The 6 P's of Writing A Great Résumé

I am constantly approached for advice on how to construct a “Winning Résumé” by unemployed job seekers, people who are currently employed and looking to advance their career, and by established and aspiring résumé writers; and without knowing them personally I am hesitant to offer specific advice.

However, upon reflection for this week’s post, I’ve come up with some ubiquitous rules I feel apply to professional résumé writers and individuals writing their own résumés at all levels and stages in their career.

So here are my “6-P’s of Writing A Great Resume.”

PASSION: Passion, both externally and internally, is a must to achieve a great résumé. Before beginning the writing process the writer (you or the professional you hire) must be passionate about the project. It can’t be looked upon as just another writing assignment, there must be an inner drive that the finished product is going to be the best résumé possible and that the writer will put everything he or she has into it and not stop until perfection is achieved. On the other hand, the writing within the résumé must convey the candidate’s passion for their job and their passion to be the best at what they do. Of course this is easier said than done, but there are ways to convey passion and leave a positive impression in a résumé.

PREPARED: After writing a few dozen résumés most professionals learn how to prepare for the task at hand, whereas most people who write their own résumé are often at a disadvantage in this regard. To me being prepared to write a résumé is a multi-layered process. Before the first keystroke the writer must know the following information: The profile of the ideal hire, exactly what the candidate has to offer, and what style and format is the best one to use to get the readers’ attention and make a professional impression on them. Only after you have this information in hand are you prepared to start writing.

PATIENCE: This is a most important factor in résumé writing. As mentioned above, don’t rush into the writing process until you are fully prepared to begin; be thorough and meticulous in your preparation. You also need to have some patience in testing the résumé to see if it is getting the desired results. Don’t go rushing off and making wholesale edits and changes if you’re not getting the response you anticipate right off the bat. Before blaming the résumé I suggest you first evaluate how you are using the résumé to see if major changes are appropriate in your job search approach before committing time and effort to make wholesale changes to the résumé document itself.

POSITIONING: For me this is the crux of a great résumé and it is the aspect of résumé writing I personally spend quite a bit of time on. Every resume is as special and unique as its owner, and so is each job. A key factor in getting your résumé to the top of the pile and for the reader to give it more than a perfunctory 10-15 second scan is knowing what information is vital, crucial and useful and positioning this information accordingly in the résumé itself.
POIGNANT: This is the hardest aspects of résumé writing. All too many résumés today (professionally or self written) are a collection of ‘been there – done that’ chock full of bland attempts at including bullet points that end with ‘resulting in blah blah blah…’  Although a résumé is not an exercise in creative writing, it is definitely not an exercise in technical writing. In my opinion the goal of a résumé writer is to be creative in the use of words and appearance, to poignantly tell a story that will influence the reader to judge you through your eyes rather than their own, and in so doing lead them to see what they desire to see while prompting them to reach out to you with a request for an interview.

PRECISION: This aspect of résumé writing applies to both the information contained in the résumé and to its presentation. The information you offer must be as precise as possible, especially when it comes to noting achievements and staying on point for the particular job/s you are applying for. If you oversell yourself it is likely to come back and bite you in the butt on a job interview and if you offer too broad a picture you open yourself up to coming across as overqualified. Precision is also of great importance in choosing the adjectives and achievements used in a résumé and determining if you have offered the reader too much or too little information to determine how well you meet their need and stack up against the competition.

As always I am happy to critique U.S. resumes and LinkedIn pages at no cost. Email me at perry@perrynewman.com

Common threads in business development and job search

As a professional résumé writer and job search advisor there was a recent discussion in LinkedIn’s Account Manager Group that caught my eye and a response that prompted me to write this post.

“Need to convince a prospective client, but no way to get into him!” This was a discussion started by an Account Manager at a bank in Cameroon looking for strategic business development advice.

What I loved was this response posted by a Business Development Manager in the UK.

What do you need to convince the client to do - To buy something?

Why can’t you get to him – He refuses to talk or you can’t get past the gatekeeper?

When you hit a brick wall, ask yourself: How much do you know about his business? What is it that he does? How he does it? What is it that he wishes to achieve? Why would he change something? Why would he buy from you?

Find the answer to some of these questions, and you will find a way to get him to talk.  If you can’t get past the gatekeeper, find a way to build rapport with the gatekeeper first, or find a reason to be at his office in person.

I thought his response was categorically great advice for the banker and also perceive it as equally applicable for people engaged in a job search.

Throughout my career I keep telling people how important it is to think like a salesperson in all aspects of conducting a job search. So when I read this Q&A I saw the correlation articulated by someone from the sales side in a way you can appreciate and understand.

Cristian Andronache’s advice is something you need to seriously consider when writing a résumé and preparing for a job interview.  In both activities you are trying to make a sale and get beyond the initial gatekeeper. Just as he advised the banker, to be successful in a job search it helps to know as much as possible about perspective employers, their business, culture and the modus operandi of their operations. You need to research what is it they are looking for in this hire and why would they consider hiring you over someone else.

Extrapolating on what Cristian wrote, if you can answer these questions you will be prepared to write a targeted résumé that will get past the gatekeeper and get your foot in the door. Then, once inside the interview room you will know what to say to the interviewer that will get you a job offer?

As always I am happy to critique U.S. resumes and LinkedIn pages at no cost. Email me at perry@perrynewman.com

Sometimes What Makes You Special Might Turn Off Recruiters

As have other resume writers I know, I’ve become quite talented at creating marketing documents that take into account what clients have to offer and what makes them stand out from others vying for the same position, and presenting this information to match the desired ‘hire’ profile as closely as possible.

 

Moreover, the better resume writers have learned how to develop resumes that establish a unique personal brand that gets the documents noticed, even if it is in the middle of a stack of 100’s of other resumes, by being visually appealing and presenting success stories that validate a clients’ true worth and explain why they can do the job (depending on who the are of course) as well if not much better than others.

 

Among the most successful presentations I have created are Bio-Rez formats that have gotten excellent results when submitted directly to a company or someone the client wants to network with. As a matter of fact these resumes improved clients’ prior submit to response rate by up to 80%, thus getting them back to work in a shorter amount of time.

 

However this week I got yet another call from a client who told me about her recent traumatic experiences with a few so-called recruiters in well-known, mega-large placement agencies she visited to help her find a new job. From their tone and demeanour, I would not call the people she spoke with recruiters; they are more akin to 20^th century employment agency personnel who spew negativity and have no interest in the positive traits a candidate can offer unless they are employed and a perfect match for a specific job opening. Worse yet, they try and impress on people that the way to get a job today is through conformity and uniformity in a resume rather than establishing a personal brand; their take on resumes is they are a “One-Size-Fits-All document.

 

Each person she encountered offered her the same message. They told her how few jobs there were in her field because companies moved these jobs out of state (this is NYC we are talking about); they told her how fierce the competition for these few jobs is; and finally, puffing their chests out, they told her how choosy they are in referring resumes to a client.

After all this they looked at her bio-rez formatted resume and told her they would never send a resume like this to a client. If she wanted their help she would need to rewrite it and rather than have it be eye catching and easy to read, with lots of useful information that established her personal brand, they told her it would have to conform to what they called a “tried and true” traditional chronological format their clients preferred containing a generic opening summary statement and a laundry list of jobs and responsibilities in a template that mimicked every other candidate resume in their database.

 

Almost in tears, she told me she could not understand this and when I revised her resume to conform to their wishes she could not fathom why they would prefer such a bland presentation over the original one that stood out and had so much more important information.

 

I told her the answer is simple; their goal and hers are not the same. Her goal is to get a job and theirs is to earn a fee. But they are only paid a fee on a contingency basis, so if the company interviewed 1 or 10 of their candidates and none were made an offer they come up empty. Also her goal was to better if not totally eliminate her competition whereas their goal is to create competition and control it. This is how most permanent placement companies working in the $30k to $120+k range work and why at all times, no matter what is said, their allegiance is to themselves, their company and their client; never to you, their candidate.

 

The bottom line is if your resume stands out to them it will also stand out to their client and this causes a dilemma for them because the more candidates they refer who are interviewed the better the odds are of their earning a fee. If one resume they submit stands out above the rest the tendency of the client is to choose that person and reject the others sent by that agent. This opens the door for their competitors to get their candidates in the door, thus lowering the odds of their making a placement. So naturally it is in the placement agency’s best interest to submit resumes that lack a personal brand so they can better control the outcome depending on their relationship with the client.

 

This is why if you choose to register and send your resume to a number of permanent placement agencies you may need to have another version of your resume prepared in a ubiquitous generic format to suit their needs.

 

My question is this: Is it in your best interest that your resume conforms to the status quo and unanimity? I think not. Let me know your thoughts.

 

As always I am available to review your resume at no cost if you email it to perry@perrynewman.com and as a pre-Easter and Passover gift I am offering readers a 20% discount on bio-rez documents during the entire month of March.