Instructor Blog #3: Resumes

I'd like to discuss ways to make you stand out from the crowd when applying for a job. Good application materials can help you score the job you want, or at least give you a fighting chance. The last thing you want to do is send out a mediocre or terrible resume. Without hyperbole, I can say that a resume is one of the most important documents you will ever produce. The irony, of course, is that it will be read in 10-30 seconds, and if you don't make that cut, you get thrown away. 10-30 seconds. That's all the time you have to survive the first cut, so you'd better do it right.

The frustrating thing about resumes is that if you ask 10 people about them, you will get 10 different pieces of advice. Resumes are a gamble. Some people will like one move, others will hate it. Some people want objective statements, some don't. Some want very slim design, others want full design. Remember that resumes are a gamble; make the best bet you can, and hope for the best. Ultimately, that's all you can do.

To begin, a few pieces of advice from the experts. The first is from the Rockport Institute:

"A great resume doesn't just tell them what you have done but makes the same assertion that all good ads do: If you buy this product, you will get these specific, direct benefits. It presents you in the best light. It convinces the employer that you have what it takes to be successful in this new position or career."

The second is from Doug B Richardson, who wrote this article, one of my favorites about resumes:

"Show me a clear-cut sense of direction. I keep seeing resumes that are little more than buckets into which a lot of data has been dumped in the apparent belief that I will fill in the gaps, synthesize diverse information, connect the dots and tell you what kind of product you are. I have no incentive to do this, given the number of knights eager to enter the lists. It isn't my job to make sense out of your life."

From these quotes, I want you to take several things. First, a company does not care about you. Not really. They want people who are going to be great for the company, who will make the company better. So they don't care if you took really interesting classes, or had a cool internship, or got some sweet scholarship. They only care if you show them how these things prove that you will be a great fit as a great employee for the company. Your resume is not about you. It's ultimately about them. It's an ad for you aimed at them, so you want to appeal to what the company wants. Purpose and audience, people; it's the basis of all writing.

Secondly, a resume is an ethos builder. If you demonstrate through a resume that you understand the conventions and expectations of a business world, you look qualified and professional. If you can present yourself well, you can present a company well. If you present yourself poorly, you look unqualified and unprofessional. So remember that the resume is the first representative of yourself that the company sees, so make a great first impression or you won't have the chance for a second.

Thirdly, as Richardson says, a resume is not just a blank sheet that you pour data onto. You need to carefully construct your resume to match the job and the company. This means focusing on the key words in the job ads. Again, say it with me: Focus on the key words in the job ads. Many people do not understand this, and it hurts them. Job ads tell you what the company wants, so you have to show the company that you match their requirements.

Consider this job ad for am IT Delivery Manager for Sears in Lafayette. The ad lists many requirements. For instance, they want the candidate to be able to "Manage the creation of detail design documentation," "Motivate team to achieve results utilizing their potential," and "Ability to work in a fast paced exciting environment."

You do not have to play guessing games about what the company wants - they just told you. Now it's your job to demonstrate that you are this person. So first, think about all your past experiences. Think about times you designed documents, motivated teams, and worked in fast paced environments. It's best if these experiences were relevant to computers, but the time you motivated trainees at Target or worked in the fast paced environment of Hardee's are also relevant, if you frame them in the right way. If you have the luxury of many past job experiences, choose the ones that are most relevant to the experience. If you only have a few job experiences, highlight the tasks that best fit the job description. As you write, use the language used in the job ad. All together: Use the language used in the job ad. The HR people are going to be looking for those qualities in those words. If you don't exhibit that you have those qualities in their language, why would they want to hire you?

So how does this manifest in each section? Let's break the resume down section by section with some specific advice. The textbook gives great and more thorough advice on all these sections, so read it carefully. The following thoughts merely supplement the text.

Objective Statement: The goal of an objective statement is to convey what job you want and how you will serve the company, such as "To acquire a software sales position in an organization seeking an extraordinary record of generating new accounts, exceeding sales targets and enthusiastic customer relations." This is a bit wordier than you might want to be, and is not specific enough for the employer, but you get the point. The objective is using a sentence fragment that starts with "to" or a verb (seeking, etc) that operates as a thesis that focuses the resume. Be careful to specify a specific job, something neither too general nor too specific (resumes are often filed away for 6 months or a year, so you want something that might still meet the needs of the company after that time has passed.) Be careful also to not talk about what you want. I often see resumes that say "To secure an entry level position that will develop my network of contacts in the medical field." This essentially admits that you are using the job as a stepping stone to something better. What company wants that employee? Rather, focus on what the company gets by hiring you, even for an internship.

Education: Because you go to Purdue, your education section is probably your strongest asset right now. Later on, as you get more experience, education will slide further and further down your resume, but for now it will probably feature prominently at the top. At minimum, include your major, your minor, your degree, your anticipated graduation date, and your GPA if it's over 3.5. (If your major GPA is good, you can include that instead.) You can also consider including relevant courses, though do so only if you have taken interesting courses beyond the requirements. You can also include language skills or computer skills in this section. Include language only if you are comfortable speaking it in a technical job environment and include only computer skills that are unusual (don't put Windows, Microsoft Office or Firefox, for example, unless they are specifically mentioned in the job ad).

Experience: Here's the meat and potatoes of your resume. This is the part that will sell yourself to the employer. You want at least three jobs on here, in reverse chronological order (most recent first), with at least two bullet points under each describing your duties, accomplishments, and skills. Choose your most relevant experiences to feature. If you have substantial volunteer experience that is relevant, you can include that if you call your section "Experience" or "Relevant Experience" rather than "Work Experience." Include your job title, the company, and the dates of employment at minimum (you can also include the location of the company.) The position you held is most important, and the dates are the least, so feature the position on the left side of the resume, where the eye scans first, and the dates on the right, where the eye may not reach in a 10 second scan.

As you write your bullets, keep several things in mind. First, use parallel active verbs. That means starting each bullet with a verb of the same tense. If one bullet starts with a verb ending in "ed," they all start that way. If one starts with a present tense verb, they all start that way. And the verbs need to be exciting and action packed. Not "did," "was," participated." "Organized," "Analyzed," "Implemented," "Trained," "Produced," etc. See the CCO's list of power verbs on page 27 of their employment guide for more specifics.

Secondly, be specific in your descriptions. A description like "worked in an office performing various tasks" is extremely vague and almost worthless. A description like "Provided customer service by answering 100 calls daily on 12 line telephone" tells us what you did. That's something we can sink our teeth into. Quantify when you can, especially if the numbers are impressive. "Served customers food" is less impressive than "Served 200 customers food daily and operated cash register totaling $1000 in daily sales." If you used any equipment, machinery, or software in your job, tell us what it was. If you taught or trained anyone to do anything, tell us. If you wrote or designed anything, tell us. If you implemented anything new or had a new idea, tell us. If you performed any special feat, tell us. If you got any special awards or accomplishments, tell us. Use these bullets to prove that you match the company's expectation, so if they want someone with "Strong oral and written communication skills," emphasize something you did on the job that proves this qualification.

Activities, Awards, Honors, Volunteer Work, etc: Resumes often include references to other activities, awards, honors, and volunteer work done by the candidate. This is great in moderation. If you are on the Engineers Guild of Purdue University, tell us. If you play guitar, do yoga, care for sick puppies or built a really cool treehouse, no one looking to hire you cares. Keep this section relevant and short, and at the bottom of the resume.

Design: Your resume had better look great. The HR people should want to marry your resume, or at least take it out to dinner. If it doesn't look good, you could have amazing experience and no one will read it. If information is hard to find, no one will find it. A good resume is easy to scan from top to bottom, makes good use of bullets, bold, and italics to create a hierarchy of information, and uses white space effectively. Use bullets where you most want to guide the eye, so avoid bullet overkill. Also, pay very, very close attention to alignment, which is key for scanability. Remember, good design is invisible, so don't go overboard with gold paper and glitter and sparkles. Just an elegant, simple, clean, easy to read design that uses the page well and is easy on a scanning eye. This is difficult to describe, which is why I am having you examine closely the samples in the CCO guide. Please look at them carefully and note their design features.

Spelling and Grammar: DO NOT MISSPELL ANYTHING ON A RESUME, EVER! If you misspell something, save yourself postage and deposit your resume directly into the garbage. I was once working at a job when an HR person ran across a resume with a misspelling. She called everyone in, we all had a good laugh, and then she threw the resume away. I don't want this to happen to you. To emphasize this, I am not giving anything over a C to any resume with a misspelling. Considering that having your resume thrown away is the equivalent of an F, this is very generous.

Templates: Please don't use a template. I know that Word and other programs have templates for generating a resume, but the problem is that lots of people use these. You don't want your resume to look exactly like 100 other people's, because then you won't stand out. Follow design principles and resume format closely, but find some small way to make yours original and distinctive.

Ethics: I realize it is tempting to lie on your resume. Many people do, and sometimes it works. But despite the temptation, never, ever lie on your resume, whether you're a rapper or a CEO. After the scandals at companies like Enron, businesses and business schools are being extra vigilant about honesty and ethics. Companies often do extensive background checks just to ensure the honesty of their applicants. If you lie on a resume and the company finds out, you'll almost certainly be fired. Furthermore, if you inflate your skills or experience, you might find yourself in big trouble when you can't perform as well as you sold yourself. The question, of course, is what constitutes a lie on a resume. Often, when I help students rephrase things on resumes to make them sound more impressive, they look at me like I'm helping them lie. Absolutely not. You deserve to represent yourself as well as possible, and sometimes that requires using language you're not used to or comfortable with. But this language should only portray the truth in the most positive light, never inflate the truth. I think there are a few tests to determine if you're lying on your resume. One, if you claim to have a skill, are you comfortable performing it on the job? If not, leave it off your resume. Secondly, if someone performed a thorough background check, would they find anything that seems shady or dishonest on your resume? If so, reconcile those differences. Thirdly, would your friends, family, and former employers agree that the resume portrays you accurately? If not, you may be stretching the truth. Be careful when putting together your resumes to be extremely ethical. The temptations are there, but the consequences are high.

Scanable Resumes: Some companies, such as Purdue, scan resumes with computers that sort out resumes with key words from those that don't. So again, this emphasizes the importance of keywords. It is also important that scanable resumes avoid italics, underlining, or strange fonts that throw off the computer.

Good luck on producing your resume. Please let me know if you have any questions.