Refining Your “Marketing Materials”— Resume Basics

One of a CEO’s primary responsibilities is the growth and development of the organization. Investors and board members believe that if the business is not growing, it is dying. Given that you are the CEO of the Business of You, your business development efforts should be focused on seeking and obtaining gainful employment and advancing your earning potential. The best way to do that is by making yourself as attractive and marketable as possible to potential employers.

Business development in its most basic form is selling or identifying opportunities or partnerships/relationships to grow the business.

Before you can outwardly market yourself to employers, take the time to enhance your marketing materials. Your resume is your primary marketing collateral. It should be professional, easy to read, and concisely packaged to show what your skill set can do for this potential employer.

Job-search websites and many independent companies provide great advice and tools on developing a resume. A quick online search will yield dozens of articles, software solutions, and professional writing services to assist with the basics behind drafting a solid one. To avoid wasting time by treading over already well-covered ground, let’s focus on some guiding principles for fine-tuning your professional resume that will cause it to stand out in a crowd.

Your resume, like any other effective piece of marketing collateral, must accomplish the following:

• Look professional and quickly capture the reader’s attention
• Clearly define your product or service
• Speak directly to your target audience

Remember these objectives as you draft your resume. If it is executed correctly, you will put yourself in an excellent position to get to the next step in the vetting process (assuming you meet many of the minimum requirements for the position).

LOOK PROFESSIONAL AND QUICKLY CAPTURE ATTENTION

When you see an advertisement in a magazine, what do you notice? It likely captures your attention and quickly delivers a message. The designers behind these ads know that they have a brief second or two to engage the reader. The same rings true for you and your resume. Hiring managers and human resource employees are reviewing dozens if not hundreds of resumes for a given position, so it is only a matter of seconds before they decide the fate of yours. Does it make it to the follow-up pile, or is it filed away and never reviewed again?

By visiting one of the online resume building resources or consulting with your network, you will have many options to choose from for your resume template. When selecting the format, consider the following:

• Does it convey a sense of professionalism?
• How is the flow? When you read through the template, do your eyes naturally progress through the content, from section to section?

After your template decision is made you will be faced with a few design choices, including fonts and spacing. When selecting a font, stick close to the classics like Ariel, Courier, Calibri, or Times New Roman. You can get away with one of the close cousins of these fonts, but don’t deviate too far and submit your resume in Comic Sans. Using an obscure font does not come across as sufficiently professional.

• Avoid the urge to jam too much information onto the page with small type size and tight spacing. Reflect back on strong advertisements and how they capture attention. The space is balanced and the content is spread throughout the entire ad, giving a feeling of symmetry.
• Do not forget to have a section dedicated to a summary of your key qualifications or skills. These days many companies screen resumes through a variety of applicant-tracking systems. The greater the concentration of relevant key words, the better the chances your resume will receive a high score and reach an actual human being. Assuming an overlap, this insertion of your key skills will help your chances of progressing to the next step in the process.
• The length of a resume should match the level of experience you have. The goal here is to balance out providing enough information to get them excited about meeting you, while leaving them wanting to learn more.
      If you are early in your career, your resume should fit on a single page. For more seasoned professionals, two pages are sufficient. Employers and recruiters are more concerned with your most recent roles and activities. If you have previous experience that adds value to your candidacy (such as a notable responsibility or company) and are having trouble limiting the length to two pages, try using a previous roles section, mentioning each one in a bullet.

COMPANIES HIGHLIGHT THE MOST GLAMOROUS AND COMPELLING ATTRIBUTES OF THEIR PRODUCTS IN ADVERTISEMENTS. YOU SHOULD DO THE SAME WHEN PRESENTING YOURSELF.

A common mistake I’ve witnessed from the thousands of job applicants I have reviewed is listing every single accomplishment, club, hobby, or thought on a resume to make it multiple pages. Your intent may be to impress the reviewer with your myriad of accomplishments, but this will backfire and create the exact opposite response. Do you really want the reviewer thinking about how effective you were delivering hot coffee instead of how your system refinement enhanced productivity by 12 percent? Companies highlight the most glamorous and compelling attributes of their products in advertisements. You should do the same when presenting yourself.

• Last but not least, accuracy is paramount. Imagine if you read a national advertisement, and there was a major spelling or grammatical error in the ad. What impression would be left about the company behind that ad? Employers have the same reaction when they see mistakes on a resume. They are looking for a reason to rule you out and move on to the next resume. Don’t give them that chance. Proofread like crazy, and then have a friend or family member who is strong at that activity do an additional read through for you. If you don’t know anyone who can help, hire a professional copy editor to review your resume. It will be the best twenty or so dollars you can spend.

YOUR PRODUCT AND SERVICES: TELL A STORY

Advertising is more than simply sharing a product or service you are selling. Effective advertising connects that product or service to what the customer needs.

It may not sound like a big difference, but that shift in mind-set can be the difference between making the sale or not. In this case the sale means getting the job. Your resume should be written in a way that allows prospective employers to have a clear vision of what you are going to do and bring to their organization.

Don’t just convey information. Tell a story. The story should highlight the value you’ve added to previous employers and what you are capable of bringing to future ones. This story begins at the top of your resume with your career objective or summary. It is the framework of who you are as a professional, what you bring to the table, and what makes you different from the other candidates. Strong career objectives or summaries will describe what you do for employers. Here is an example of one I used on a previous resume:

 

Analytical, versatile leader with in-depth experience building highly effective teams and aligning resources. Strong evaluative, decision-making, and planning skills, with a track record of streamlining processes and driving profitability. Skilled in revitalizing under-performing organizations.

 

When describing yourself, play up your strengths and core competencies. If you are early in your career, talk about your career aspirations. Here’s another opening example:

 

A creative self-starter seeking career opportunities to round out my design and management skills to grow into the position of a Creative Director.

 

The summary above briefly touches on strengths but quickly shifts the focus to what you are aspiring to bring to employers. Once you’ve started the story, it’s time to reinforce what the employer is buying with proof points.

As you bullet out your responsibilities and accomplishments from previous roles or activities, use measurements whenever possible. Quantifying results helps the reviewer digest the content and adds credibility. Why do you think advertisers use stats like “30% more horsepower” or “4 out of 5 dentists approve”? Because stats work. They deliver information in a way that people are able to understand, and they quantify the impact.

An impactful structure for delivering accomplishments on your resume is to outline an action taken by you that resulted in a measurable result. For example:

 

Created and implemented a system-wide incentive and engagement program that helped to drive a year-over-year improvement in franchisee growth and participation in vendor platforms by over 30 percent in each category.

 

When outlining your accomplishments, refer back to your summary to ensure that you are consistently reinforcing the character introduced in the beginning to avoid cognitive dissonance.

Additionally, use these accomplishments to demonstrate a wide range of skills and talents to help cast a wider net. When was the last time you heard a complaint about someone being too versatile?

Another consideration when outlining your accomplishments is to incorporate anything that can differentiate you from your competition. Is there something you did that makes you unique or jump off the page? Add it. Many of us are not comfortable with bragging about ourselves, but this is the time and place to do so.

One more tip. People typically remember the first and last statements, and tend to forget what was in the middle. A way to play that up to your advantage is to position your strongest accomplishments at the beginning and end of each section.

SPEAK DIRECTLY TO YOUR TARGET MARKET

Strong marketers spend a great deal of time, money, and energy to make certain they are speaking directly to the needs and wants of their target customers. That way, they have the best chance of the message landing and resonating with the person who is most likely to purchase their product or service. To be more effective in landing interviews, you should follow suit.

Before submitting a resume, take a moment to consider the role and the company you are applying for. Are there certain attributes in your resume that you should play up that are most relevant? During job searches, I’ve used several different resume templates. I modified them to play up certain characteristics and accomplishments that would speak more directly to the different types of roles (business development, operations, training, etc.) or to the culture of the company that I was applying for. It requires a bit more work, but going that extra mile pays off when the reviewer of your resume feels like you are tailor-made for the position.

BUILDING AWARENESS

Over the last ten years, I have worked with thousands of small-business owners. The common theme among the most successful operators is a well-oiled business development engine. And at the core of that is a diverse mix of lead generation sources. That diversity helps to insulate their organizations if one lead source drops off during a given time period. Obviously, most of us are not trying to collect multiple jobs the way businesses are with customers; but harvesting multiple sources for career opportunities can help bring more openings your way and shorten the time frame between looking for a job and landing a job.

When conducting your job search, extend your reach by using all of the different job-sourcing opportunities available to you:

• Networking
• Your personal network
• Career fairs
• Placement organizations and recruiters
• LinkedIn
• Temporary and employment agencies
• Job sites like CareerBuilder, Monster, Ladders, and Craigslist
• Scanning the websites of companies you are interested in for job postings
• Joining industry organizations

Depending on the job or role you are seeking or the stage of your career, another way of finding companies that are hiring is to look for news stories and press releases (by checking cable business news stations and business websites) referencing companies that are expanding or hiring. These companies will need to find talented people to meet their expansion targets.

The sales cycle is the process that companies undergo when selling a product to a customer. It encompasses the work and activities associated with securing the business relationship or closing the sale.

With a strong and targeted resume and an extremely active search effort, you will get your foot in the door with organizations. That is just the beginning of your “sales cycle.” The next part of the process is interviewing and “closing the sale,” or, for the Business of You, securing a job offer.

IDEAS IN ACTION

▸Your resume is your primary marketing collateral. It should be professional, easy to read, and concisely packaged and positioned as to what your skill set can do for the potential employer.

▸Begin with a qualifications summary or a summary of your key skills to increase the likelihood of your resume being captured with applicant-tracking software.

▸Your resume should be written in a way that packages you and allows prospective employers to have a clear vision of what you are going to bring to their organization and do for them.

▸Great resumes tell a story about what you have brought to previous employers and what you are going to bring to future ones.

▸Before submitting a resume, take a moment to consider the role and the company you are applying for. Are there attributes in your resume that you should play up that are more relevant to this role or company?