The Perfect Job Solution

The #1 Blunder In Resumes Today – And How To Fix It

Do you realize how easy it is for your executive resume to get trashed or deleted, even if you qualify for the job? It happens more times than not, primarily because of a gap that tends to arise between who you are and what you do, and how that’s expressed on paper. Or, I should say, how that’s not expressed on paper. The #1 blunder in resumes today is lack of specifics. Specifics provide an illustration for the reader. Paint a picture in the hiring decision maker’s mind, and you’re more likely to prompt him to call you over your competition.

A best practice is to present specifics repeatedly on your resume. Begin with the summary or profile, then the areas of expertise, scope of responsibility, and achievements. Particularly in the summary, avoid words such as “committed,” and “results-oriented,” in favor of phrases that indicate actual results, such as “Reputation for delivering an average 10% revenue growth year over year in every position held.”

Complete resume examples illustrating these points are here. Presenting specifics entails presenting your actual activity. That’s different than presenting what the job is. For example, in outlining the scope of responsibility of each position you held, move away from the job description, and emphasize what you did:

Non-specific: Created, developed, and managed the 3-year strategic marketing plan.

Specific: Built and managed the 3-year marketing plan, which called for launching into the health care vertical, tightening the release date for the signature product, and deepening account penetration with the top 10 clients.

Specifics deliver impact when they convey numbers. Those numbers can come in the form of dollars, percentages, rankings, amounts, or time. Dollars and percentages indicate clear growth or savings. Rankings add significance and context to achievements. Amounts indicate the scope of your achievements. And time is an important indicator that tells the hiring decision maker you can achieve the goal faster than your competition. Following is an example illustrating the use of specific dollar and time indicators:

Non-specific: Designed and deployed a FIX portal instrumental to increasing equity trades.

Specific: Designed and deployed a FIX portal instrumental to increasing equity trades from $170 billion to $7.7 trillion the very next quarter.

Tend toward specifics as many times as possible in your resume. There’s no longer any such concept as saving the details for the interview. In the competitive environment of job search today, you’re more likely to be chosen for the interview when you say how you achieved specific results for your employers. Click here for more examples of specific resume language, words to avoid, and complete resume samples.

The Top 3 Mistakes Killing Your Executive Resume

By jewelbracydemaio

How would it feel to never have to wonder whether your resume was hitting the nail on the head? Would you like to be able to blaze forward with confidence, knowing your resume is 100% on point, so the hiring decision maker immediately sees your value and calls you above your competitors? Then let’s raise our collective awareness of executive resume blunders that are likely keeping you from getting a call from your ideal potential employer.

The mistakes we’re going over, I believe, come from a place of fear. There’s fear that you’re not saying enough, you’re leaving out this detail or that, you’re not showing enough experience, or you’re not reflecting every single word the employer outlined in the ad or job description. However, adding more material, content, and words, does not add to who you are. Kindly re-read the prior sentence. Who you are and what you’ve done is already more than sufficient.

Therefore, let’s avoid the following three mistakes likely killing your executive resume (and thus, your job search). And you can see full examples of these points in the free resume samples here.

1) You’re harkening back to 1982. No, no, 1,000 times: NO! This is 2013. Going back 30+ years does exactly one thing and one thing only: age you. I understand why embracing this concept can be hard: this is your life; this is your story; you take pride in it. However, I define resume as a brief summary account of professional and educational qualifications. Material from 1982 is the polar opposite of “brief” and “summary.”

To repair this: In your mind, allow yourself to go back only 20 years. On your resume, detail the most recent 10 years, and summarize the 10 years prior to that.

2) You’re presenting the job description instead of writing a resume. Let’s look at an example: a Senior Technical Project Manager, with 15 years of experience leading multi-million dollar global initiatives. One bullet says “Organized monthly steering committee meetings to discuss the project status, risks, issues, and change requests with project sponsors and executives.” That is a classic example of lifting the job description and placing it smack dab on your resume. That is not what the hiring decision maker needs to see from a multi-million dollar mover and shaker.

To repair this: Provide a synopsis of your scope of responsibility – four to five lines of text at the most – and that can come from your job description. Then make your bullets actual achievements. Continuing with our project manager from above, every bullet should detail an actual project: strategy, execution, and monetary result. That’s how to elevate from describing the job, to describing your performance in the job – big difference.

3) You’re telling a never-ending story. Hiring decision makers expect a two-page resume from executive-level candidates in most cases. Therefore, the second page cannot have as much detailed information as the first. While there are no hard and fast rules specifying number of bullets, it doesn’t make sense to have a job on page two have ten bullets, while a job on page one has four.

To repair this: Visually wind the story down. There should be less and less material as the reader approaches the end. The last job presented should probably have no bullets; there should be the least amount of detail there.

These resume-killing mistakes have nothing to do with any lack of experience, or misaligned expertise. They all have to do with how you’re presenting your particular brand of brilliance. Make the presentation inviting and engaging, and the hiring decision maker will flow through your resume in a positive manner – and a favorable state of mind. That is more likely to help him see your value more clearly, so you get that call for the interview. For examples of how to improve your resume, free templates, and resume words to avoid in order to skyrocket your job search, click here.

Is Your Executive Resume Holding You Back? A Little Quiz.

By jewelbracydemaio

When you find out a close colleague landed a new position, what do you truly say to yourself? “My skills are just as good.” Or worse, “My skills are even better than his.” That may very well be the case. However, in job search today, you don’t win based solely on skills and experience. Success also depends greatly on how you market yourself. Too often, I find the foundational marketing piece – the resume – is just not hitting the mark.

Having a long, illustrious career can be a blessing when it comes to what you bring to the table. But it can be a curse when it comes to articulating the totality of who you are on your resume. As a consequence, the tendency is for executives to cram everything into what I unaffectionately call the Everything-Plus-The-Kitchen-Sink resume. While I know all your history is important to the story you want to present, the cold, hard fact is: nobody will read all of that. And if nobody event wants to read it, then your resume is holding you back.

So, here’s a little quiz to determine if you have an Everything-Plus-The-Kitchen-Sink resume, and what to do to turn that around. You can view several sample resumes that illustrate these points here.

1) Is your resume longer than two or three pages? Truly, my strong recommendation is two pages. Three is not impossible, though it should be a rarity. Back in the days when everyone’s resume was on paper and being transmitted by way of snail mail, the lengthy resume just looked thick, heavy, and unattractive. Today, it looks like a great big attachment in somebody’s email on their cell phone. When your executive resume takes too long to download, the recipient is going to just move on.

How to fix it: Create an addendum, a separate document focused on, for example, leadership achievements, consulting engagements, or major projects. The beauty of an addendum is it provides the recipient with a choice. Your fundamental resume is of digestible length. Then there’s also this other standalone piece. Title your addendum something positive and enticing, and there’s a higher likelihood the employer or recruiter will click, open, and read it.

2) Do you present 10 or more accomplishments for each position? While there is no hard and fast rule in resume writing regarding ideal number of accomplishments, venturing into the double digits may make your resume feel more like a dissertation. Bear in mind: your resume need not account for virtually every day of your professional life. It is a summary document.

How to fix it: Apply the “instances of greatness” philosophy. That means that once you articulate a handful of achievements, doing so automatically implies that there are probably more. For example, a VP, Sales who presents bulleted accomplishments about leading the company to capture 21% greater market share, competitively positioning the business to elevate to #2 among 5 key competitors, and personally closing a long, difficult, $14 million 3-year agreement, has demonstrated several instances of greatness. Point made. Move on.

3) Are your resume “tidbits” excessive? Tidbits are sections towards the end of the resume such as “Certifications,” “Training,” “Computers,” “Affiliations,” and “Endeavors.” The tendency is to make these sections a catch-all presenting every class, program, and group you’ve ever attended over the course of your entire career trajectory.

How to fix it: Re-evaluate these sections and delete all but the most relevant information. For example, if your affiliations number over a half-dozen, delete the oldest ones, or delete the groups in which you were a member, but didn’t hold a leadership position. As another example, if certain certifications were granted for a finite period, and are no longer current, delete those in favor of those certifications which were granted for life.

Streamlining an Everything-Plus-The-Kitchen-Sink resume accomplishes a couple of things in your favor. It elevates your presentation to something crisp, clean, succinct, and attractive. Further, it requires that you focus on only that which is absolutely most relevant, and that sets a solid foundation for discussing the key points with highest impact in your interview.

For examples of how to improve your resume, free templates, and resume words to avoid in order to skyrocket your job search, click here.

4 Comments

The #1 Blunder In Resumes Today – And How To Fix It

The Top 3 Mistakes Killing Your Executive Resume

Is Your Executive Resume Holding You Back? A Little Quiz.

Recent Blog Posts