Get a Life! Volume 4

Have you made these resume mistakes?

Many of you may be on the verge of making a career change, or venturing out for the first time on your own as a free agent. Whenever we prepare for a career shift, a common starting place is to update our resume. But because we don't often approach the task with the right things in mind, we often end up with a document that does absolutely nothing to reflect our real experience or entice prospective employers to want to talk to us.

Have you made these resume mistakes?

Blanket internet job boards or traditional job listings with the exact same resume and cover letter
Obsess about the 1 year break you had without working. Try to cover it by saying something clever like "Conduced research on food and beverage marketing trends for major retailer." Translation: you hung out in Starbucks for 8 months, sipping coffee and praying that someone would sit next to you and exclaim "you look really smart - do you need a job?"
List your variety of jobs in a haphazard way without explaining the reasoning behind the transitions from one job or industry to another in a well-written cover letter

The truth is, there is no way that your resume is going to get you a job. In the scheme of effective job search techniques, it ranks next to "stand on sidewalk with sandwich board." However, a well-written, well-organized resume can be the tie breaker between you and other well-qualified candidates. Most importantly, if you approach the task of writing your resume in the right way, you will see that it is a great opportunity to discover the story behind your rich and interesting series of jobs.

If you cannot tell the story of your career in a compelling way, how in the world do you expect a potential employer to figure it out from your hodgepodge resume?

Case in Point: My Best Friend Desiree's Resume Saga
My best friend Desiree went through a tough job search period in the "dot.gone" bust of 2000. She is an exceptionally talented and charismatic person, with a long history of service in the non-profit sector. She made a career shift and spent a couple of years in corporate America, as a project manager at IBM and Arthur Anderson. At precisely the moment that the economy exploded, she lost her corporate job to layoffs and faced job prospecting.

Her low point came one day about 6 months into her job search. After sending out hundreds of resumes with limited response, she started to look for work that would help keep her family afloat.

"They laughed in my face when I applied for a job to clean trains in Chicago. 'Why in the world would you want to work here?' they said. I felt desperate and devastated."

What was the problem?

Here is what she did right:

She maintained a regular work schedule of job hunting, spending hours a day scanning job sites and submitting resumes
She followed up each interview with a thank you note or phone call
She actively worked on keeping her spirits up and maintaining a positive attitude, even in the throes of disappointing results

Here is what killed her chances at getting a response:
Desiree's resume did not tell any kind of cohesive story which wove together the rich variety and background in her career with non-profits and the corporate world. When I asked her what job she was looking for, she didn't have a clear answer. If she was applying for non-profit jobs, they wondered why she wasn't looking at corporate jobs, and if she applied for corporate jobs, they didn't understand her non-profit experience.

Since I am not a resume expert, I searched the web for someone with an expertise in resume writing and job search techniques. After some intense Google-ing, I found Louise Garver, a consultant from Connecticut with a bang-up website. I hooked her up with Desiree and after their first month of working together, Desiree had 3 job interviews. At the end of 2 months, she had 3 job offers. She took a great position as Global Grants Manager for the Rotary Foundation, where she was wildly successful for a few years. She recently made another career move to Habitat for Humanity, where she is Director of Global Youth Programs.

Did Louise write anything that was factually incorrect in Desiree's resume? No! She simply presented Desiree's skills and experience in a way that made sense to potential employers.

If your resume is an advertisement, what does it say?
Many career experts make a direct correlation between marketing ourselves and marketing a product. (A Brand Called You, Creating You & Co. to name a couple). If you follow this thinking, your resume is an advertisement which you are using to get the attention of a potential customer (the hiring manager or company).

Here is what many of our "resume ads" say:

I have no idea what your problem is, but our product:

Solves crime in your neighborhood!
Relieves pain and itching from hemorrhoids!
Gets out those pesky stains!
Changes your oil in 29 minutes or less or your money back!
Stops waxy build-up!
Leaves you with white teeth and fresh breath!

Here is the problem: we often don't know (or care) what "problem" our customer (hiring manager) is trying to solve. We do nothing to clarify what our wide range of skills and talents actually means to that person, instead listing skills like random features and functions of a product.

What can you do to shape up your resume?

Before you start to update your resume, spend time defining what type of work would really energize you.

Not creating a clear idea of what work you are looking for is like going to Costco hungry and without a list. You will spend time and energy relentlessly searching the aisles, filling your cart with huge family packs of things that are not nourishing and don't really meet your needs. You get home, tired and broke and spend the next year thinking of ways to use a Jumbo 20-pack of ketchup. Searching the internet for jobs that "ignite your passion" without defining what you are looking for first is akin to this Costco shopping experience. So to avoid wasted time and drained energy, create your profile of ideal work before searching the job boards and beginning your networking. Build your resume around this ideal work.

Look for trends and patterns in the work you have done to date.

If you did your homework from Issue 2 of Get a Life: Stop Searching for the Perfect Job and Start Finding Your Life's Work, you will have a good start. Group this experience in categories, or use the trends to craft a well-written cover letter. What kind of story do your work patterns tell? How does your work hang together?

Put yourself in the mind of the potential employer or client.

Like any good piece of writing, your resume should be written with the audience in mind. Think about the job (or types of jobs) that you are applying for. What specific problems or challenges do you think the employer is facing? What kinds of experience will make the difference between doing the job and doing it exceptionally? Make sure that you highlight your personal experience that will contribute to this exceptional performance. You may think it is great that you have multiple degrees from prestigious universities, but if your prospective employer doesn't care about that, don't play it up.

Hire an expert.

Resume writing is one of those areas that relatively few people are really good at, especially when writing about themselves. I feel about this the same way that I feel about doing my own taxes. I could do them myself, but why in the world would I want to when I can pay my savvy accountant Michelle $200 to do them for me?

Resources on Resumes

Louise Garver, who I mentioned earlier, has received rave reviews from two people I admire very much: Desiree Adaway and John Fritz. Her company is called Career Directions LLC and her website is: www.resumeimpact.com. Louise lives in Connecticut, but does most of her consulting by phone, so don't let her location stop you (Desiree and John never met her in person).
If you are an independent consultant and don't use a traditional resume to get new work, the best person I have ever run across is Robert Middleton from Action Plan Marketing. In addition to being a truly nice guy, Robert has a wealth of information and materials, many of them free, on his website www.actionplan.com.
Let me know if you have other good experiences, resources or information to share on resumes. pcs@ganas.com

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Take good care and have a safe and wonderful holiday season.



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All the best,

-Pam

Pamela Stewart
Ganas Consulting
1155 S. Power Road, Suite 114
PMB 110
Mesa, AZ 85206
480-663-3252
pcs@ganas.com

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