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Guidelines to
Resume Preparation
Mac Walker, Career Mission Consulting March '02
Nobody ever found work on the basis of a resume alone, but very few have
ever gotten it without one. The resume is a means of positioning your value as a
“personal service business entity” to potential employers, other potential
users of your service and networking contacts. It is a sales promotion piece, a
leave-behind, which supports your verbal presentation and reflects your
creativity and writing skills. It can be selectively used as a way to introduce
yourself as well as a complement to your face-to-face meetings/discussions. For
it to be effective, you must develop it with care and get constructive input
from others. Change it until you really like it and then only if you get
really helpful suggestions.
What
is a Resume?
A resume is a series of carefully selected facts,
deliberately arranged to create impressions and conclusions about you based on
these five objectives:
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to help you organize and present interesting
information about yourself.
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to demonstrate your seriousness and
professionalism in approaching the marketplace.
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to help introduce you as “an individual
business entity” to work opportunities for the purpose of getting an
interview and to serve as a subsequent memory jogger or calling card.
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to provide viable documentation for
third-party resources such as search firms.
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to act as a prompter script for your various
types of meetings and discussions, particularly networking.
When
Do You Use It?
As a general rule, keep your resume in your pocket
as
long as you can. The reason is that it is used to
screen you out much more often than to screen you in.
Here are some situations where it can be used:
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As an attachment to a cover letter sent to
search firms to get in their database. |
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As support to a cover letter sent in answer to
an ad for a position opening. |
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As part of the follow up to a networking
meeting, it can be sent with the "thank you" letter , if you think
it will help that relationship. |
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As an application for entry into an electronic
career search/ job openings data
base on the Internet. (This needs special preparation so it will
attract attention with key and buzz word emphasis.) |
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When asked for it by someone with a specific
need to see it.
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Some
Guidelines for Creating It
As you organize your career /life history, focus
on the value that you bring to given work situations; your strengths - what you
do well- and your interests-what you love to do. Then tailor this information
into a resume that is appropriate to your career goals and search strategy. Here
are some guidelines to help you do this:
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Consider your resume a "showcase"
for your accomplishments. (See resume model). An accomplishment is:
"Something specific that you did; solved a difficult problem,
created/met an interesting challenge, created something new, which benefited
your organization, you liked doing it and you did it well." Start
them with an action verb and tell what you did and what the result was. For
example: "Integrated overseas operations with North America, reducing
combined costs by $16 million annually." "Wrote selling copy that
beat out competition in a four-way test." "Negotiated 30%
reduction in professional service fees." |
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Prepare the document yourself. It is a really
potent career management training tool for the blood, sweat and tears you
put into helps you know yourself better. |
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Present yourself positively and accurately and
in no more than two pages. |
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Just hit the high spots, do not tell all.
Joggle the reader's curiosity to know more about you. |
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Use an active, upbeat writing style. Start
sentences with an action verb and to be more interesting be clear, concise
using very specific information i.e. names of projects, companies,
promotions etc. And make sure any professional /technical jargon can
be understood by the reader and is relevant to the work you seek. |
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Account for all time starting as a college
undergraduate up to the present. Do not include much detail for jobs 10+
years old other than where you worked, job title and brief description of
responsibilities. |
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Do not include salary requirements,
references, height and weight or any data that might be subject to
discrimination, e.g. age, race religion etc. However, do not fudge the age
issue by not including the dates you graduated from college. |
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Seriously consider including appropriate and
significant personal and volunteer activities, interests and
accomplishments. This completes the picture of you and can provide valuable
relationship building information to people that you meet. |
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Use the so-called Chronological Resume (your
career listed in reverse chronology) format for most work searches today. If
you are trying to get into an entirely different field or industry or have
worked for a lot of different organizations, consider the Functional format
which uses your accomplishments to demonstrate your three or four key
strengths. Often, however, this “transfer of skills” can be handled
in a cover letter. |
For examples of Functional Resumes and
Chronological Resumes please see the following pages:
By: Mac Walker, Principal Strategist,
Career Mission Consulting
Phone & Fax (203) 857-4625
macmiss2000@yahoo.com
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