Who Knows Best – You or Your Resume Writer?
As a professional who has written thousands of resumes and dealt with thousands of clients, I’ve found the best results are obtained when a customer allows the professional to do what he or she does best.
I’ve heard of clients who’ve hired resume writers only to get the completed document and have it critiqued by their spouse, parents, English teachers from their high school or college days, friends, you-name-it. Each of these individuals has an opinion as to what’s wrong with the resume…what they’d like to see.
The problem with that thinking is that these individuals aren’t resume writers or hiring managers. They mean well, but their advice will only serve to confuse or to weaken your document.
For example: An English teacher may tell you that your resume is grammatically incorrect because it has nothing but fragments in it – not complete sentences. Technically, that’s true. However, a resume is a marketing document (with you as the product). Marketing copy is meant to hold and capture your attention in the shortest period possible. Maxwell House Coffee’s “Good to the Last Drop” – should read “It tastes good (or it is good) to the last drop.” That’s a complete sentence. It says the same thing but it takes longer to get the point across. And what about “Got milk?” from America’s milk producers? Yes, it’s a fragment, but it speaks volumes.
A resume needs to do the same. You have, at most, two pages to capture and hold the hiring authority’s attention. If you use complete sentences, your document will sound stilted – worse, it may sound as if English is your second language. We simply don’t convey ideas in a stuffy way. Resumes, as with most marketing documents, are conversational and fluid, like language.
Another aspect of resume writing that well-meaning amateurs don’t understand is organization of data. A resume is not a novel, nor is it a biography that relates everything you’ve ever done. It needs to be focused, targeted, succinct and to provide only the most relevant information as it relates to your current job search. Going back more than fifteen years isn’t advised, yet I see it all the time with the candidate explaining that their spouse, mother, father, BFF, thought it was a good idea.
If you do hire a professional resume writer or coach, let them do their job. They’ve helped hundreds, perhaps thousands of individuals reach their employment goals. They can’t do that if you don’t trust their efforts or if you seek advice from well-meaning amateurs.
The Functional Resume – Good or Bad Choice?
I’ve had many clients who’ve asked whether using a functional resume is a good or a bad choice.
Before I answer that question, it may help to know what a functional resume is:
1. It focuses more on a candidate’s skill, knowledge, abilities than where the individual achieved or learned them.
2. The Professional Experience or Work History section only lists the employer’s name, city, state and dates of employment. There are no bullets or duties listed.
3. It contains exactly the same information as a reverse-chronological resume (the most popular format) but the organization of data is different (see #1 and 2 above).
So, should you use it?
Rarely.
As a hiring manager, I see functional resumes on a daily basis and they don’t give me the immediate information I seek. Someone may state in the skills section that they’ve sold a billion widgets and increased profits by 15%, but they don’t say where this happened or when. Was it at their current position or the one they held way back when? There’s no way for me to know and I don’t have the time to figure it out.
Neither do most hiring managers, which is why the functional format is very unpopular with employers.
Most HR people know that individuals who have employment gaps, are job hoppers, haven’t worked in awhile and are transitioning careers are going to use the functional format to try to hide these deficiencies. Rather than that happening, the functional format makes them glaringly apparent.
So what do you do if you have a spotty employment history and can’t use a reverse chronological resume to prove your worth?
Try opting for a combination resume – it’s part functional, part reverse chronological. You’ll list your most stellar/relevant skills in a functional section beneath the opening summary, followed by the professional experience section in a reverse-chronological format. It’s really the best of both worlds.
Also, if you’re in career transition, rather than using a functional format, you could still stick with the reverse chronological presentation but break up your professional experience into two sections. The first (and most important) would be labeled Relevant Experience (you’ll list those jobs that are the most germane to the current position you seek). Following that would be another section entitled Other Experience (here you’d put all other experience you’ve had).
Either of these formats is far superior to the functional format that makes a hiring manager or recruiter work to find data. In this economy, you don’t want to do that.
Don’t Wait Until the Last Minute to Update Your Resume
We’re all procrastinators. We have so much to do on a daily basis that we often push off those duties/problems which can be addressed later.
Don’t let that happen with your resume.
Let’s say you’ve been looking for a job for six months to a year and you’ve finally landed one. You’re breathing a sigh of relief. You can relax. Or can you? Remember when the layoff happened at your last place of employment? Or when the company went belly up in the awful economy? At that time were you scrambling to update your years-old or decades-old resume? Want to go through that panic again?
Or how about this – you’ve been at your present company for many years. It’s not going anywhere, and you hope you’re not going anywhere either. But can you really be certain of that? What if it’s sold off or absorbed by another company? What if the owners decide to retire and shutter the enterprise? Again, do you want to be caught with a dated resume that is in no shape to be submitted to new employers?
Whether you feel comfortable in your present position or you just won a new job, it’s always wise to keep your resume updated on an ongoing basis.
Use it as your diary in your current work. Did you accomplish something that saved your company money or made it money? Record that on your resume.
Were you promoted? Or did you assume additional duties from a co-worker who was either retiring or let go? Again, add that to your resume.
By keeping tabs of what you’re doing, your resume will be filled with data vital to a hiring manager. And when the time comes for you to be looking for new employment (and we all face that from time to time) all you’ll have to do is polish your resume and start handing it out.
Don’t Shortchange Yourself with a One Page Resume
Over the years, there has been a lot of advice centered on the perfect length for a resume. Some experts have claimed that one page is the best. Keep it brief and to the point, they say. Others advise that two, three or even four pages is acceptable, depending upon the circumstances.
As a resume writing expert and a hiring manager, I don’t believe there is one perfect resume length for all candidates. I like to take the common sense approach in this. And that is, a resume is as long as it needs to be PROVIDED the data it contains is germane to the current job search and nothing extraneous is included.
That means that your resume may be two pages, while your colleague’s may be one. It all depends upon your background.
In addition to page length being debated, how far a candidate should go back is also argued about from time to time. In my view, anyone in IT shouldn’t go back farther than 10 years. The industry is changing so quickly, the technology is outdated quickly. Therefore, listing what you used 20 years ago isn’t going to impress anyone as that technology isn’t popular any longer. For those outside the technology fields, it’s best not to go back farther than 15 years. To do so might invite age discrimination. What’s more, a hiring manager is most interested in what you’ve done recently, not way back when.
The only time you would go back to the beginning would be if you’re reentering an industry you left in the early years. For example: You began in finance, then moved on to information technology, and now you’re returning to finance. The early experience must be on the resume. It’s all that you have in terms of expertise in the field.
Whenever you’re at a crossroads as to how long your resume should be or what it should contain, just use common sense. Is the data you’re providing:
1. Proving you’re the best candidate for the position?
2. Showcasing skills, knowledge, abilities that meet the job requirements?
3. Painting a positive picture of your candidacy?
If the answer isn’t ‘yes’ to each of the above, then the data has no business being in your resume. Once you’ve included only that information which belongs there, that’s the length of your resume.
It’s as simple as that.
