Category Archives: Resumes

Hymnbooks and resumes

Posted on July 23, 2010 | Leave a comment

To be chosen, you first must be seen.

Hymnbooks and resumes      

You haven’t got a prayer of having your resume read unless you remember a hymnbook.

A resume should be created with a hymnbook in mind.  A hymnbook is created so that a singer may read the text and the music without shifting their eyes.  An organist can play a measure or two with one glance.  A chorus director can read all 4 singing parts and the text in quick glances. 

So why is this important? Because most resumes are thrown out in 10 seconds.

From the top line of the top staff of music to the bottom line of the bottom staff of music is 1 to 1  1/2 inches.   The width of one measure is usually the same.  A trained musician can read two measures wide, or about 3 inches of music, in one glance.  Have you noticed that when there are too many verses, some are moved from between the music staffs to the bottom of the page?  If the line gets too wide, it takes two glances to read it.

Your resume must be set up for maximum impact to get you an interview.  It should be created in high impact sections.  Each section should be the same size and shape as two measures of music in a hymnbook:  1 to 1 2 inches high by 2-3 inches wide.

Most people look at a page in rectangular sections.  Go to some high volume internet sites.  They are arranged in small rectangular sections with high impact.  Pull down menus in computer programs are also sized about the same.  The reason is because you can read all that information at a glance.  

Your resume has to sing to get you an interview.  A reader=s eyes will naturally pause in three or four places on your resume.  That is where the most compelling evidence of your attitude and productivity must be displayed.  Bullet points break up an unreadable paragraph into high impact, one glance sections.  Key words in bold become the center of focus. 

Look at your resume.  Does it read like a hymnbook in one glance rectangular sections? Or does it look like a monotonous term paper with huge paragraphs strung completely across a page.  Time to get it into readable rectangular impact areas.  

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My free resume planner is available at www.agicc.com/resplangeneral.pdf .

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Skipped parts – hiding in plain sight

Posted on May 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you hide in plain sight, no one will see you.

My son once hid from our family right by the front door.  Right in the open.  We have coat hooks there.  He hid inside a coat hanging on a hook.  His shoes and a foot of his pants were fully exposed.  Our whole family looked for 15 minutes before someone found him. He hid in a spot no one ever looks at.

Your resume has spots that no one ever looks at: the objective, the summary, and big block paragraphs. 

The objective and summary on everybody’s resume says the same thing.  So I read the first 5 words just to be sure, then skip them.

You say, “Hard worker, team player, and I want to grow.”  So what?  The day I read a resume that says,  “I’m lazy, can’t work with others and want to stagnate,” I’ll show the whole office.  I don’t have time to wade through a bunch of descriptions of things everyone does. 

If I’m going to read your objective or summary it has to be short. One line is best. It has to start telling me about you in the first 5 words.  What is unique about you must come out.  Don’t talk about things I expect in every employee.

Ugly, huge, wordy paragraphs are more than I can handle.  Take the 6 most important points of your paragraph and turn each essential point into one line bullets.  I’ll get those 6 points.  If you bury the 6 most important things about you in a half page paragraph, I will never read them.  If YOU don’t know what the 6 most important things are, YOU have been lazy. 

10 seconds is all that most resumes get before they are trashed.  If they make it past the 10 second screening, they get a 45 second review.  A final few will be fully read.  Don’t hide the most important information.  Make it stand out.  Make sure I read it.

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Try to get your Objective and Summary sections down to less than one line.  If you have a paragraph over 3 lines in length, consider cutting it out or turning it into bullets. 

Remember: Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview.  It is not a complete job history or a confessional.  Its only purpose is to get you an interview.

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Sexy verbs make a resume attractive

Posted on April 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

The world is extremely interesting to a joyful soul.  (Stoddard)

Boring means not read.  Not read means no job. A sexy resume gets attention.

What does the person who gets your resume want to see? 

Don’t tell him what you are “Responsible for.”  That means you are overhead.  No initiative.  You didn’t cause anything to happen.  You just slowed things down and kept the people who do things from making mistakes.

“Supervised” means you didn’t accomplish anything.  You were useless.  If you had trained all those people well, you could have made the company some money.  If you say, “Cut support costs by 27% by realigning my team,” that’s a lot better than, “Supervised 10 people.”

Companies hate people who are overhead.  Overhead doesn’t make them more money. 

Go to www.agicc.com/actionwords.htm or www.agicc.com/actionwords.doc .  Replace the verbs in your resume with some of these.  Change the sentences to talk about how many more sales were made because of you, how much more money the company made, and how much money you saved the company.  Karen Woodworth’s list of “Action Words” can spruce up your resume.

Your resume may become irresistibly sexy.  That’s how you get a job.

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Something To Do Today

Get that sexy resume worksheet at www.agicc.com/actionwords.htm or www.agicc.com/actionwords.doc Run your resume through it.  Make your resume attractive

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Q&A – Where do I put the cover letter?

Posted on April 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Question:  When sending a resume to a company’s website, should a cover letter be part of the resume document or should I write the letter as the email and just attach the resume alone?

Answer: Great question.  That depends on what you want the cover letter to do.
 
If you want it to highlight things not in, or obscured in your resume, it goes as the first page of the resume.  It MUST be in the same document as the resume. (I suggest you also redo your resume to highlight important points.)
 
If you think it has to be read to get someone to even open your resume, it goes as the email that your resume is attached to.  NEVER put it as a second attachment to your resume.  If you do, it will be ignored. 

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Resume butchering – live resume makeover

Posted on March 16, 2010 | Leave a comment

Tonight at 6 PM EDT I will be butchering some resumes during a live resume makeover. 

I will be sharing some secret techniques I use when I am training and coaching people.  You’ll absolutely learn a new thing or two.

If you want to be considered for one of the guest butchering spots, send a resume in .doc or .rtf format.  This will be broadcast and replayed, so if you want anonymity, blind your resume before you send it.

The webinar doesn’t cost anything.  So signup at:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/237308210 

It will take somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour depending on the resumes I have to makeover.

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Classes today and next Tuesday

Posted on March 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

Next Tuesday I will be doing resume makeovers for a few people live.  It will be a brutal but very instructive process.  If you want to be one of the resume remake recipients, send me a copy of your resume.  We’ll talk if you are going to have it done for you.

On the second Tuesday of each month I give classes on sales and management.  Today they are:

1.  Pride Based Leadership
2.  Engineers Really Can Sell
3.  Mastering Group Change

These are the full keynote classes that clients fly me in to teach.  If you want me to put a recording of today’s session up, let me know.

You can click on the class name above for more details.

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Light waves marching in step

Posted on February 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

Laser light has three basic attributes, coherence, focus and intensity.

Light waves first marched in step half a century ago.  The laser was born.  A 10 watt laser will burn you from a mile away.  A 100 watt light bulb will only burn you if you touch it. 

Light waves marching in step is called coherence.  When light comes out of the laser it is one pure color.  Each bit of light created inside a laser merges into more and more powerful light waves.  The waves of light get stronger, more intense.  A simple lense focuses the light into a narrow beam of light. 

Coherence, marching in step, and being only one color are keys to lasers.  In a resume and in an interview coherence is also a critical key.  Hiring managers always look for attitude and experience.  Let me give you an example of lack of coherence in each.

Attitude:  I love my job.  I give it everything I’ve got.  I will do whatever is required to get the job done.  Can I leave early on Wednesday and Friday?  You can just pay me for a 34 hour week.  Okay? (He’ll do what it takes? Why not work a full week?)

Experience:  I’m a pure manager.  I lead.  My people get the job done under my direction and I don’t have to do the work.  I installed the server software over a weekend myself.  I also designed and programmed the billing software.  I supervise 2 part-time people. (Pure manager? He’s a worker with a title.) 

If something you say cancels out another thing you said, you lack coherence. If you apply for three different jobs, you should have 3 resumes.  Each should tell one story.  You need to drop information from your resume that is not important to the job you seek.

In an interview make sure you stay on track.  Talk about exactly what suits you for this job.  If the interviewer asks you a question that doesn’t apply, give an extremely brief answer.  Then ask her, “Will that be part of my responsibilities in this job?”  It is always a good idea to find out why a strange question is asked.

Hiring managers notice when your resume and your interviews all march in step.  It makes them feel safe.  Pay attention to what you say and how you say it.  Be coherent.

Tuesday I am giving a free webinar  on how to fix your resume. I’ll be talking more about this.

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Something To Do Today

Do you give the same message on the job, in an interview and on your resume?  It may be time to change.  Do you need 3 different resumes?

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Posted in Resumes

Your resume reeks worse than an outhouse

Posted on February 18, 2010 | Leave a comment

If you send out 100 resumes and get no callbacks, your resume reeks worse than an outhouse.

Tuesday I am giving a free webinar  on how to fix your resume.

The next day I’ll put up a link to the replay.

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Am I showing up?

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

If they can’t see you, you aren’t there.  If they can’t take their eyes off you, there’s no competition.

 What is the difference between these scenarios? 

  1. You send out 100 resumes in an hour and get no response. 
  2. You spend two days deciding who to send resumes to, send out 3 resumes, and get no response. 
  3. You go fishing.

From a job search perspective, there isn’t much difference.  If you are getting absolutely no response from your job search efforts, change something.  Experiment.  What can it really hurt if you completely change what you are doing 10% of the time?  Can the response get any worse? 

Get creative.  Here are some things others have tried:

Make a trial resume each week.  Do severe changes or just rearrange the bullets.  Send your normal resume out to most jobs.  Send your trial resume to 5 or 10 companies.  Do you get a response? 

Call up 10 friends and ask them to critique your resume.  Send them a copy and find out what they think.  You don’t have to make the changes they suggest.  In addition to getting some good and bad help, you’ll be networking.  They’ll know exactly what you can do and be looking for an opportunity to help you.

Call half the companies you want to send a resume to, before you send it.  Ask for the person who would be your supervisor.  If you get HR (Human Resources) that’s okay.  Whoever you get, ask them what skills they are having the hardest time finding.  If you have the skills, make them the first line in your resume, in bold print.

Once a week walk down the street in a business park and ask for the owner of each business.  Whether you talk to the owner or the receptionist, tell them you are looking for a job.  Take a resume and a sincere desire to help.  It can’t hurt.  Ask everyone you meet who they know that can use you.

Add a recommendation letter to your resume.  Get your last boss or a coworker to write a letter telling how hard you work and how much you help.  Make it the first page of your resume.  It’s bragging when you say it, it’s proof when someone else says it.

Think. Earl Nightingale suggests spending an hour each day with a pencil and a pad of paper just thinking and listing ideas of how to reach your goal. Exercise your brain. You’ll throw most of the ideas away, but you’ll also come up with some gems.  Think.  What can you change that will make you stand out?  What can you do that will draw positive attention to yourself?  Is there any REAL risk?  Probably not.  So try it a few times.  See what the response is. 

Learn.  Do better each week.

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Something To Do Today

Decide what you will do different.  What will you change?  Try your experiment out 5 or 10 times and see what happens.

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Posted in Finding jobs, Perseverance, Resumes

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Resumes and elephant guns

Posted on January 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the world.  (Archimedes)

 In the old Tarzan movies a “great white hunter” is walking through the African plains followed by a couple of trusty gun bearers.  Suddenly, out of the trees, an elephant charges.  He reaches back and his huge elephant gun is placed in his hands.  He takes aim and waits.  When the elephant is a mere 30 yards away he fires.  The elephant falls to the ground at his feet.

What would happen if the hunter reached back and a bow and arrow were placed in his hands?   Well, there wouldn’t be enough left of the hunter to have a funeral.

For every job there are a few key experiences that will get you an interview.  They are the elephant guns or levers in your job hunt.  If you have those experiences, you will get an interview.

Before you submit your resume for any job you have to ask yourself, “What is the elephant gun for this job?  Is there one?”  You may have to read the job description two or three times before you know.  If you are still confused, call up the company and find out.  Ask for the person in charge of that job.  Whether you get HR (Human Resources) or the hiring manager, ask what the most difficult to find skills for that job are.

We submitted one resume for a job using an elephant gun.  The candidate did not have the college degree necessary.  He was not a CPA and had never been an auditor.   Still, the company phoned back immediately.  They were excited that we had found a candidate with the one skill they absolutely had to have.  He had several years of experience collecting the data to fill out a particular set of government forms.

We knew what the elephant gun for the job was.  The candidate got the interview.

Are you using a bow and arrow resume when you could be using an elephant gun?  You need a lever and a place to stand to move the world.

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Something To Do Today

Find an ad that is picky, an ad that asks for 10 different skills and a lot of experience.  Find out what the elephant gun is for that ad.  Call the company and ask what the most important skill sets are and which are not essential. Find out where the lever can be placed.

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Posted in Accomplishments, Resumes

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