No BS Resume Advice

Before it closed last year in anticipation of a move to its new home, I took my son to The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York for lunch. One of the owners, Alex, is an old friend and my son and I hadn’t been back to New York for a few years since moving to North Carolina. Everything came together beautifully.

We sat at the bar with Alex and ordered lunch. The appetizer arrived for each of us. My son looked at it.

“It’s beautiful!”

We ate it, an entrée and dessert and each time he exclaimed how wonderful each item looked and tasted.

Each dish was beautifully prepared, plated and presented with a discerning eye to how a guest would receive it.

When an employer asks for a menu to order a new hire, s/he is not looking for a Quarter Pounder or Big Mac. They want something aesthetically beautiful that delights just like my son was delighted by each dish.

They want something special.

Is every job description you read the same? No.

Is every job you submit your resume to the same? Of course, they aren’t. 

If all these job descriptions are different, why do you submit the same resume as though you are flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant? 

Every day, people send the same generic resume out as though each position was identical and each employer was attempting to hire identical skills and attributes. Too often, the results they receive are like the broken watch that is right twice a day—hit or miss success.

They list their name, phone numbers and email address, list an objective, education, and chronology of experience with dates of employment. The resume includes some successes or accomplishments. This is their resume.

In the days prior to computers when changing a resume required you to re-type different versions, this made sense. Today, when computers allow you to customize, spell and grammar check documents so easily, you are missing out on opportunities and costing yourself money by being lazy and not tailoring your resume for each opportunity you are interested in. You are not serving a beautiful meal. You are preparing a Quarter Pounder!

Here are several steps that you can do to improve your resume and get better results.

 1.    Each employer will be interested in different attributes of your experience. They often indicate it by the items they describe in their job ad or the recruiter described to you. Emphasize the experiences that you have that relate to the skills being sought and the functions you will perform in the job they will ask you to perform. If you are applying for a staff position, emphasize your staff experience and minimize your management experience. If you are being hired to be a leader, write about your recent leadership.

2.    Employers are more interested in recent work, rather than work you did many years ago. Use more space in your resume to highlight recent experience, rather than things you did before Barack Obama became President.

3.    Like setting a goal where you make them specific, measurable, achievable within a specific period of time, describe your successes or achievements concretely. Reducing costs is a nice start but it is more powerful to describe something as reducing operational costs globally by 2%. Increased departmental sales by 27% resulting in . . . You get the idea. Use action verbs wherever possible

4.    Ask someone you trust to critique what you’ve written. Too often, people believe that they can do everything by themselves without asking for help. Ask a friend in your industry to critique what you’ve written to insure you’re on target and aren’t missing the mark.