Make it easy on the reader: Create a hard-hitting paragraph that gets her excited and wanting to know more. Take a look at these three options for an opening paragraph or profile:

Clearly, the first option is an objective statement. Did it make you want to find out more about what the applicant was seeking and keep reading? If not, then it is ineffective.

The second version is moving in the right direction, but still misses the mark. The language is weak and generic. Did it make you curious about the applicant?

The third option is a value proposition statement. You clearly know what the individual has to offer and how he is perceived. The applicant has also differentiated himself by offering more than just generic information.

Core Competencies, Areas of Expertise, and Professional Skills

Including a section on core competencies, areas of expertise, and professional skills is expected in resumes today. This section helps your resume get through applicant-tracking systems. But does it help the employer? Yes! Keep the employer in mind at all times, because she is your gatekeeper. With many resumes to sift through, she wants a quick and easy way to scan your resume to see if you have the desired skills. The core competencies, areas of expertise, or professional skills section provides that checklist.

Picture a hiring manager with a stack of resumes on her desk. She pulls your resume from the pile and holds it in her left hand. In her right hand is the job description. If the resume has a professional skills section (or one of the other section headers listed here), then she can quickly eyeball both documents to see if you have some of the more crucial requirements. She will appreciate that you were considerate of her time by frontloading your resume with these keywords; now she won’t have to dig for this information. When creating this section on your resume, ask yourself, “What keywords will be searched when an employer is looking for someone like me?” Make sure those keywords are included in this section, but be sure to back up them up with relevant experience and accomplishments throughout your resume.

For example, an employer is looking for someone with the following skills to fill a position: event planning, food and beverage operations, customer satisfaction, menu creation, food safety, workforce planning, recruiting, training large teams, catering, mentoring, upselling services, and vendor relations. The areas of expertise or core competencies section of an applicant’s resume may look like this:

Areas of Expertise

•  Banquets •  Coaching •  Hiring •  Large Events •  Sales •  Scheduling •  Training •  Vendor

How else can you find the right keywords? One way to find the best keywords to include is to see what words are used in job descriptions and postings that look interesting to you. The Occupational Outlook Handbook (www.bls.gov/ooh) is another great resource. You’ll read more about keywords in chapter 8.

Professional Experience

Hiring managers don’t want to read dense blocks of text, and nobody wants to read a long list of bullets. Often, a person’s resume becomes a laundry list of what he has done, instead of an engaging story about what he has achieved throughout his career. Remember to keep the “product-consumer” mindset. Let’s compare two fictional ads. As you’re reading them, think about which ad is more compelling and which one appeals to the wants or needs of the consumer.

When creating your professional experience section, keep CAR in mind:

•  Challenge: What were you challenged to do?

•  Action: What did you do and how did you do it?

•  Results: What were the positive end results and the impact on the global enterprise?

Next include numbers, percentages, or anything that will quantify and support the results. For example, is this an effective statement?

We do not know how the individual did this, if she was successful, or the results. In other words, we need to know the quantifiable accomplishments.

Here is another example:

We have no idea how the individual did this. He claims he increased net profits, but we don’t know by how much. Was it $1? $1,000? $10K? Was it an achievement? Even if he stated “increased net profits by 20 percent,” we still wouldn’t know if that was actually an accomplishment. What if the goal was 35 percent? Then this would have been an underachievement.

Using the CAR format, develop a challenge, action, and result story. Once you’ve collected all the pieces of that story, write it up in an interesting but concise manner. This will then be a strong bullet.

Remember, we want to make everything easy on the reader. Too often, people blend their job descriptions with their achievements. Instead, include a brief overview of the job description in paragraph form before you list your achievement bullet. It is much easier on the reader when your experience section is written with a combination of paragraphs and bullet points. This formatting makes it easier to navigate your resume. The following is an example of using bullets and paragraphs to describe a professional experience.

Note how the job description is separated from the achievements. Contextual information is also included so the reader can understand how the individual’s career has progressed.

It is also important to ensure that your language is active, not passive, by using “action verbs” for each bullet point. List achievements for a current job in the present tense; for past work experiences, write them in the past tense. Table 5-1 lists action verbs you can use to start each bullet point.

Table 5-1. Action Verbs for Resume Bullet Points

Accomplished

Achieved

Approved

Arbitrated

Bolstered

Built

Completed

Conducted

Consolidated

Constructed

Controlled

Converted

Created

Decreased

Delivered

Demonstrated

Designed

Developed

Devised

Directed

Doubled

Earned

Edited

Eliminated

Established

Expanded

Founded

Generated

Headed

Implemented

Improved

Improvised

Increased

Innovated

Installed

Instituted

Introduced

Invented

Launched

Led

Maintained

Managed

Narrowed

Negotiated

Operated

Organized

Originated

Performed

Planned

Prevented

Processed

Produced

Promoted

Proposed

Provided

Purchased

Recommended

Redesigned

Reduced

Reorganized

Researched

Resolved

Revised

Scheduled

Serviced

Set up

Simplified

Sold

Solved

Sparked

Started

Streamlined

Strengthened

Stressed

Stretched

Structured

Succeeded

Superseded

Supervised

Terminated

Traced

Tracked

Traded

Trained

Transferred

Transformed

Translated

Trimmed

Tripled

Uncovered

Unified

Unraveled

Utilized

Vacated

Verified

Withdrew

Won

Worked

You can also incorporate a description of the company, particularly if the company doesn’t have name recognition. This gives the reader an understanding of the type of environment you have worked in—small or large, public or private, national or international.

For example:

Additional Sections

Once you’ve developed the professional experience section, start to wrap up your resume. If your experience goes back more than 15 years, consider including an earlier career section. Your earlier career is important and you don’t want to lose it. After all, that makes up the building blocks of your career. However, the details of those positions may no longer be relevant, or they may simply not be as important as your more recent experience, and therefore, you don’t want to waste the space. Here’s an example of what this section might look like:

Earlier Career
Assistant General Manager | Houlihan’s Restaurant, New York, NY Executive Chef | Osteria, Charlotte, NC Food & Beverage Director | The Riviera Country Club, Charlotte, NC	1996 to 2000 1994 to 1996 1992 to 1994

Then conclude with the education section. If it includes professional training, course work, or certifications, call it education and professional development. Here is an example:

Education and Professional Development

Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte, NC Bachelor of Science in Food and Beverage Management

The Leader’s Institute, San Antonio, TX Fearless Presentations | Team Building

Southern Hospitality Association, Richmond, VA Wine Pairing | Management 101 | Customer Service Excellence

Other sections people often put in their resumes include associations, affiliations, speaking engagements, patents, publications, and certifications. Whether it is appropriate to include these sections will vary. Consider developing a separate document called “Resume Addendum” for these sections. The addendum can be provided as requested either at an interview or afterward, but it also may not be necessary. Remember, the resume is the tool that procures the interview, and the employer will appreciate that you did not provide a novel.

Resume Length

Have you been told that resumes should only be one page? Wrong! Yes, a resume needs to be written clearly and concisely. However, if you are a professional with substantial experience and have tried to communicate that in one page, then your reader is probably scratching her head, wondering what you’ve been doing for the past XX years. One page is usually not sufficient unless you are straight out of school.

I write two-page resumes 90 percent of the time; sometimes I write three pages, which is acceptable when warranted. Beyond that is unnecessary unless you are creating a CV for an academic position. When a resume spills into four pages, the reader will not only get bored, but also wonder whether you can communicate clearly and concisely.

Format and Design

How important is the formatting and design? Extremely! Think about the formatting and design of your resume as product packaging design. You should have two types of resumes: a nicely formatted one you use when emailing or supplying a hard copy to someone, and a plain text version to use when applying to positions online. This chapter is primarily concerned with the first type, and chapter 8 covers formatting for online applications.

For a product, great packaging improves professional image and influences the company brand. Packaging can be the deciding factor for a consumer making a buying decision, and at a minimum it helps the product get off the shelf. For example, a shopper takes a child to the store to buy a new cereal. The child points to the rows of cereals exclaiming, “I want that one!” Most likely, he is pointing to a colorful box with fun cartoon characters; the company has created a design that stimulates his senses and encourages his mom to take the product off the shelf. Granted, the mom may review the ingredients, determine it is too full of sugar and preservatives, and put it back on the shelf. But the point is it got off the shelf and in the hands of the consumer. When customers see a packaging design that appeals to their senses, they are more likely to review and possibly buy a product.

According to the writer, painter, and art critic John Berger in his seminal book Ways of Seeing (1972), people think in pictures: “Seeing comes before words.” Your first thought may be that this is an obstacle when writing a resume, because a resume is mostly words. But understanding this can work to your advantage. The entire packaging or design of your resume becomes essential for inspiring and motivating a potential employer to “take your resume off the shelf,” pull it out of the pile, and pay attention to the “ingredients.”

The key to selling any product is presentation and evoking a sensory response for the consumer. Here are some tips on how you can accomplish this:

•  Choose a font that is easy to read and an appropriate size. If your reader needs to whip out reading glasses to see what you have to say, not only have you aggravated her because you’ve called attention to her age, but you also wasted her time because she had to find or use tools to read through your document. And then she might not even bother; after all, she has a whole stack of resumes and another one might be easier to read. A few recommended fonts include Arial Narrow, Bookman, Calibri, Cambria, Garamond, Georgia, Tahoma, and Verdana. The appropriate font size varies based on the specific typeface, but a good rule of thumb is to go no smaller than 10 points.

•  Separate your sections with clear dividers. Segment information so that the reader can easily navigate through the document.

•  Write succinctly. Resumes that are dense cannot be “eyeballed.” The hiring manager is scanning for information and needs to find it quickly. If your resume looks like a newspaper article without white space and tons of content, then it needs reworking.

•  Pay attention to details. Misspellings, incorrect grammar, and inconsistencies in tense, voice, punctuation, and spacing alert the reader that you do not pay close attention to details. This document is a representation of you; if you want the reader to know that you are detail oriented, prove it here.

•  Add embellishments. Adding a graph, table, image, box, border, or some color to a resume can help support the content and draw attention to important aspects of the information. As you design your resume, keep in mind the industry and position for which you are applying. Some industries may be conservative, whereas others are more freely creative.

So, what resume style should you use? That depends on whether you have career challenges that need addressing. The three most commonly used styles are reverse chronological, functional, and targeted or hybrid.

Reverse Chronological

The traditional resume is reverse chronological, with a focus on the experience section and describing each job in detail. This style resume is often used when a person is staying in the same profession.

Pro: It appeals to the more conventional reader and can be very effective if the candidate wants to highlight some prestigious employers.

Con: Core skills are not brought to the forefront and the reader has a linear view of the candidate.

Functional

A functional resume highlights major skills and accomplishments at the top. The important skill sets and qualifications are presented under functional headings, so the reader does not need to scan through entries for several employers to see what you’ve done.

Pro: This type of resume format is effective for people who are changing careers, have gaps in their resumes, are returning to work, or are students or graduates just entering the workforce. It de-emphasizes or even omits employment history, dates, and so forth.

Con: This format may raise a red flag with employers, because they may wonder what you are trying to hide. Search firms do not prefer this format.

Targeted or Hybrid

The hybrid resume gives the best of both worlds because it presents work history in reverse chronological order after a strong introduction that highlights skills and key selling points.

Resume Challenges

You can address challenges in your resume several ways. Consider these tips.

Employment Gaps

Your skills and experience may be marketable, but how do you present a gap or gaps in your employment history? Yes, your reader will most likely question an employment gap, but it does not mean that you will be perceived as unemployable or a poor candidate.

Short employment gaps are not necessarily worrisome, as long as they are not frequent. Neither is an employment of one year or less. Unemployment that lasts more than a year will require a strategy. By camouflaging and explaining gaps in your resume, you’re taking a pre-emptive measure to put the tides back in your favor.

Just be ready to answer the obvious question: Interviewers will always want to know the cause of your employment gap, so don’t get caught without an honest, valid answer.

Hide Gaps in Plain Sight

Were you let go? If yes, say so. Were you laid off because of a downsizing or company restructuring? Explain this in your cover letter or provide a short explanation in your resume under the company description. State why it happened, such as poor company performance, obsolete jobs, outsourcing, or whatever reasons your previous employer provided.

Camouflage the Gaps

Employment gaps in your resume can be camouflaged by simply showing ranges of years. It is not important to include months in your employment history, especially if most of your jobs span years. Compare the two below. Doesn’t the second one look better?

Include “Nonwork” Work in Your Employment History

If you took a class, pursued an MBA, consulted, worked in a startup, or volunteered, then put it in your employment history. This is an authentic way to account for the time, instead of having a glaring gap in your resume.

Convert Unpaid Duties Into Profitable Work-Related Skills

If you are a parent returning to work and some of your common duties include preparing meals, driving kids, organizing car pools, budgeting, and making sure that homework is completed, these are acquired skills and should not go to waste. Reframe those skills to match the target employer’s vocabulary; for example:

•  arranging play dates or organizing car pools = organizing or coordinating events

•  budgeting and paying the bills = bookkeeping

•  helping the kids with their homework= mentoring or supervising people

•  selling tickets for a fundraiser or raffle = sales and customer service skills.

Emphasize Continued Learning

Many individuals who have been out of the workforce stay up-to-date with the latest in their industry by reading professional magazines and participating in LinkedIn groups. List professional memberships you’ve maintained, workshops you’ve attended, and any active licenses or certifications by creating a “Professional Organizations and Licenses” section in your resume. List any recent training programs you’ve attended to brush up on your skills in the “Education” section. These accomplishments will show prospective employers that you’re not a dinosaur.

Ageism

If you are concerned that your age is a detriment as a job seeker, here are a few quick and easy tips:

•  Eliminate graduation dates. Unless you are a recent graduate, the reader does not need to know that you graduated in 1979. If he went straight to that section to find out how old you are, then you have just forced him to actually read your resume so he can figure it out.

•  List your personalized LinkedIn URL in your contact information (and make sure your profile is well crafted; see chapter 6). Providing the URL helps the reader find your profile quickly. She is going to look for it anyway. This also demonstrates that you live in the 21st century and understand both the value and application of social media.

•  Stay current on skills and certifications and list them in your resume.

•  Truncate or eliminate older positions. Use the “Earlier Career” section for truncating, and eliminate any positions from a long time ago that are truly irrelevant.

•  Don’t be old fashioned. Simple things on a resume can indicate your age. Resumes constructed with a wide left-side margin, objective statement, or phrases such as “references available upon request” shout “outdated individual.”

Addressing a Career Change

It is not impossible to change careers and market yourself for something entirely new. The trick is perception. How a potential employer perceives you is what matters most, and your job is to positively influence that perception.

Investigate your target employers so you truly understand what they are looking for. Review the keywords and make sure that you include and emphasize any skills you have that match your prospective employer’s. Highlight any success stories you have and translate them into language that the reader will understand.

Consider using the functional format when structuring your resume so that the reader is drawn to your transferable skills, which you will include in the first third of page one.

Summary

A resume is a personal marketing tool. Its purpose is to communicate an individual’s value to a potential employer in such a way that the employer is compelled to call the person for an interview. There are many components of an effective resume, including the value proposition statements, keywords, skills, professional experience, and education. It is also important to choose the right format, design, and strategy when crafting your resume. Choose the one that makes the most sense for the job you’re applying for and the experience you’ve amassed thus far. See Appendix F for sample resumes and the Additional Resources section for further information on resume writing.