Career Opportunities

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Resumes

February 1999

It has often been said that first impressions are the most important and this is certainly true when it comes to applying for a job. We all need to put our best foot (or experience) forward when we make that first knock upon a company's door.

Over the years, certain conventions have arisen about resumes, how they are designed, how they are used and their overall usefulness as an interview tool. Unfortunately, these conventions haven't kept pace with the fast changing job market. I find that most resumes are ill prepared for the rough and tumble job market that faces us as we approach the new century.

Over the course of this month I will offer a new view of the resume and how you can make it work best for you.

What's the point?

The official view of a resume is a one-page synopsis of your entire work history as well as an overview of you as a person. As you might imagine, this presents a nearly impossible task. It is a rare person who can sum up their life's worth in a few hundred words. To be truly useful, your resume needs to focus on those items that make you stand out from the crowd in a positive way.
Most resumes are staid, terse and very corporate. While this was fine for the "company man" of the 50's and 60's, today's market of casual companies, staffed by younger and hipper entrepreneurs requires a different approach.
You need to approach your resume in the same way that an advertiser looks at an advertisement. You, too, are trying to convince someone to buy a product. In this case, though, you are the product. Your experience is what makes you different from the next person in the stack of resumes. Your new goal with a resume is to make the interviewer want to pick up the phone just to see if you are as knowledgeable and interesting as your resume makes you appear.
This makes it doubly important to keep your resume truthful in every way. Don't oversell your experience. Nothing will turn off an interviewer more quickly than being unable to answer a basic question. Conversely, don't undersell those skills that you do have. This includes experience you have developed on your own while working for free. If you have been the computer support person for your extended family and their business make sure that that experience finds a place in your resume. Experience itself is much more important than where you obtained it.
Take an objective look at your resume. Would you want to talk to this person? Would you want to work with this person? If not, you have some changes ahead.

Next week: Resume Look, Feel and Content

This week I continue my discussion of resumes for the new century. The old formats for resumes are out. Today you need to give your resume a little more punch without going overboard.

Walking the fine line

As I am sure you are thinking, there is a fine line between having an interesting resume and a laughable one. A resume delivered in a pizza box wrapped with a ribbon will generate more scorn than goodwill. On the other hand, most resumes are at the opposite end of the spectrum. If some alien were to come down and judge the human race only on the basis of our resumes, they would think we are the most boring people on the planet.

The new rules

There are a series of new rules about resumes. Some of them are based around changes in the job market. Some are due to the massive changes in technology that have taken place in the last few decades. While not everyone agrees on these rules, I hope that my choices will help spark your thinking.

* The pre-printed resume is dead!

In the past it was common to design one resume that was copied onto nice bond paper and sent to every company with an appropriate job opening. This type of resume is right out of the 1950's. Today we know that one resume does not fit all. They must be altered and edited to match the specific needs of the company. If they need network mangers, you highlight this experience. If they need support people, you change the resume again.

Since most of you are searching for computer positions I would assume that you are using computers to create your resume. If not, start today. Beg, borrow or steal computer time. It is important to use the tools of your trade and only computers are flexible enough to develop an ever-changing resume.

* Develop resumes that can be delivered via other methods.

For most of us, especially those of us in computer fields, the days of sending a resume through the US Mail are numbered. FAX, email and the Web have totally transformed how we apply for jobs.

While it is definitely more work, it is important to maintain different resumes for each delivery method. This means more than copying and pasting from your word processor. Make sure you are making it as easy as possible for the interviewer to receive and view your resume. Email delivery requires hard spaces and hard returns to look presentable. Faxes have trouble with gray backgrounds and thin lines.
In both cases, send your resume to yourself or a friend's FAX machine to check it for legibility. You want to present a professional look whether you are delivering your resume on paper or electronically.

Next week: What to include on your resume.

This week I continue my discussion of resumes by exploring what information belongs on your resume and what is better left unsaid. There is much contention over what information belongs on the average resume. I have included some guidelines below but it truly depends on where you are sending your resume. If you have inside information about a company then that will take precedent.

* Include all usual contact info but also web and email addresses

As a computer careerist, a web site shows that you are at least familiar with the latest technology. Today, it is almost like having a telephone number. Getting an interviewer to check out your web site is equal to having them give you a call. It is yet another chance to sell yourself.

That said, if you are going to refer people to your web site you will need to be a little more careful about what you put there and how well the site works. This is not to say that you shouldn't put personal information on the site. Family photos, writing and artwork help to round you out as a person. This gives the interviewer a little more information about who you really are. In fact, this might be the reason they are visiting your site.

* Do NOT include employment dates or salary information

This is probably the most controversial of my guidelines. I have found that these two items are the ones most often used to disqualify a candidate out of hand. In the past, lapses in employment used to be considered odd and something to be concerned about. Today it is merely a fact of life. We all have short periods when we are unemployed and employment dates merely draws attention to them. You can explain these lapses during an interview should the interviewer ask. It is better to explain breaks in your employment in person than letting the resume speak alone.

I learned my lesson about including salary information when I was told to hire my own assistant. I found myself looking at previous salaries and salary requirements and immediately discarding those that were outside the range for the position. This opened my eyes and I began to wonder how many times my resume had been tossed aside even when I might have been a good fit for the job and willing to negotiate.

It is much better to discuss salary requirements and salary history in an interview when you can discuss it in person instead of having them dismiss your resume out of hand. In some cases they might even be willing to raise the salary or place you in a more important and higher paid job.

Next week: Resumes should include work and play


This week I wrap up my discussion of resumes by providing a few more guidelines on what to include to make your resume work harder for you. You want your resume to present as full a picture as possible. You want to "sell yourself" to a company. Sometimes this involves letting an interviewer know more about you than just your work experience.

* List experience, not software
Too many computer resumes include a bare list of hardware and software that the person can use or support. This doesn't give the interviewer much to go on. Even adding qualifiers like beginner, intermediate and advanced doesn't really help. These are vague descriptions that mean different things to different people.
Tell your experience using stories. What projects have you worked on? How did you use the technology to solve a business issue? Below I have included a sample from my own resume.

Hollywood Online Santa Monica, CA

Director of MIS/WebMaster for Internet Web Site with over 500,000 daily hits. Maintained and operated web server (Sun Solaris), managed internal Macintosh network and desktop systems including instruction/training, troubleshooting, repair, remote access and Internet connections. PERL cgi programming, HTML page development, installation and maintenance. Purchasing of hardware, software and services.

I weave the names of important hardware and software through the story but I believe it gives a much clearer view of what I actually did at this job. Tell a story. It will always be more powerful than a simple list.

* List other specialties and interests

Your resume should always include other interesting work that you do outside of your job. I always list my writing experience and give an example of the magazines where I have been published. This is especially helpful to me since most of these magazines are computer-related.

I also include my volunteer work whether that is staffing a visitor center in the Angeles National Forest or teaching a free Internet Class at my local library. These experiences are valid even if you don't get paid for them. They show a willingness to go the extra yard in making the world a better place.
You should also include any consulting or support work you have done privately, even if it was only for family members or friends. As I said earlier this month, experience is important regardless of where you get it.

It is time we all bring our resumes into the next century and make them work harder for us. The old resume models have served us well in the past but the job market is changing and requires a new look and feel. Make an interviewer want to pick up the phone, view your web page or send you an email. Your resume should sell you as the best and perhaps only person for the job.

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