Tag Archives: resume

Trying the trick at the end of this post may get you a job

Posted on February 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  (Mark Twain)

12 words is the most that people will read on a billboard.

(That was 12 words.)

1 ½ or 2 inches of print
is what most people read
at a glance.

12 to 15 seconds is all the time a resume normally gets in a screener’s hands before it is trashed or put in the “review” pile.

3 critical words can make or break your resume.

How to get your point across in a resume

Worry about the first 3 words people read in every paragraph and bullet point.  Those are the critical words that have to drag the resume reviewer into the rest of the line.  Think of the hiring manager.  What action, accomplishment or benefit can he see in the first 3 words?

Can’t do it?  Get a thesaurus, or use the one in your word processor.  Find the main word in that paragraph, find a high impact word to replace it with, and put that word in the first 3 words of the paragraph.  In most cases it is better to break any paragraph over 3 lines long into bullet points.  Long paragraphs are intimidating.  Reviewers don’t want to read them.  Make sure you worry about the first 3 words in every bullet point.

3 words can make or break your job search.  Work on them.

Here is the real trick to having a great resume

Take an electronic copy of your resume and delete everything except for the first 3 words of each paragraph or bullet point.  Leave the spacing and formatting the same.  There will be a lot of white space and blank lines.  Print it out. Put it face down on your desk.

Come back tomorrow and look at the skeleton you created.  What is its impact?  Fix it.

 

Leave a comment

Posted in Accomplishments, Focus, Resumes

Tagged , ,

Set your resume apart with the right facts

Posted on February 2, 2012 | Leave a comment

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.  (Mark Twain)

Facts would be nice

Stephen King, author of more than 30 best selling horror books, wrote a book on writing.  He says, “Get rid of adjectives.”  This top author refuse to write, “She stealthily crept down the spooky staircase which creaked ominously.” Instead of using adjectives, he just tells what his character does, “She crept down the  stairs.”  He says the toughest thing hehas to do in his writing is to remove all the adjectives. Just give the facts.

I’m still waiting to see a resume that states:  “I hate to work hard.  I disrupt every team. I am a pig.  I never take initiative.  I lie constantly.  I never hit my deadlines.”

The resumes I actually get have 2 to 4 paragraphs covering half a page that state: “I work hard.  I am a team player. I am neat.  I take initiative.  I am honest. I do assignments on time.”  Those paragraphs never give me any facts, so I don’t read them.

What I really want to know is: What is different because you were there?

Set yourself apart from the other 40 people applying for a job. Use every inch of your resume to state things you have actually done.

State facts like:

         I carried a beeper and was on-call for 3 years.

         I worked late for two months to help a different team finish the Simpson Project.

         I received an award for having the neatest desk.

         I kept our biggest customer from losing $500,000 by shipping their widgets overnight, without being authorized to, because my boss was on vacation.

         I estimated my last project at 715 hours and completed it in 690 hours at $4,000 under budget.

Would you rather hire someone who says, “I work hard” or someone who says, “I carried a beeper and was on-call for 3 years”?

If you write your resume like Stephen King writes his novels, you’ll get more interviews. Give the facts about what you’ve done.  Let the hiring manager use a red pen to add comments to your resume like: hard worker, takes initiative and hits deadlines.

Something To Do Today

Grab your resume and a ruler.  How many inches of text describe you without giving facts?  Many resumes have more hot air than facts.  Literally.

As fast as you can, cut your resume down to nothing but facts.  Add facts in bullet points.  Don’t worry about the relevance of the facts.  Act quickly.  See if you can create a long “facts only” resume in less than half an hour.

Now take a break until tomorrow.  Then fix that resume so that it can be used.

Leave a comment

Posted in Accomplishments, Resumes

Tagged ,

Why your resume disappears when you submit it

Posted on January 25, 2012 | Leave a comment

Great article on why resumes disappear when you submit them to large companies. It also gives you some hope for getting through all the filters. Here’s the link.

Leave a comment

Posted in Job Boards, Resumes

Tagged , ,

10 things that ruin your resume

Posted on August 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

I have seen all of these ways to sabotage your chances of getting a job.

Leave a comment

Posted in Resumes

Tagged , , ,

15 words you should replace on your resume

Posted on May 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

You really should prove that these words describe you, rather than just proclaim them.

Click on this link for the full article

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged

Getting past the resume trash can

Posted on November 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.  (Pythagoras)

When is your resume being thrown away? Yesterday I gave the 4 major trashing points in your resume’s life.

You have two ways to break through the cycle:

  1. Have someone give your resume directly to the boss with their recommendation.
  2. Have a resume that passes all 4 trash points.

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.

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.

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 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.

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?

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?

Leave a comment

Posted in Accomplishments, Networking, Resumes

Tagged , , , , ,

When is your resume thrown away?

Posted on November 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.  (Gardner)

Hiroshima, WWII:  “I sure wish I could find rice for my family. Hey, what is that lone airplane doing above the city? Oh well, I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

Sometimes timing is everything and you are worrying about the wrong problems.  For your resume there is a timing pattern you must understand.  You have to break through the following pattern to get hired:

  1. Your resume arrives along with 100 others.  The secretary trashes 80 after a 10 second review apiece.
  2. The secretary trashes 10 more after giving them 45 seconds apiece.
  3. Her boss gets the 10 remaining resumes and trashes 2 after a 10 second review.
  4. The boss throws away 3 more viable resumes.  He just doesn=t have the time to deal with more than 5.  For the 3 trashed, something is not quite right.
  5. He calls the 5 remaining candidates, starting with the best one.

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Resumes

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Hiding real problems

Posted on November 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

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)

Does this make my butt look big?  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 the 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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Accomplishments, Focus, Resumes

Tagged , , , , , ,

Resume blasting – job boards

Posted on August 20, 2010 | Leave a comment

Water from a hose can make plants grow or blast them out of the ground. Planning and aim make the difference.

Should you put your resume out on one internet job board?  On 50?  It really could get you a job.  But there’s a down side too.  Consider:

Your boss calls you into his office and closes the door.  “Two days ago you posted your resume on an internet job board.  Why are you quitting?”  Are you looking forward to that conversation?

Want even more fun?  You may not have posted your resume on the internet for 6 months.  A job board you never visited may have bought your resume and posted it without permission.  That way they can attract employers.  I know one guy who got called in by his boss 2 years after he first posted his resume.  The funny thing was that 2 years ago that posting got him his current job and the boss who was cross examining him.

One way to avoid this problem is to post a confidential resume.  It isn’t foolproof, but it will keep you from being recognized by all but those who know your background in detail.  The problem is that you will get fewer responses to your posting.

Recruiters and resume blasting are a two sided coin.  Putting your resume on a website may get you calls from a lot of recruiters.  However, some recruiters refuse to work with candidates who have posted their resumes.  The ones who refuse to work with you because you posted your resume online are far fewer in number, but tend to have the more exclusive job openings.

Posting your resume online can absolutely energize your job search.  It can also be a long term problem.  It is easier to post your resume than to get it off the internet.

If you decide to post to as many places as possible you may want to consider a service like ResumeRabbit. It can submit you to up to 85 sites instantly.

————————-

Something To Do Today

Go to ResumeRabbit and look at the places they will post your resume.  Whether you use the service or not, you may want to look for job postings at some of those sites.

Leave a comment

Posted in Job Boards, Resumes, Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

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.

————————-

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.

Leave a comment

Posted in Finding jobs, Perseverance, Resumes

Tagged , , , ,