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The other day, a woman called with a resume question. She had been working in her field for a number of years, since losing her job two years ago, has been employed as an administrative assistant outside her field. She wondered how to write her resume so that her two years of temping wouldn’t make her look like an undesirable candidate.

The obvious danger here is that the first thing an employer will see is the temporary employment, and will throw her resume in the trash. To avoid that, I recommend that she structure the resume very differently than she had in the past to put her best foot forward. Here’s my advice to her and others in a similar situation.

Begin with your career summary or objective and then your qualifications section. After that, create an accomplishment section. Go through your experience, and find the best, most relevant, accomplishments in your field. Write a clear, concise description of four to six of them, making sure that you show the results of your work powerfully.

For example, don’t just say that you were in charge of orchestrating the move of a large office. Rather, show that the move went smoothly and people began work in the new place immediately without a hitch.

Likewise, don’t say that you were responsible for managing a Fortune 500 account, leaving your readers wondering whether they loved you and gave you lots of business or whether you so offended them that they threw you out and gave the account to a competitor. Instead, show how you cultivated the relationship and brought in lots of additional business for your company.

After this, put in your experience section, showing the companies you worked for, a brief description of the company, dates of employment, and a brief description of your duties. In this way, you will draw the most attention to your accomplishments and what you are capable of contributing, rather than the most recent (and unattractive) experience.

She does need to show the dates of employment for the temporary position (in this case, since she was there for two years. If she had only been there for a couple months, she could omit it) and spin that temporary experience to her chosen field, as best she can.

Some people advise that a resume should NEVER be longer than one page. I say, be careful of people who say “never.” Your resume should be an appropriate length for you.

Recent college grads should limit themselves to one page. However, I have worked with outstanding college grads who held responsible jobs, served on committees and organizations, wrote interesting papers, and so on, while in school. They had enough good information to justify going beyond one page.

Those who have been around the block a few times do themselves a disservice by limiting their resumes to just one page. Remember, the goal is to market yourself. Allow enough room to tell about the great things you’ve done that separate you from the other candidates. Again, there are exceptions. I have seen people with 20+ years experience who were able to condense a good career into one page, but it was a skilled and heroic writing job to craft text that tightly.

Don’t go beyond two pages. Even if you have been creating miracles your whole career, there is a limit to how much employers will read. When it comes to marketing, less is often more.

Clients often ask how many years and how many jobs they should include on their resume. I tell people there is no one correct answer to this question. A résumé is a marketing document, and marketing people carefully select information about a product to appeal to a given market. Talking about the delectable taste of juicy beef just doesn’t fly if your audience is vegetarian.

As you try to decide what to put on your resume, put yourself in the shoes of your target market–the boss. What is going to be most important to him/her? Then, select your best and most relevant experience. This is an art, not a science, and the “right” answer about how many jobs to include varies from person to person. Let’s go through a few examples to give you a feel for the thought process.

JIM–drop irrelevant, long ago job
Twenty years ago, Jim worked as a waiter at a fine dining restaurant for four years. He should definitely not include this job if his career since then has been in banking, and he wants a vice president job. On the other hand, if he is in the hospitality industry, this job may be a plus, showing a solid progression and diversity of experience in the industry.

Sam–Make job outside his field relevant
Sam, who also spent four years waiting tables at a fine dining restaurant, is now 27 years old, and looking for his second position in sales. He should keep the waiting experience on his resume, being sure to emphasize his salesmanship in getting customers to buy more expensive meals, wines, and deserts.

Janet–Concentrate on most recent experience
Janet has spent her entire thirty-year career in the insurance industry. Usually, I would advise someone in her position to omit her early, lower level positions, and concentrate on the high-level achievements of the last ten, fifteen, maybe twenty years. This will also give her a little protection from age discrimination. However, the right number of years to include will depend on her and which years will create the best impression. Perhaps she had high-level achievements early in her career and should include all thirty years. If she is trying to return to a former employer, a position with that company may be a plus—even if it was many years ago. On the other hand, if her long-ago experience was with a company whose name is no longer reputable, she might omit that position.

Donna–Omit short-term survival job
Donna has a distinguished career in public relations, but since being laid off, has spent the last five months working at a survival job with much less responsibility. She definitely should leave that job off her resume. There’s no shame in doing what it takes to make money, but this job doesn’t go on Donna’s resume because it is short-term and lower-level. Even if Donna stayed for a full year, it would probably be a good idea to keep it off the resume.

Judy–Sorry, but you have to include mid-career jobs
Judy started her career with two great jobs in marketing, then left the field for three years. She has since been happily employed in marketing for the last five years. She should keep her first jobs in marketing on her resume. The three years outside marketing may be deemphasized, but not omitted, as they fall in the middle of her career.

Summary

1) Be relevant to the employer’s needs
2) Emphasize your best experience and accomplishments
3) Spin each job toward the employers’ needs
4) Follow the rules of resumes
For example, you can select a time frame from the present backwards—perhaps the last fifteen years. BUT, you generally can’t leave out your most recent jobs or those in the middle of the time frame.
5) Generally speaking, don’t feel obligated to include very short-term jobs, especially if they don’t contribute to the image you’d like the employer to get.

Most important rule
6) Rules are made to be broken. A competent resume professional can help you with the tough problems.

Need Help?
Want help with your resume? Give me a call: 847-673-0339.

Think your resume stinks? Here’s the acid test: does it tell stories that will make the boss want to pick up the phone and call you? If not, your resume needs some serious work. In a tough job market, all your job search tools, including the resume, must be top notch. Often, poor resumes are symptomatic of poorly-run job campaigns.

Many accomplished people have ordinary resumes. The resume fails to market them, but just tells dry histories: companies, titles, dates, and duties. Most importantly, they fail to speak the boss’s language. The boss needs people who can get results! He (or she) needs someone who can solve the tough problems—and help him advance his career.

*Tell stories*
Don’t bore the boss with long descriptions of your duties. Don’t think your titles and high-level responsibilities will be enough to impress the boss. Many people with impressive titles and lots of responsibilities are incompetent. Tell brief, well-crafted stories of how you made a difference, and give quantifiable results. If the results aren’t quantifiable—many people’s work doesn’t easily translate into numbers—you can still express them powerfully. It does takes a little more work.

*Be clear*
Make sure people besides you can understand clearly what you did. Many outstanding accomplishments are overlooked due to a murky, lackluster presentation.

*Be relevant*
Don’t waste the boss’s time describing a job you did 25 years ago that is irrelevant to the needs of today’s markets. Instead, anticipate the needs and issues facing the boss and speak to them. Some people go through their career, just adding their latest job onto old resumes. Their resume starts to resemble a compost pile–one piece of garbage thrown on top of all the others. They never reevaluate themselves and ask important questions like:

Who am I today?
How have I changed since I wrote my last resume?
How have markets changed?
How do I want to portray myself?
What part of my experience is most relevant today?

Some people write great resumes for themselves, but many—perhaps most—ought to get them professionally written. Most of us don’t hesitate to pay professionals, including plumbers, mechanics, attorneys, and accountants because professionals usually do a better job. Your job search is too important to skimp. Not only is a good professional skilled in writing the copy, but, as outsiders, they bring a valuable objectivity. Often, we’re just too close to ourselves to articulate well what we did. A good career professional can ensure you speak about what most matters to the boss—results.

Resumes are too often downright wretched documents that give the boss no reason to be interested.  A properly-crafted resume can spark interest and help you control the interview.  

Managers Are Often Untrained
Companies rarely provide training in conducting interviews.  The boss is told to “hire someone,” then fed a job description, created by someone else, that is often doesn’t resemble the actual job.   Many managers begin interviewing with only a rough idea of what they want.  They shoot ineffective questions from job interviewing books:  
–”Tell me about yourself”
–”What are your greatest strengths/weaknesses?”

The interview is tense, as the boss keeps thinking, “If I hire a toad, I’ll look bad.” 

What Does The Boss Want?
The boss wants to impress his/her boss.  So, when interviewing, your job is to discover what will impress the boss’s boss, then show you’re the one who can help do that.

During the interview, the boss looks at your resume for something interesting to discuss.  Unfortunately, it’s just a description of past duties.  He says, “I see you managed press relations. Tell me about that.”   You explain that you set up press conferences, wrote press releases, etc.  There are no results or stories with happy endings.  You score no points.

Include Stories—And Results!
Give the boss what he wants–results.   Include stories!  Help managers determine what to ask by featuring projects you want to sell.

Tell concise stories describing the challenge you faced and (when appropriate) a description of the available resources: technology, time, budget, people, etc.  Then, describe your solution and the results you produced.  Describe how you expertly handled a public relations crisis after the company released a defective product.  Include numbers showing how you protected product sales.

Be prepared to discuss what you learned from your accomplishments.  Knowing what you know now, how would you do it differently?   By discussing real accomplishments,  you help turn the interview into a conversation, rather than an interrogation. Interviewers feel better about you and about themselves.

Ask about the boss’s needs
Zero in on what the boss needs.  Make him stop, scratch his chin, and think.  Ask questions like:

Six months from now, if you were to give me the best job review possible, what would it say? 
What are your biggest priorities? 
What projects do you need done? 

Ask The “Genius Question”

Then, ask the question that will really make the boss think–and love you for asking:

What would get you (the boss) the best review possible?  How can I help you get there?

By uncovering what will make the boss look good and directing attention to results-oriented stories, you’ll help the boss interview you–and position yourself as the winner.

Steve Frederick
Frederick Career Services
847-673-0339
www.fcscareerservices.com