11 DOs (and 6 DON'Ts) to Maximize the Impact of Your Resume

Writing the perfect resume is a daunting task, and it is important to do everything you can to make yourself stick out (in a good way). Recruiters pore over volumes of resumes and may spend mere seconds looking at each one. As someone who has reviewed hundreds (maybe even thousands) of resumes myself, the following is advice to help your resume stand out.

Overall

DO spend some time thinking about what kind of job you are applying for, who is likely to review your resume, and what they are looking for. Focus yourself on questions like What adds the most value to my personal brand? and What sets me apart from the competition?, especially as it relates to the specific job and/or company to which you are applying.

DO develop your story to have the most positive impact possible. Minimize non-relevant information and focus on demonstrated impact and results.

Formatting

DO organize your resume in order of relevance. If your educational degree(s) will set you apart, put that before work experience (or vice versa, if work experience is most relevant).

DO be consistent with fonts, headings, dates, locations, etc. The more consistency there is, the easier recruiters can find the information they are looking for. Using templates, learning to right justify text (e.g., dates), and maintaining adequate white space help your resume to look professional.

DO be creative and recognize the potential that electronic resumes bring. Most recruiters will be viewing your resume on some form of computer, tablet, or phone screen. Consider embedding links to relevant online pages, like your LinkedIn profile, professional blog, work samples, or the corporate webpage for companies listed in your work experience. This gives resume reviewers an option to seek out additional information, without taking up valuable additional space on your resume. Another possibility is using color to add visual appeal, but be careful that it isn't distracting and that the resume still works if printed in black and white.

DON'T use jargon or abbreviations unless you are 100% sure that reviewers of your resume will understand them. Instead, use more general and readily understandable terminology or spell out potentially ambiguous abbreviations. Similarly, don't use contractions, which are often viewed as informal and unprofessional.

Education

DO focus on what sets you apart from the competition. For example, did you get a 4.0 GPA in college? Then list that under your degree. Did you get a 2.3 GPA in college? Then leave that out. As a general rule, list things like awards, GPA, and extracurriculars only if they help you tell your story and have a positive impact.

Work Experience

DO be concise and simplify as much as possible. Try to limit yourself to 2-5 bullet points per job, and try to keep each bullet point on a single line. This forces you to clearly and distinctly summarize the job, because recruiters do not want to slog through irrelevant details.

DO list bullet points in order of relevance, importance, or impact for each job. Whatever is most likely to make you stand out should be listed first to catch the recruiter's attention.

DO focus on quantifiable results, wherever possible. Instead of just listing your job duties, find way to demonstrate your impact, accomplishments, or learning in objective terms. Instead of saying Conducted sales calls to develop new client relationships, say something like Increased new clients by 30% and revenue by $250,000 through targeted phone campaigns.

DO use active, powerful verbiage to illustrate your duties and accomplishments. For example, Member of team that set company sales record could have much more impact when stated as Actively engaged new clients as part of a team that set company sales record.

DON'T copy and paste the same bullet point into multiple jobs or use the same verb for sequential bullet points or bullet points within the same job. These things demonstrate a lack of attention to detail or a lack of effort in compiling your resume.

DON'T include irrelevant information. Focus on the job duties and accomplishments that are pertinent to the job and company where you are applying. Including all prior work experience, even when it is not relevant, will dilute your resume. As recruiters scan your resume, they are just as likely to focus on irrelevant information as they are on relevant information. So highlight the things the recruiter wants to see by getting rid of the rest.

What to Exclude

DON'T include a Summary/Profile/Objectives statement. This is typically full of subjective information (I'm a hardworking, conscientious people-person...) or information that is redundant. Recruiters already know your objective (to get the job) and should be able to put together their own profile of you based on the clear and concise information in your resume (e.g., work experience, education, etc.).

DON'T list your references (or even include a references are available upon request statement) unless specifically requested by the employer. The employer will assume that you can provide references and will ask for this information if and when it is needed.

DON'T include personal information. There is no need to highlight your love of fishing, watching football, knitting, or cooking - and definitely do not include marital or parental status. Keep your resume focused on job-related information.

Editing

DO have multiple people review your resume and give you feedback. It is hard to catch your own typographical errors, and others can help identify any inconsistencies or make you aware of anything unclear or confusing. It is always a good idea to get multiple honest perspectives about your resume. In the end, it is your resume, and you can choose what to incorporate and what to ignore from these friendly reviews. But it's better for a friend to catch a major error before your resume is in the hands of a company recruiter.

Deconstructing Structured Job Interviews

 (image obtained from flickr.com)

I co-authored a recently-published study using a variety of methods to examine over twenty years of research on structured employment interviews. The full article runs over 40 pages long (not including 10 pages of references), but I'll save you the trouble of reading through the article in its entirety by highlighting some of the major conclusions:

• What is meant by a "structured interview" is inconsistent. There is general agreement that structuring an interview includes asking applicants the same questions and rating them on common rating scales, but there is less consensus on other characteristics that could be included in structured interviews, such as limiting follow-up questions from interviewers, limiting questions from job candidates, or taking notes.
• The most common techniques for structuring interviews are conducting a job analysis as a basis for the interview questions, using the same interview questions for all applicants, using better types of questions (such as situational and past-behavioral questions), using anchored rating scales, rating each question individually (as opposed to only making general ratings at the end of the interview), using multiple interviewers (i.e. panel interviews), and providing interviewer training.
• Smaller rating differences for legally-protected groups. Race, gender, and disability impact interviewers' ratings and decisions less in structured interviews, as compared to unstructured interviews.
• Applicants' ability to influence interviewers' rating is reduced. While impression management by applicants (e.g. self-promotion and ingratiation) is still a common occurrence in structured interviews, the effects of such behaviors impact interviewers' judgment less in structured interviews than they do in unstructured interviews.
• Personality may be more difficult to measure in a structured interview than in an unstructured interview, but little research has directly examined the topic of the validity of personality assessments in structured interviews.
• Situational and past-behavioral questions should be used together to attain maximum utility from the structured interview. Situational questions tend to measure job knowledge, while past-behavioral questions measure job experience, and they both are good predictors of future performance.

The article also presents over 30 research questions and propositions that can be used to guide future research and practice, but I will not summarize the details here. You can read through the article if you are interested in that specific information. But hopefully the bullet points highlighted above provide some interesting and useful information for those who currently use structured interviews in their selection process, those considering the use of structured interviews in the future, and those interested in researching the topic.

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Reference:
Levashina, J., Hartwell, C. J., Morgeson, F. P., and Campion, M. A. (2014). The structured employment interview: Narrative and quantitative review of the recent literature. Personnel Psychology, 67, 241-293. doi: 10.1111/peps.12052.

How a Job Interview Works . . . According to Kids

Questions about Sexual Orientation: The Case of Manti Te'o

"Wait - what did you just ask me?"

(image credit: washingtonpost.com)

By now, we're all probably sick of hearing about Manti Te'o and the catfishing hoax that made national headlines for months. If you haven't been following the drama, Te'o supposedly had a girlfriend who died during the football season from leukemia. However, it was later found out that the girlfriend never existed, and that Te'o had never met this girlfriend, but that the relationship had taken place completely via internet and phone communications. It was revealed that the person behind the hoax, and acting as the non-existent girlfriend, was a male who later confessed his love for Te'o. Most believe that Te'o was a victim, fully duped by the hoax. However, others believe that he may have been in on the hoax, and some are even questioning his sexual orientation as a result.

For the most part, that news is all behind us. But with the NFL combine complete and draft day coming up, NFL teams will have the opportunity to focus on Te'o at the upcoming Pro Day at Notre Dame on March 26. This is the day that interested NFL teams can come to South Bend and watch Te'o perform (you could almost call it a type of  work sample test).

If NFL teams want to interview Te'o before draft day (in what would constitute a kind of selection interview), this article from Yahoo! raises an interesting point about questions regarding sexual orientation. Unlike race, age, gender, and religion, sexual orientation is not protected from discrimination under federal law. Some state laws have regulations that prohibit sexual orientation from influencing employment decisions, while other states do not. Therefore, some NFL franchises may have restrictions regarding the information they can gather regarding sexual orientation, while others may not. The article lists 19 NFL teams that theoretically could ask those questions, while 13 other teams could not.

Of course, whether or not questions regarding Te'o's sexual orientation are legal according to state law may be a moot point. Employment decisions should be based on job-related information - so information such as his slow time on the 40-yard-dash at the NFL combine would probably be more relevant. The only possible way that I can think of sexual orientation being job-related in the NFL is the fact that teams are all male, they travel together, shower and dress together, and room together on road trips. Could a gay football player create an uncomfortable (hostile?) work environment for the rest of the team? I'd say this logic is tenuous at best, and reasonable accommodation could certainly be examined in such a case. So I'm hoping that no teams are posing questions regarding sexual orientation. But the fact that some teams could potentially do so legally, while others may be more restricted is an interesting case of how different state statutes may affect the hiring process.

5 Current Trends in Job Résumés

(image from rayvinmedia.com)

With the globalization of business and advancements in technologies, businesses are making a lot of changes in an effort to gain a competitive advantage in today's fast-paced business environment. Similarly, job seekers should be looking for new ways to stand out and gain their own competitive advantage in the selection process.

There are a number of good resources for sprucing up a traditional résumé (two that I think have a number of good points are from U.S. News and Business Insider). But even the Wall Street Journal reports that the traditional résumé is losing its relevance in an increasingly competitive and technological job market - particularly for positions that require innovation and creativity. Below are five trends for job résumés that are currently gaining momentum:

 

(image from mylifeaudio.com)

The Storytelling Résumé
This trend moves away from simply presenting general, static information to actually weaving a narrative that tells the hiring organization what you bring to the table and how you can meet their needs. This can be done in a number of ways. For example, instead of just listing past employment, show how your experience is relevant for the current job opening. Or highlight your accomplishments by showing the numerical value of your work (i.e. "Reduced production costs by 33%," or "Expanded our customer base from 35 customers to over 400 customers").

Another example is to highlight your ambition and promotability by listing multiple job titles (with dates) under the same employer. Take, for example, someone who started as an intern for an organization, then was hired as an administrative staff member, and subsequently became a supervisor over other staff. Those three job titles (Intern, Administrative Staff Member, Staff Supervisor), each with their specific information as described in the previous paragraph, tells a prospective employer (1) that you take advantage of growth opportunities, (2) that you were successful in your previous job(s), and (3) that you would likely stick with the company for a long time.

One article even goes as far as to suggest creating a personal bio in lieu of a résumé, answering five major quesions: (1) Who are you?, (2) How can you help the hiring organization?, (3) How did you get to where you are?, (4) Why can you be trusted?, and (5) What do you share in common? (i.e. Why would you be a good fit for the job/company?)

 (image from brainzooming.com)

The Creative Résumé
Other than the information it contains, what makes your résumé stand out from others? It used to be that printing a résumé on professional-looking cardstock (i.e. marbled, ivory, or parchment) or bright colored paper was enough to draw attention to it. Today, job applicants are often asked to submit their résumés electronically, without printing the résumé at all. But that doesn't mean you can't be creative. If anything, it has increased the creative options for job seekers.

Examples such as the job seeker who formatted his online résumé to look like an Amazon product or  the 15 creative résumés found here show how you can set yourself apart for other job seekers by showcasing your talents and creativity. The trick is to be creative in a manner that accentuates the positive knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies that an organization and/or hiring manager might be looking for in filling the type of position you want.

(image from ksl.com) 

The Visual Résumé 
The visual résumé is a specific type of creative résumé in which your past education, work experiences, accomplishments, etc., are presented in an "infographic" form. Basically, this information is presented visually (typically through graphs and charts) in an effort to draw and maintain the attention of the person reviewing the résumé and to highlight the information that best sells the job candidate. The picture above is just one example of how this can be done. Other examples can be found here and here.

(image from usatoday.com)

The Video Résumé
Using a video presentation as a résumé allows a job seeker to literally tell his/her story and create a personal environment where the hiring manager gets a glimpse into the professionalism, communication skills, and personality of the applicant.

Both USA Today and CBS News share some pros and cons of using video résumés, along with tips for increasing their quality and impact. These links also suggest some sites that are available to assist in creating and hosting video résumés.

One of my favorite examples of a video résumé is found below. It is far from the ideal video résumé, and showcases some of the pros and cons of this résumé medium.

The Google Résumé

The idea of a Google résumé is the idea that your online presence creates its own résumé that can be found when a hiring manager "googles" you, or searches for information about you using an internet search engine. This could include personal webpages, social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn), blogs, etc. More and more hiring managers are using these resources during the process of recruiting and employee selection in an effort to find the best candidate and/or dig up red flags that may indicate that a candidate is not a good fit for the company.

Socialmediatoday.com has a great infographic that details why a positive online presence matters and how one can go about improving his/her Google résumé (or social résumé, as they term it). One of the best ways to first approach the situation is by going ego surfing, using the mindset of a hiring manager to critique the information you find.


Utilizing and managing any of these five current résumé trends takes varying amounts of time, effort, and skill. It is important to understand the job market for the kinds of jobs for which you are applying and whether utilizing these résumé trends would be beneficial in your own job search. Typically, the more creativity and innovation that a job requires, the more many of these résumé trends would apply.

The Purpose of HR

I am working right now to put together a training on the subject of effective HR practices, and one of the first questions I plan on asking the training group is this:

"In one sentence, how would you describe the purpose of HR?"

In my research (a.k.a. Google search), here are some of the answers that I came across:

• HR's duty is to bring the best people into the best position.
• HR exists to protect a company from its employees.
• The purpose of HR is to fulfill organizational goals by implying tools which focuses on enhancing performance with concern for its employees.
• The purpose of human resources is to live.
• The HR department is to is there to guarantee that the right candidates get appointed to the right task at the right time and the job offered to them utilizes their capabilities to the maximum, adding to self-motivation and leading to better performance.
• HR is there to hire and fire.
• The HR function is to hire, train, motivate and support productive employees.
• An effective Human Resource department facilitates the execution of your company’s mission within the boundaries of employment law.
• HR's sole purpose is to take the fun out of work for everyone.

I have my own thoughts on the issue, which I will save those for another post. But I want to hear your perspective. Do any of the answers listed above ring true to you? Or is there a better way that you would describe HR's purpose?

Technology in the World of HR

A recent article regarding the DOs and DON'Ts of using Facebook while maintaining your professionalism got me thinking about how technology (specifically the internet) has changed the business landscape for both employees (those currently employed and/or those seeking employment) and those who manage and hire employees. Here is a list of pros and cons that I quickly came up with.

JOB SEEKERS

PROS:

• Access to numerous open positions through job search websites (i.e. Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com), company websites, and non-traditional job search outlets (i.e. Craigslist.com) make job seeking more effective.
• The ability to develop your online profile can make you and make your resume available to those searching online in need of employees.
• Search engines, company websites, newsfeeds, etc., offer the ability to quickly and thoroughly research potential job opportunities and hiring organizations.
• You have access to countless online resources for effective job searching, writing your resume, and having a positive job interview.
• The ability to utilize online social media networks can help you find otherwise unknown job opportunities.

CONS:

• A lot of personal information may be avaialable online that you do not what prospective employers finding.
• Getting into a habit of only searching for and applying for jobs through online channels can be a monotonous and ineffective job search.
• Even with online professional profiles and resumes, it is hard to convey your true personality and professional motivations without face-to-face personal contact.

CURRENT EMPLOYEES

PROS:

• Internet research can assist you in finding the lowest cost, most effective, and/or fastest solutions to the problems you face at work.
• Utilizing online training, remote network meetings, etc., can cost travel costs and increase the effectiveness of long-distance work groups and organizations.
• Computer and internet resources have aided employees in accomplishing more and being a more valuable asset to the company.

CONS:

• From watching YouTube videos, to online shopping, to playing games, to reading online news, the internet can be a huge distraction at work.
• Since most information is just a mouse click or online chat with a co-worker away, there is potential for reduced time being physically active at work.
• Relationships with coworkers, customers and/or supervisors may suffer with reduced personal interaction.
• Technology at times may make some employees obsolete, leading to job losses.

MANAGERS

PROS:

• The ability to quickly disseminate information to your employees is increased through email, company intranet, etc.
• Time and effort spent managing "paperwork" (i.e. payroll, contracts, employee records, etc.) can be greatly reduced through technology.
• Recruiting is greatly facilitated through online job boards, websites and professional networks.
• A quick Google search on a job applicant and/or current employee can uncover important information that otherwise would not be brought to light.

CONS:

• Reduced personal interaction with your employees can decrease employee job satisfaction and can take a toll on your relationship with your employees.
• Focusing too much on internet recruiting may increase the quantity of applicants without increasing (and potentially decreasing) the quality of applicants.
• A quick Google search on a job applicant and/or current employee can uncover unimportant information that should probably not have been brought to light.

What are your thoughts? What are some of the positives and/or negatives that you have seen in your own experience with increased computer and internet technology?

To Get a Job . . . You Need to Already Have a Job?

What if you lost your job, and when you start searching for a new one, you were repeatedly turned away from job openings because you were not already currently employed? Sounds a bit ridiculous, right?

Well, CNN Money ran a story recently about a new recruiting trend, where phrases such as "applicant must be currently employed" or "unemployed applicants will not be considered" are cropping up on job descriptions. And even when such explicit statements aren't spelled out, it seems that recruiters give preference to applicants who are currently employed over those applicants that are not.

To me, that's just a lawsuit waiting to happen. If you have a solid potential job applicant, and the only reason he/she is not considered is because he/she isn't currently employed, it feels an awful lot like discrimination.

What are your thoughts? Have any of you run into this kind of situation as a job seeker or as a recruiter/hiring manager?