PREPARING TO WRITE
YOUR RESUME
Yeah, I think I know what you want. You want me to get right to it. Tell you how to write a winning resume, give you an outline or template, tell you how to fill it in, tell you where to post it. And that’s that.
Well, much as I would love to do that, I just can’t.
Resumes need a lot more thought these days. Since the Great Recession of 2008, resumes aren’t working too well.
I’m guessing you knew that.
Everyone assumes this is because there are no
jobs these days.
Well, there are jobs. I’m looking at the government’s little-known report, sitting here on my desk right now. It’s called JOLTS for short, but its full name is
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. You can look it up on the Internet. It’s issued monthly. This one is for January 2014. It reports
that during that month, 4,500,000 people in the United States found
jobs, and there were still 4,000,000 vacancies unfilled at the end of that month. That’s a total of 8,500,000 vacancies filled or waiting to be filled. That month! That’s pretty typical in the United States. Every month.
Now admittedly, that’s not enough jobs or enough vacancies to fix our distressing unemployment problem. Still, somebody’s getting those eight million jobs. Each month.
Why shouldn’t you be among them?
Well, one reason—a big reason—may be your resume.
It almost certainly needs fixin’.
Yesterday’s resumes just aren’t up to the task today.
Yesterday’s resumes are like a dull knife trying to cut food. Need sharpening. Badly.
These days, you can’t just fill out a resume, post it, and expect it to go anywhere.
Resumes now take more time than they used to.
They take more thought than they used to.
In this economic climate, you have to work harder to make yours effective, in finding those jobs that are out there.
But you can do it. Yes, you can.
That’s what this little book is about.
Let’s start simple, with some thinking. Or, rethinking.
Okay, here’s the story:
You want to find work. To find it, you’ve got to secure an interview with some employer or employers who actually have the power to hire you. And employers are busy people. They’re not necessarily anxious to spend all day doing interviews. So, since you know that, you send someone on ahead of you, to plead your case for you.
And that someone is not actually a person but a piece of paper.
Yes, you send a piece of paper on ahead of you, to make the case as to why you should be invited in for an interview. And that piece of paper has a name. It is called a
resume. Or resumé. Or résumé. Or its near cousin,
CV (
curriculum vitae, meaning “the course of my life”).
Now, the most interesting thing about this piece of paper (digital or real) is that while it looks like just a bunch of words, it really is a
painting. And that’s because employers have the same thing you do:
imagination.Yes, your resume looks like just words. A lot of words. But when they’re reading your resume, the words are lifting off the page and painting a picture of you in the imagination of the employer who reads it.
Employers wouldn’t call it a painting; they would call it an “impression” of you. Same thing. They are looking at this piece of paper, covered with words, but they are thinking in terms of pictures. They are visualizing you.
Now, here’s the question. Do the words they read make them visualize you as a competent worker, or not? Do the words they read make them visualize you as energetic, or not? As joyful, or not? As a team player, or not? As honest, or not?
And let’s throw in: Do they visualize you as tall, short, or average height? Young, middle-aged, or old? Yes, those things aren’t covered in your resume, but employers can’t turn their imaginations off, just because they’ve finished looking at this piece of paper you sent on ahead of you. Rightly or wrongly, they see, they imagine, beyond your words. That’s just human nature.
But to my main point: It’s not just words that determine whether or not they decide to call you in for an interview. It’s the picture of you that these words paint in an employer’s imagination that determines whether they invite you in, or not.
So, when you set out to compose your resume, you would do well to think of yourself overall as a painter, not a writer. Your paintbrushes are your words. What is the picture of you that they paint? That is the question you should ask yourself, when you—or someone you hire—are debating what words to set down in your resume.
Let’s say you see a job posting. Some employer is looking for someone to fill a vacancy or a job newly created. You send in your resume. And you want to know how long an employer will likely spend looking at this resume/painting of you that you are sending on ahead, to plead your case for you. The answer will vary, of course.
There’s a difference, for example, between how long the owner of a restaurant will spend looking at the resume you drop off, when you are applying to become the manager there, versus how long a multibillion-dollar corporation will spend looking at your resume when 250 came in that day. With a small employer you might get as much as two minutes. With larger employers, we know (
because people have measured it) that generally your resume will get between four and fifteen seconds of attention. The
average is eight.
Eight seconds! Yikes! An employer is going to be reading down your resume fast. In fact, they may not get all the way to the bottom in those eight seconds. So, what they read first, what they see in the top half or even top third of your resume, is going to be determinative.
What can you do about that?
What can you do about this painting that the employers may be taking only a fast look at?
Well, real painters of course paint in various ways. But, as we can tell from the sketchbooks of famous painters like Rembrandt (below
1), they usually begin by laying down in broad strokes the outline of the whole portrait or picture. Then later they fill in. Details, shading, and such.
If your resume is only going to get eight seconds of attention, then it must do something like that. In the top third of your resume you must lay down in broad strokes an outline of who you are, using the words you write. Enough to make the employer hungry to see what else you have to say for yourself, as during the remaining two-thirds you shade and fill in. So to speak.
The new wrinkle of our day and age, regarding resumes, is key words. In the old days—ten or twenty years ago, say—you never heard about these. But now, article after article on the Internet will emphasize the
importance of your putting
key words near the top of your resume. Everyone thinks it’s because of computers and scanning software. And that’s a great part of it, sure.
But not solely. Eventually the eyes of a real human are going to be looking at your resume. Key
words, like all the other words on your resume, are paintbrushes. But it is the peculiar task of
key words to lay down, in bold strokes, near the very top of your
painting—excuse me, resume—the broad outline of who you are, which the rest of your resume is then going to fill in. If the employer’s eyes get down that far.
Now, this term is normally spelled keywords. But the dictionary permits the term to be spelled as two separate words, and throughout this guide I spell it as two separate words.
Why? Because in my working with job-hunters I have discovered that altogether too many of them think keywords are a separate animal, with an official list from which you choose, and that sort of thing. No, they are just words—any words—that are key to understanding the job under discussion, and what you have to offer. Most any word, noun or verb, may become key to understanding a job … or You.
And you want those key words near the top of your resume.
Here’s one example, starting on next page.
2Still, you’re puzzled.
Why do you have to write this way?
Why is an employer only giving you eight seconds?
What’s the hurry? Why so fast? Why so brief? I mean, you may have slaved over that resume, hours on end, and now it only gets an eight-second look? Come on! What kind of game are employers playing?
Well, it’s simple. They’re not playing a game of hiring. They’re playing a game of
elimination. At least at the beginning.
They’re faced with a problem bigger than you. On
average, corporations, for example, get 250
resumes for each
vacancy that they post or advertise.
3 When an employer is faced with such a large stack of resumes, real or digital, they go through that stack with one main obsession: “How can I cut the stack down to size?”
There are just too many job-hunters. Too many knocking on their door. Most especially now. When we’re still recovering from the Great Recession of 2008. Employers are looking for ways to get it down to last man standing. Or last woman standing. Your sending them your resume just makes it easier for them.
Later, it will be
Who can I choose? But for now, it’s
Who can I eliminate? Elimination is the name of the game.
They’re reading down your
resume—fast—looking for one thing: a reason—any reason—to eliminate your resume, so they can cut their stack down to a manageable size that they can call in, at the end, for an actual interview. Incidentally, we know how many they’re trying to end up with: just five or six. The
average number of interviews employers need to conduct to find a hire stays pretty constant, year in, year out. It’s 5.4 job-hunters. (
No, I don’t know how they only interview .4 of one of those people!)
Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Playing this game of elimination represents a time savings for the employer. As it only takes a typical employer about eight seconds to scan a resume with their eyes, they can get rid of fifty job-hunters—I mean turn down fifty resumes—in five minutes or less. Whereas, interviewing those fifty job-hunters in person would have required a minimum of twenty-five hours. Great time savings!
If it’s a large organization, they can speed up the elimination game even more, by first putting your resume through automatic resume scanning software—technically called
ATS (applicant tracking system) or
ERM (electronic resume management) systems.
4The more sophisticated—which is to say, the more expensive—of these ATSs can be set to look not just for key words, but also for other words that usually are near that key word when it is authentically used, and if the software doesn’t find that—if you just tossed that key word in there because you thought it sounded good—they will screen you out.
At which point, as the scientist
Kenan Sahin points out, this may technically still be software but it behaves more like a “robot” (though not as we typically think of robots). And this process doesn’t take the software/robot eight seconds; it just takes a fraction of one second.
All this
may happen,
if it’s a large organization. (These systems are expensive. They can cost thousands, on up into the millions. Therefore,
small
employers—250 or fewer employees—are not likely to have them.)
But jobs aren’t all with large organizations: 66 percent of the jobs in this country are, in fact, with organizations that have just 1–250 employees; 18 percent are with organizations that have 251–1,000 employees; and only 16 percent are with still larger organizations.
5Okay then, how common are ATSs in large organizations? You will find the following answer all over the Internet:
If it’s a large organization, they will for sure electronically scan your resume, which means you run the risk of software rejecting you, not a human—if it doesn’t find the proper key words, or your resume isn’t formatted properly, or it uses the wrong font. All large organizations do this.Well, maybe.
But there was a survey—done by BYU professors—that discovered 60 percent of the Fortune 500 companies surveyed did not electronically scan the resumes they received. They input the data manually, if they input it at all.
6 The wastebasket or shredder was and is always an alternative. So who knows? Maybe all large organizations do use an ATS; maybe all large organizations don’t. Take your pick.
All you need to know is that these days there is a chance that your resume may get scanned by software before it gets scanned by human eyes. So, you must prepare for this possibility.
Mentally prepare, as well as taking practical steps in the formatting and such.
Best mental preparation? Remember, this is no big deal: just another step—an extra step—in the game employers are initially playing with your resume anyway—the game of
Elimination.Here’s an infographic overview showing how all of this plays out in a typical large organization:
You can be forgiven for feeling as though this resume of yours, this little emissary you’re sending on ahead to plead your case for being given an interview, is having to make its way across a battlefield to safety, dodging bullets all the way. But I want to teach you how to dodge those bullets. You can alter the way you were going to set up, construct, and format your resume, as we shall see in the next chapter.
It helps if you keep in mind, throughout this process, that employers obviously don’t just want to eliminate.
No, ultimately they want to find. Once human eyes are reviewing your resume, they are looking for certain positive things as they scan down your resume.
Even during the elimination game, employers are keeping their eyes open for some things they really want. Good things. You need to know what these are. Obviously.
All generalizations we might make at this point are suspect. If someone tells you today that all employers are searching for employees who are kind, someone else will show you tomorrow an employer who is looking for someone tough as nails, who takes no prisoners.
So, generalizations are dangerous. Still, in general … there are three things employers are most hoping to find, as they glance at your resume.
And the first two are: Competence plus
Compassion.
To expand that a bit, employers want to know if you can do the job, of course, but they also want to know, How do you get along with people?
Or put another way: they want to know, What can you do? What do you know? What experience have you had? But they also want to know, What are your people skills?
The latter are sometimes called your
soft skills. “Soft” means “unquantifiable.” It is kind of a silly term
7—reminds you of softheaded—but there you have it.
If “soft” skills are so important, you naturally want to know what they are. Well, they range all over the map, but they are basically concerned with how you interact with people. Here’s a brief list of some of them.
You have good soft skills if you (
choose any or all): are likable—friendly, cheerful, optimistic, open, honest, even-tempered, emotionally stable—and manage yourself well; are confident, conscientious, and dependable, with a sense of humor; interact well with coworkers and customers or
clients regardless of their background; can see things through others’ eyes; are understanding, compassionate, empathetic, a good communicator, a good listener, a good learner, good at resolving conflicts, flexible, and adaptive; can stay calm, cool, and collected; have the ability to motivate others, not intimidate others.
Good soft skills means you understand yourself and your own inner world and have a high “
emotional intelligence quotient” (EQ).
9The one thing soft most assuredly does not mean is “a soft manager, going easy on people who fail to perform, tolerating mistakes from others, repeatedly.”
So, to my point: everyone knows that employers are looking over your resume to see, What can you do? What do you know? What experience have you had? What education? What many job-hunters or career-changers do not know is that employers are also heavily focused on how you get along with people.
They want both, and I mean both; but they will privately confess to you that, for many jobs, they give priority to the question of how you get along with people. In the past, employees, especially managers, have wrecked a company because while they were very competent at what they did with information or things, they had terrible people skills. So, it’s important to find this out now.
Aye, and there’s the rub. Traditional resumes have a format that is designed to help you make the case for the first part of the equation—
what you can do, what you know, what experience you have had—but that format is lousy at communicating anything about the second part of the equation:
how do you get along with people?That’s where resumes come up short. We’ll see, in a minute, what you can do about that.
But first, remember how I said there were three things, not just two, that employers are generally looking for when they glance at your resume? Well, here is the third thing:
Anything Disturbing.
Yes, when they’re looking at the painting of you that the words on your resume are creating in their imagination, heaven help you if they notice a blemish or ugly gouge in your portrait that draws their attention and makes them shake their head.
In other words, this third thing is not about something you should put in; this is about something you should take great care to
leave out.
I say it again: on your resume it is important to leave out anything that will disturb them. Such things might come up later, during an interview with them, once you get it; and if that happens, fine. You can explain it. But you don’t want it on your resume—this piece of paper that they’re only giving an eight-second look.
I know you may be wondering what I mean by “anything disturbing.” Well, to understand that, we can do no better than to turn to the Internet.
If you’re not on the Internet,
10 then you can just forget this whole section.
11But according to the latest survey, 85 percent of us in the United States are, via either home computer or smartphone.
12 Not only on it, but conspicuously and frequently, leaving tracks behind. You know. Facebook. Twitter. Pinterest. Instagram, Tumblr, Google+, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Craigslist, eBay, YouTube, blogs, photos, LinkedIn, and much more.
Many of us, in fact, have left enough material about ourselves there to constitute the makings of a good resume, if we were to put it all together. And Google has.
13 (
It’s just not organized.)
Yes, if you are on the Internet you no longer have just one resume. You now have two, in effect, whether you want to (two) or not. Because employers nowadays look at both: the resume you carefully compose, then send to them, and the one that
Google.com will randomly display before their eyes, when they type your name into Google’s search engine and bammo! If you’ve been anywhere near the Internet—and as I said, most of us have—and if you’ve posted anything on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, or if you have your own website or webcasts or photo album or blog, or if you’ve been on anyone else’s Facebook page, every aspect of you may be discovered by that employer.
All of this is subject, of course, to your
privacy settings—who you allow to see your pages and who you don’t—and
puhleeze, an employer does not have the legal right to demand your password; if they do demand it, you’ve got to weigh how much you really want to work there. Unless you’re desperate, you do have the right to refuse and go look elsewhere for a job.
Let us pause a moment to shed a tear over the death of the “good old days” when you had control over your private life when you went job-hunting. The only way an interviewer could learn much about you was from that piece of paper called your resume or CV. The good thing about this—from your point of view—was that you had absolute control over what went on that piece of paper. You could always show only your best side.
You could omit anything that was embarrassing, or anything from your past that you have long since regretted.
Short of their hiring a private detective, or talking to your previous employers, a prospective employer couldn’t find out much else about you.
That was nice. But those days are gone forever. With social media sites, much of your life is now an open book. As Edward Snowden and a host of others have been reminding us, privacy is kinda dead.
It’s easy now for anyone to find out more about you than just your resume.
So naturally, upon deciding to explore the resume you sent them, a vast majority of employers (91 percent of them, according to recent surveys
14) will
Google your name—
yes, Google has become both noun and verb—before they’ll consider interviewing you, or consider hiring you.
And what are they looking for? Well, as I said, they’re looking for anything disturbing, in the total picture the Internet paints of you.
With Google they often find it: 70 percent of all employers who regularly Google a job-hunter’s name have in fact found some thing that caused them to reject an applicant.
What kinds of things? Well, the biggie is anything that shows you lied on your (other) resume. Experts say that 82 percent of all resumes need checking out, because there’s something that looks questionable. When I first interviewed experts who fact-check resumes for companies, and heard this statistic, I thought it was way too large. Nope, turns out it wasn’t. And isn’t. Apparently, people lie, right and left, on their resumes these days—and think nothing of it—unless or until they get caught—and, consequently, don’t get the interview or lose the job. Then, of course, it’s too late.
So, don’t … do … it!In addition to lies, there are some other things employers generally dislike: bad grammar or gross misspelling
on your Facebook or LinkedIn
profile; your using bad words (starting with “f … ”); badmouthing of previous employers or people with whom you’ve worked; any signs of racism, prejudice, or jaw-dropping opinions; anything indicating alcohol or drug abuse; obsession with sex, as well as any—to put it delicately—
inappropriate content, etc. Not to mention the general overall
tone of you, on the Internet.
Remember, employers are looking for
three things: competence, compassion, and …
nothing disturbing. Don’t just shrug your shoulders and ignore this last.
If they find something disturbing, they will dump you. You will never be called in. Or hired.
Not fair, you say. And I agree. But let’s look at the bright side: you can fix this, if you will just give it some thought beforehand.
In almost all circumstances, you can manage or remove anything online that might disturb a prospective employer, prior to that employer’s Googling you. Prior to your sending them your resume. In other words, you can clean up your portrait on the Internet.
First of all, there’s an automated way to at least begin the process. The site is
www.reppler.com. In a few minutes, it will go through all the sites you link it to—your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Flickr,
Picasa, and
YouTube accounts, and so forth—and then flag those things you might want to delete. Nice app! And so far, it’s free. Use it.
Secondly, you can use your brains. Naturally!
Try painting an ideal but realistic picture of yourself, in your own mind, that you’d like the employer to see, or imagine, when they Google you. Paint that picture in broad strokes, by making a list of adjectives you’d hope would pop into the employer’s mind when they look you up.
Experienced? Professional? Determined? Creative? Organized? Well-rounded? Honest? Trustworthy? Kind?
Make your own realistic list. It should include, above all, any of the
soft skills we saw that you feel you can legitimately, honestly claim as your own.
That list is how you’d like to come across, on the Internet.
Now Google yourself and read everything the search engine pulls up about you, most especially on social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn,
Plaxo,
MySpace,
Tumblr,
Craigslist,
Pinterest, or
YouTube.
Remove anything you posted, or allowed others to post, that contradicts the items on that list of yours.
How? Just type or speak the following into a search engine like Google: “How to remove an item from [here name the site you are concerned about; say, Facebook],” and the chances are 9 out of 10 that Google will point you to somebody’s clever detailed, step-by-step instructions for “scrubbing” that site.
Just remember, you want current instructions, so look at the date on the list of items the search engine pops up. Pick the most recent, and try what they suggest.
As you’re doing this
cleanup, if you come across any sites (LinkedIn, in particular) that allow you to fill out a
profile,
STOP! and
DO IT. Fill it out completely. Now. These “
profiles” are little mini-resumes. So, show them great care. Cross every t, and dot every i, and have someone check your spelling. And grammar. Particularly if English isn’t your first language. Leave no part of the profile blank unless you have a very good reason.
More than 277 million people are on LinkedIn alone, and it is the first place an experienced employer turns to, on the Internet, when they are curious about you.
15
1. A profile photo, head and shoulders, broadly smiling. Yes, do it. Surveys reveal that employers spend 19 percent of their time on your LinkedIn mini-resume just looking at your picture.16
2. Your industry and location (postal code at least).
3. An up-to-date description of your current position (if you’re presently employed; otherwise, your most recent one).
4. Two past positions at least; if you choose to list all the jobs or positions you’ve held, do so in reverse chronological order (working backward), along with descriptions of your roles.
5. At least five of your favorite and best skills.
6. Your education (where you went to school).
7. A summary about yourself.
8. At least fifty connections (LinkedIn will tell you how).
And looking down the road, be sure you make it a weekly or monthly practice to keep such mini-resumes up to date. Really up to date. I know that’s hard, but you do want to look professional, and there is nothing that makes you look less professional than having an obviously outdated profile, somewhere, somehow.
Okay now, I’ve been talking about the Internet as though it’s a potential millstone around your neck. Actually, if you do things right, it can become a tremendous asset instead. All you have to do is just make your two “resumes”—what you write plus what Google turns up—work in tandem with one another.
Let’s go back to our earlier problem: I said that although employers’ eyes, looking at our resume, want to find out not only if we are competent but also if we have
compassion, it turns out to be incredibly difficult if not impossible for them to determine the latter. A resume’s
traditional form and nature just doesn’t allow that.
We know this, and we want to help them. But just when we are at our wit’s end about how to fix this, along comes our Google resume to the rescue. It offers us a chance to correct
that little problem, because it is there that we can triumph over the limits of a traditional resume. There, on the Internet, we can demonstrate and parade our people skills.
And if we commit to doing that, does it actually work? Yes, it sure does. Some 68 percent of employers have hired a candidate because they were impressed by what Google showed them about that candidate’s skills with people, in addition to their creativity or professionalism demonstrated online, and the wide range of interests exhibited.
17The Traditional Resumes vs. Google “Resumes” chart that follows gives an overview of how your two resumes complement each other, in painting a picture of You in the imagination of an employer.
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Created by you or your agent
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Gathered by search engine
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Your technical skills (what you can do, what you know, what experience you’ve had)
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Your people skills (“soft skills”): your relationship to and handling of people (as shown on Facebook, etc.)
SECONDARY EMPHASIS ON:
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Your people skills
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Your technical skills
FORM OF THE INFORMATION:
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Well organized
GOOGLE “RESUME”: A mish-mash
SIDE OF THE BRAIN APPEALED TO:
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Left side of the brain
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Right side of the brain
NATURE OF THE INFORMATION:
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Evidence, with stories
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Impressions
WAYS OF
IMPROVING THIS RESUME:
TRADITIONAL RESUME: Experience: Cite more stories, even if in one brief sentence, to prove you are not just claiming you have this technical skill or that, but you actually have demonstrated you have that skill.
GOOGLE “RESUME”: Anecdotes: Put up more stories, on your Facebook page and elsewhere, which show you are likable and good with people. (Tell stories of times when you demonstrated any
soft skills.)
Thus Google supplements your traditional resume. And your traditional resume, in turn, supplements Google. It’s no quick matter for an employer to Google you. The stuff about you that Google can call up may be all over the map.
You help by using your written resume to summarize and organize the most pertinent information about yourself, as it relates to this employer’s needs and job requirements.
Well, this is the end of your preparation. What have we learned thus far?
1. You are not primarily a writer, but a painter when you create a resume. You’re writing words. But employers have imaginations. They can’t help themselves. Your words inevitably create a picture of yourself in their imagination. So, you must think of your words as giant paintbrushes.
2. You have two resumes, loosely speaking: the one you write (or “paint”) and the one that Google pulls together about you. With these two working in tandem, you can convey to an employer the two things they most want to know: that you are competent but also compassionate. Your resume alone can’t do much about the “compassionate” part—your soft skills, your people skills. But your postings on the Internet, done thoughtfully and intentionally, can complement your resume’s focus on only your technical skills.
3. You must take especial care, on both “resumes,” to remove anything that an employer might find disturbing, when they are weighing whether or not to invite you in for an interview.
4. Employers play the Elimination Game before they play the Hiring Game. Your resume therefore doesn’t at all get the attention you feel it deserves. On average, it’s eight seconds. You must therefore structure your resume so that it paints a quick impression of who you are in the top third of that resume, using key words.
5. As part of the Elimination Game, ATS technology may be used to run your resume through an automatic scanning (and possible rejection) procedure, at large companies. But hiring is not all about large companies. In fact, 66 percent of all jobs in the United States are with small companies, having fewer than 250 employees. There, your resume is most likely dealing with human eyes from the beginning (go back to number one).
Now, with this preparation, you are ready to write that resume.
