Resume Help Blog

Archive for the ‘Five Star Resume Writers’ Category

Everyone knows that resumes serve as the quantification of who you are, what you’ve accomplished, and what expertise you can bring to your next employer. So, in this competitive job-seeking environment, a professionally written resume is a necessity to help you stand out from other applicants—but it’s not the only tool that should showcase your talents and experience. Today’s business people also need actively managed profiles on the social media sites that recruiters and others are using to find and learn more about potential hires.

LinkedIn is the most popular of these sites from a professional standpoint. While many people think of it as a Web-based contact management system, it’s so much more. In fact, it’s really a 24/7 personal branding machine. Here are a few ways you can use LinkedIn to help sell yourself to a hiring manager:

• Position yourself accurately. The first step to fully leveraging LinkedIn is to think about your “positioning.” Since most people will not remember a lot about you, you want to give them one or two nuggets of information to associate with your personal brand. Let’s say you’re a salesperson who specializes in selling widgets to emerging biotech companies. Your profile should be constructed around reinforcing that role so anyone reading it knows that’s your area of expertise.
• Use keywords. You’ll want to populate your profile with keywords that someone looking for a person with your experience would use when they search LinkedIn for job candidates. This helps LinkedIn serve your profile to them as an option.
• Join groups. Once your profile is configured, you’ll want to proactively cultivate your image as an expert by joining LinkedIn Groups where people with similar interests congregate. Resist the temptation to jump into the conversations you find posted there. Rather, sit back and observe for a week or so, getting a feel for the ways people communicate, and then start participating in discussions. Eventually you will want to begin new discussions for others to join too.

Few things are as disheartening to a professional as being fired, but there are ways to update your resume to make it an effective marketing tool.

1. Use the resume format to downplay the loss of a job.
   Instead of using a reverse chronological format that accentuates employment dates, use a functional format that showcases what you know rather than where you attained that expertise. For example, an accountant would highlight skills in reconciling accounts, generating tax returns, implementing internal controls, etc. The fact that these skills were attained at XYZ Company is minimized because employer names are not mentioned until the very end of the resume.
2. Use dates of employment to your advantage.
   If you were fired from a job of short duration that fell within the same year as your last position, it can be completely excluded. For example:
   • You worked at ABC Company from March to September of 2010.
   • Before that, you worked at DEF Company from July of 2002 to February of 2010.

Simply list the second company (DEF) with the years of employment (2002-2010). This will show an unbroken employment record.

1. Never explain on a resume that you were fired.
   As much as hiring managers want to be fair and open-minded, they are only human and will likely, at first glance, wish to dismiss any candidate who has been fired. Therefore, listing your firing or any explanation of it on your resume is not in your best interest. Since your cover letter and resume will be the first place a hiring manager will evaluate your fit for the job, do the best you can using the above suggestions for resume development to offset the impact of your firing. If you are a candidate who then reaches the interview process, you will have a better opportunity to explain the full situation in as positive a light as possible, if the firing comes up during the interview.
2. Don’t confuse being laid off or let go due to downsizing as being fired.
   Your company being bought out by another firm and you being let go is not the same as being fired. If your position has been eliminated (for whatever reason), you weren’t technically fired. Hiring managers tend to look at “being fired” as a negative that was caused by the employee (e.g., he or she stole company funds, was always late to work, didn’t fulfill daily duties, etc.) It’s important to note the distinction and to list jobs from which you were laid off on your resume when economic conditions, beyond your control, were a factor.
3. Move forward by showcasing your positive attributes.
   If the industry you’re working in is a small one and everyone knows about your job loss, then it’s essential to showcase the positive (what you achieved at the job or what you learned), and to minimize the negative (confrontations with management or co-workers). During your job search is not the time to prove that you were treated unfairly at the last company; rather, it’s the time to prove to a potential new company that you can excel because of your unique set of skills and qualifications.

With so many individuals competing for jobs, the only thing that will differentiate you from the rest of the equally qualified crowd is what you achieved while on the job. But be warned—an accomplishment must be quantified in order to hold any weight with the hiring manager or recruiter.

Too many times an individual writes: “Reorganized an entire department per management instructions.” That’s not an accomplishment, that is a daily duty. An accomplishment would read: “Generated savings in excess of $25,000 annually by reorganizing the marketing department and employing temp workers rather than full-time staff.” This speaks to what a hiring manager and/or recruiter wants to see: how you can make them money and how you can save them money.

To further strengthen your resume, make certain to put at least one, preferably two, quantified and relevant accomplishments in the Qualifications Summary. This is especially true if you use the word “proven” to describe yourself. For example, you write: “Accounting professional with comprehensive experience and proven results in negotiations with the IRS.”

Proven by whom? You? That’s not enough proof for a hiring manager or recruiter. They want more. It’s better to write: “Accounting professional with comprehensive experience and proven results in negotiations with the IRS as evidenced by the $0.5 million in savings, resulting from the 2009 audit.”

The above clearly states that you saved your company a half-million dollars through your expertise. That speaks volumes to hiring managers and puts you well above the others competing for the same position.