Rewriting a resume so that it gets results, instead of getting deleted, is an art. Here is a 15 minute video of taking a resume for someone changing fields, with ancient experience, and a good attitude, and making the resume into an attention grabber with no visual negatives.
It ends a little abruptly, but all the changes are made and you just missed my final 15 seconds bragging about how good it looks.
Posted in Resumes
Tagged changing fields, changing jobs, get noticed, rewrite resume
Do you need a job now? Then use the best job search plan ever created.
Come on! How could it possibly be the best EVER created? Because it was created for only one person. You.
I have seen it happen over and over.
One guy is out of work for less than a month, and he gets a job offer with a raise.
Find a job in 5 weeks – that is freedom
It takes 6 months to get a job for the guy who sat next to him. This poor guy was doing exactly the same job, got better performance ratings, and would get rehired first if the job was re-opened. To make things worse, the guy who took six months accepts a huge pay cut.
It isn’t fair, but it happens every day.
It isn’t luck. The guy who finds a job quickly did things differently. He may have instinctively done the few most critical steps within the first days of losing his job. He may also have mapped out a strategy and executed it. Either way, he got the critical steps executed. He got the job.
The critical steps most often screwed up by the guys who take 6 months to find a job.
For 22 years I’ve been watching people get jobs in days, or wait a year to find a job. The steps most often screwed up are:
Give me a call or research these topics on my blog.
If you want to have the shortest job search possible. Fill out the survey at this link and then contact me. bryan@dilts.us or call Bryan Dilts at 717-975-9001.
No, I don’t guarantee that you will get a job offer in 5 weeks. But I will put 22 years of experience behind your job search.
Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Finding jobs, Followup, Interviews, Job Boards, Networking, Recruiters, Resumes, Time management
Tagged getting a job offer, interview, job search, job search plan, recruiter, resume
Experts are hired quickly. They rarely look for a job very long. An expert knows all the answers – if you ask the right questions. You can become an expert, just like Jim Fixx.
The guy who invented running died
Runners were either late to an interview or just weird before Jim Fixx.
Jim Fixx passed away in 1984. Some obituaries said, “The man who invented running died.” Before his book, The Complete Book of Running, jogging and running were not sports. They were just weird. Jim Fixx didn’t revolutionize running, he just brought it acceptance. In 1977 his book was the best selling non-fiction hardcover book ever. He is a legend in the running world.
Every month I run across at least one or two people whose names are synonymous with excellence in their field. Hailed as legends and gurus, they aren’t necessarily the brightest people, but they are smart. What they have done is study extensively, had a few successful projects and published a few articles or a book. If the field is broader, they get involved writing the certification tests in their discipline. They all command a 30% to 100% earnings premium compared to people who are merely better than they are.
Hiring managers feel embarrassed to admit they don’t know who these people are. It is obvious from their resumes that they are the “go to” guys in their narrow field. I have to emphasize, these guys are smart, but not geniuses. They have figured out how to be impressive. They have psyched out managers, consultants and experts. They have become the gurus in their field.
Can you become the legend or guru in your field? How about in your company? In your team? Your name can become synonymous with a particular subject. You may have to teach a few classes, write an article or a training course. What can you do to become a legend?
Something To Do Today
Who are the gurus in your field? Ask them how they built their reputation. Scared to call them because they wrote a book? Truth to tell, authors are human too. They will succumb to the rapt attention of an informed audience. Call them, email them or write to them.
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Tomorrow: I make the milk
Guerilla gardening
Great ideas are…
Forgetting
Posted in Accomplishments, References, Resumes, Selling
Testing your resume
Your resume has to be good enough in a blind test to get past the trash can.
Getting past the trash can
When is your resume being thrown away? In my last post I gave the 4 major trashing points in your resume’s life.
You have two ways to break through the cycle:
Networking will get your resume directly to the boss with a recommendation. Outstanding networking will get you an interview without a resume.
For the rest:
Do you pass the idiot test and the expert test? Assume an idiot and an expert will each try to find a reason to throw away your resume. Assume they have too many resumes and want to throw away as many as possible. They are proactive trashers.
Pass the idiot test
The secretary has to see an obvious, undeniable fit with the job description. She won’t understand all the acronyms, but she knows they have to be there. She knows how much experience is required. She knows it has to be a manager or a worker. She trashes resumes that don’t shout that they fit the job.
Pass the expert test
The boss has a lot to do. He wants a great person to work for him, but doesn’t have enough time to talk to everyone. Like the secretary he throws out the obvious problems. The difference is that he understands the resume. He also throws out the resumes that just don’t feel right. Time is critical to him. The first person he calls has the accomplishments he needs in his company.
How you can test both ways
Run a test. Take your resume and the job ad you are responding to. Hand both to someone who doesn’t know the field. Do they think you pass? Do the same with an expert. Do you pass?
Hoping is not a plan
Stop wishing and hoping. Either network your way in or find your own screeners. You need other people to help you get your resume out of the trash can.
Something To Do Today
Who do you know that is up front and brutally blunt? Take your resume and the job ad you are responding to. Ask them read the job ad thoroughly. Then give them your resume. Ask them to decide in 10 seconds if it looks like the resume passes. Then ask them to take 45 seconds and look closer.
Do you pass the test?
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Later: Slavery and recruiter ownership
Non-competes
Coyote traps – when to gnaw off your arm
Glass ceilings
The hours game
You have to know when your resume is being thrown away to fix its problems. There is a timing pattern you must understand. You have to break through your resume’s stumbling block in the following pattern to get hired:
Can you see why knowing when your resume is thrown out is critical?
Every time you send out a resume and fail to get an interview you should ask, “Who threw away my resume?” Ask the question of yourself. Also ask your recruiter and the HR person at the company. Beg, if you have to.
You need to find out when and why your resume is not being considered. Also be sensitive to the recruiter and HR. They may lie to you. They don’t want to argue. They want to be powerful and all-knowing. Play on that and ask for advice as you try to find out when your resume was trashed.
Next time we’ll talk about how to get past the screenings and into an interview. For now, try to figure out when your resume is being thrown away.
Something To Do Today
Make some calls. Find out where your resume is being trashed.
Ask some friends, they may be able to give you some ideas too.
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Later: Getting your resume past the trash can
Non-competes
Coyote traps – when to gnaw off your arm
Glass ceilings
The hours game
If you’re afraid to let someone else see your weakness, take heart: Nobody’s perfect. Besides, your attempts to hide your flaws don’t work as well as you think they do. (Morgenstern)
Hiding real problems
The trick to hiding things on your resume is the same one that stars use to hide flaws. For instance, what if you had to be perfectly honest and still answer the question:
“Does this make my butt look big?”
A good honest answer would be, “No. Your butt looks big anyway. Let me find something that makes people look at your smile. It is ravishing. They will never care about what you are sitting on.”
More than one starlet has played an irresistible vixen on TV while 8 months pregnant. How? They focused on everything above and below the swollen pregnant belly, and the actress stayed out of the tabloids until fully recovered. No one ever saw the belly.
If you have problems, even severe problems, you have to make sure the camera focuses somewhere else.
Common problems people want to hide are frequent job changes, being fired, bad references, a several year sabbatical from your field, not accomplishing much, working for a disreputable employer, an ogre boss, etc.
One way to hide problems is to point out what you did well. If you switched jobs too much, create a resume format that draws the reader’s eyes away from your employment dates and to your accomplishments. If you have bad references, you may want to emphasize how long you worked for a company so that those bad references will sound like sour grapes. If you left your desired field for a few years and want to get back, make those few years a one line entry, not a detailed account. You may want to put your jobs in order at the top of your resume, but put the dates at the bottom of the resume in another section on the third page.
If your problem might get your hiring manager in trouble later, make sure he knows about it before you receive an offer. If you are using a recruiter, tell him up front before he submits you anywhere. If you hurt someone who is trying to help you, your bad reputation will be spread very quickly.
Accentuate the positive. Make people’s eyes slide past the negative to get to the ravishing. It’s a game you see every day on TV.
Something To Do Today
Do you have a real problem? Emphasize the positive and make the negative insignificant. Don’t lie. Just put your emphasis on all the good things you have done.
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Next: When is your resume being thrown away?
Later:
Getting past the trash can
Non-competes
Coyote traps – when to gnaw off your arm
Glass ceilings
The hours game
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. (Hoffer)
Hiding what is NOT on your resume may be the hardest part of writing one. Someone is going to get that job. Most successful candidates lack some of the requirements. Some lack major components and still get hired. Let’s look at one of the world’s greatest experts.
Many people say Saddam Hussein was the foremost expert in hiding what is not there. Rather than argue the facts, let’s exploit his methods. It works when you are trying to get a job or promotion to do something you have never done before.
Saddam showed great enthusiasm for the weapons he was not supposed to have. He built expertise in their design, construction and use. He got hold of parts of the technologies required to build the weapons and made sure the world knew it. Tests were done openly with related weapons and delivery systems. His experts visited seminars, arms factories and suppliers of illegal goods. There were even articles published by “insiders” who “blew the cover” of the program. Last of all, he refused to prove he didn’t have the expertise.
Here is how to apply Saddam’s tricks towards getting a job or promotion you have no experience for:
In order to get the first shot at your future, you have to prepare. Eventually your enthusiasm and persistence will get you an opportunity.
Posted in Accomplishments, Attitude, Resumes
Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What’s a sundial in the shade? (Franklin)
Walking on the flat, open plains, an Apache claims he can disappear from sight. There is no place to hide, so the Army officer backs off to a safe distance and turns his back for a minute. Sure enough the Apache is gone, but there is no place to hide. After the officer searches fruitlessly for awhile, the Apache erupts from the ground.
In the book Life Among The Apaches, John Cremony gives example after example of Apaches hiding where it should be impossible to be out of sight.
Do YOU hide inside your resume?
Another example: Be honest. Do you read every insert in every medicine package you buy? Every word? Why not? You may open it up and take a few seconds to look for something obviously important, then you throw it away. Critical information is on those inserts, but you don‘t read them.
Is your resume as bad as that insert?
You’ve got 2 or 3 sheets of paper for your resume. How much do you hide in plain sight? Are the most important facts about you hidden in long paragraphs? Are they hidden at the END of bullet points?
In school you were required to write in paragraphs. Opening sentence, 3 arguments saving the best for last, and a closing sentence. Guess what? It does NOT work for resumes. No one reads paragraphs in a resume. No one gets to your best argument.
Use bullet points that are effective.
A resume’s job is to get you an interview. Nothing more. It is not a job interview. It is not a medicine package insert. It is not an essay.
Does your resume get read? Does it get you an interview? If not, change it.
Here is the QUICK FIX
This is an exercise that will help you fix your resume and get job interviews.
After you have done this, look over the two resumes.
Which is most likely to be read?
Now that you have hacked with an axe, go in with an editors pen and make your resume more readable. But don’t make it longer or you’ll be like that Apache again, hiding in plain sight.
One more idea? Go to www.grab-me.us and check it out.
Living in a ghetto, slum or trailer park does not make you trash. Mother Theresa lived in a slum. Her resume was good enough to get a Nobel Peace Prize.
I get some REALLY bad resumes. They say:
I can’t do this job. I have no skills or training. The reason I have the nerve to apply for it is because I really will work hard. I know I was fired from my last job. It wasn’t my fault. The job really was terrible. The job before that was terrible too. I’m not a freak.
We get at least one of these resumes or cover letters every week. Yes, this bad. Okay, only close to this bad. The resume is trash. It is literally worse than nothing.
Being laid off or fired tends to get workers, salespeople and executives to focus on the negatives from their previous job. They feel they have to explain things in their resumes. That is a mistake. Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview. It is not a confessional. It is not investigative journalism.
Here are 4 signs your resume will be thrown away in record time:
Are you sure you don’t do any of these? Usually these errors are hidden in a cover letter or large paragraph.
Something To Do Today
Seriously look at every line of your resume and cover letter. Every single line. Do you make excuses? Do you subtly or openly put down your previous boss or job? Were you smiling as you wrote it because of the subtle needle in a paragraph? Is a skill you list so basic it shows your lack of higher skills? Do you put yourself in a group of losers accidentally?
Many recruiting offices have a button that rings a bell. You can only push the button when you make a placement. Some recruiters live only to press that button. When they do press it, they keep their finger down for a full minute. It drives everyone else nuts with envy. Recruiters are competitive people.
Placing someone in a job motivates recruiters. Sure recruiters want money. That’s not their base motivation. Their whole job is centered on making placements.
Want to motivate a recruiter? Convince them they can place you quickly.
Some things that help:
If you bring me all of the things above, I’ll start salivating. I’ll drop everything I am doing and find you a job. So will any other recruiter worth his salt. With that list, you should find a recruiter who will market you. Get his commitment to report back how his marketing is going. If he won’t commit, he is the wrong recruiter.
The way to motivate a recruiter is to be a great candidate. If you have a motivated recruiter, soon you’ll have a new job.
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game. (Trump)
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Something To Do Today
Go back over that list. Can you figure out how to line up more of those things for your next job hunt? Ask a recruiter for his honest opinion, AHow marketable am I and what can I do to make myself irresistible to employers? You can, get a commitment from your recruiter of how much he’ll do and when he will call you back to report on his results.
Posted in Accomplishments, Finding jobs, Recruiters, Resumes, talent
