experience

January 3, 2016

Defining Some Resume Terms

Often in these blogs I speak about achievement, hard skills, soft skills, knowledge, and experience. Here briefly are definitions of those terms with examples:

Achievements describe what you accomplished by applying your skills, education, and experiences—for example, “Saved $250,000 annually by renegotiating vendor contracts.”
Hard skills are those you accumulate through education and experience, such as the ability to code software, speak Italian, build a house, or audit finances. The best way to demonstrate hard skills is to incorporate them in an achievement. They can also be listed briefly at the top or bottom of the resume (language fluency or financial skills are often handled this way), depending on their importance to the job.
Soft skills include leadership, teamwork, and the ability to handle difficult situations (for example, difficult customers)—anything that reflects on who you are as a person. These are best shown as part of achievements: “Led team of technical writers and designers in developing user manuals.” If you simply state that you are a great leader, the hiring manager or recruiter has no incentive to believe you. You must demonstrate through an achievement that you practiced your leadership ability and that your leadership had an effect on the company.
Knowledge includes education, both college degrees and continuing education through workshops, seminars, post-graduate courses, and so on. (High school education is generally not mentioned unless you are applying for your first job as a teenager.) You should mention if you are working toward a degree or if you fulfilled some of the requirements toward a degree.
Experience includes board memberships, volunteer work, participation in professional organizations, publications, and relevant hobbies (for example, membership in a softball team when you are applying to sell sports equipment).

Your resume should highlight achievements, hard and soft skills, education, and experience because they are unique to you and make you stand out from the competition. Whether you call it “branding” or a “unique value proposition” or any other name, what employers want to know is why they should hire you and not the other guy.

Having trouble identifying and writing about the achievements, skills, knowledge, and experiences that make you a valuable employee? Contact Robin’s Resumes® for the help you need.

November 16, 2014

Resume Lies

They creep in everywhere, the little exaggerations or omissions: those little resume lies. Some resume writers even encourage them in the name of “helping” a job applicant look good. But in my viewpoint, the consequences of lying are never worth the risk; they are too severe, both personally and professionally, and too likely to be exposed, even during the job interview. Those little lies include:

Inflating a job title. Your job title is so easy for someone to check that it makes no sense to inflate it. If your job title does not reflect what you really accomplished in your job, follow it by a sentence like “held managerial responsibility” or “fulfilled functions of CFO.” Then list the accomplishments that prove that statement.
Juggling dates to hide a gap. Nowadays, almost everyone has a gap in their job history. If you are experiencing a gap, fill it with volunteer activities, freelance work or other activities. Do not try to hide it afterwards by altering your dates of employment; this little lie will never hold up to a reference check.
Disguising the true nature of your experience. A stay-at-home parent is not a relationship manager. A babysitter is not in the customer service industry. Any interviewer will find out the truth with a few sharp questions.
Hiding the extent of your experience. While it is easy to write a resume that overcomes the “overqualified” hurdle, few people can hide the achievements and successes of a lifetime in a personal interview. The way you present yourself, the answers you give to questions, the very questions you ask of the interviewer, all serve to expose your true accomplishments.

Drawing on my own years of experience as a professional resume writer with high standards of integrity and service to clients, I write resumes that get clients interviews based on the truth, not little lies that lead to contradictions, embarrassment and even loss of a potential job. Contact me today for a resume you will be proud to submit.

January 12, 2014

The Ten Big Do Not’s of Resumes

This week’s blog is a list of resume Do Not’s. Next week we will list the big resume Do’s.

Do not use the words “I” or “me” or “my”—they can be used in the cover letter, not in the resume.
Do not lead with a goal in your resume (“to find a job that will engage my talents…”)— lead with a summary of your accomplishments and skills.
Do not write your life story. You can summarize jobs that are more than 15 years old (“Earlier experience includes:”) and drop those that have no relevance at all (“delivered newspapers to local residents”).
Do not give excuses for leaving a job (but if the company was bought out and you were retained for a while, you might want to mention that—it shows your value to the purchasing company).
Do not worry about keeping to 1 page. As long as the information is relevant and tightly written, your resume can be 2 pages or more.
Do not write your resume for “any job.” You aren’t qualified or interested in every job in the world and your job search becomes totally unwieldy if you search for anything and everything. Focus.
Do not say “references on request.” It’s a waste of space.
Do not give information about health, family, hobbies (unless they are relevant to the job), religion or politics (again, unless you’re apply for a job in a church or for a political organization).
Do not proofread online; proofread on paper. Make sure you look especially for punctuation errors, inconsistencies, missing or duplicate words, and misspellings. Ask someone else to proofread if you can.
And most important: Do not seek resume advice from every family member and friend. They will contradict themselves, and you will never finish. At some point, your resume has to leave your house whether everyone approves or not.

So where do you find advice you can trust? At Robin’s Resumes® we have more than 12 years of experience, industry certifications, a BSChE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and national recognition (including speaking and teaching engagements). Contact us today.

October 14, 2012

The Most Important Information on Your Resume

A LinkedIn participant asked the group to identify what information was most important on a resume. All of the professional resume writers and hiring managers who responded agreed that contact information topped the list: name, phone number and email address.

The next most important items were to show how your experience matches the job requirements and how your accomplishments make you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

To that all-important list, I would add three more items:

Proofread carefully. If you make a change, check the entire resume again. Your change may contradict a statement earlier or later in the resume. It may force a line over to the next page or make formatting disappear.
Create the resume in two formats. You need a format that is ATS friendly for online submissions and a more styled format for networking.
Remove irrelevant information. Remember, your resume is not your life story.

If you need help deciding what’s important for your resume, contact Robin’s Resumes® today.

September 4, 2011

How Much Information Do Employers Need?

Your resume is all about your skills and achievements. But it is not your life story. While writing your resume, you should always think about your future employer. What is that employer looking for? What value can you bring to the company?

As a member of the top four professional organizations in resume writing and career marketing, I understand how to excite businesses about your qualifications, skills and achievements. I know what to highlight, what to add and, above all, what to omit.

You may have years of experience in a variety of fields from coal mining to commercial real estate. You may be a recent graduate with a passion for fly fishing or knitting. But the company you are applying to is interested only in the achievements and passions that will help the company succeed.

My task is to focus your resume on the details that are most important to the company you are applying to. Do not let your life story get in the way of your job hunt. Email or call me today.

January 2, 2011

Focus Your Resume

After 20 or more years in the job market, you’ve picked up a lot of skills. One recent contact told me that she had worked in sales, management, website development, marketing, bookkeeping and purchasing at various companies over 30 years. How, she wondered, would she ever fit all that experience into one resume?

She was asking the wrong question. She should be asking, “What job do I want?”

If you have a multitude of skills and experiences, narrow them down to the ones that excite you most, that you’ve achieved the most in, that you can see yourself performing for the next 10, 15 or 20 years—and that employers and recruiters are looking for. Your resume should focus on those areas of expertise.

You may decide that you have two passions and need two resumes. For example, one resume might focus on your sales and management experience; the other might focus on marketing experience, including website development.

But a single resume that qualifies you for every position in every department in every company only serves to convince future employers that you’re a Jack of all trades and master of none. And nobody hires Jack.

October 31, 2010

Advice from Your Next Boss

What do companies look for when they read a resume? Recently I asked that question on an online business site. Replies came from 18 hiring and department managers working in colleges, electronics companies, banks, sales, engineering and human resources among others.

Overwhelmingly (11 out of 18), they first checked the resume to make sure the skills and experience met their needs as outlined in the job description. No one wants to hire a brain surgeon without a medical degree or a chef who’s never worked in a kitchen. Often, the responders defined “experience” as number of years in the field.

Does this mean you can submit a laundry list of skills and job titles and get hired? No.

After that first glance, most of the people responding looked for accomplishments or achievements. Your resume has to explain what you did with your skills. How did the company benefit?

Did you develop a new report, increase sales, interact well with your peers and managers, lead a team, volunteer in the community, meet deadlines, streamline a process, help make a project successful, complete a class, give a presentation, serve on a committee, receive praise from customers or earn a promotion? The way you used your skills to benefit your old company tells your new company what to expect. They know whether you’ll be a valuable addition to their team.

You may find it hard to boast about—or even recognize—your own accomplishments. If you need help, call or email Robin’s Resumes®. Together, we can make sure the marketplace knows just how valuable you are.

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