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The Essential Resume

Guest post by: Dave Soteros

Article Overview: What is the best resume? In this article we will explore one of the most important documents you will ever create, your resume.

The Essential Resume

The Essential Resume

What is the best resume? In this article we will explore one of the most important documents you will ever create, your resume.

The resume is one of those documents that everyone has to create and then update on a regular basis. Those who have joined the job market in the last 20 years will likely change jobs 5 time over the course of their career. This new reality highlights the importance of a good resume. There are many different methodologies and formats floating around out there but most of these are post war era, a time when people took jobs for life. These old formats do not apply in the 21st century and they actually could be keeping you from getting an interview.

After all, the real reason anyone writes a resume is to get a job interview so the best resume is the one that gets you the INTERVIEW.

Dave Soteros, President of Alrym Consulting, says that many resumes don't even get into the hands of decision makers. Some resumes just confuse the hiring manager or recruiter prompting them just to ignore it. Recruiters just don't have time to decipher or decode a resume and if the resume is that bad then maybe the writer is bad too. Even if they do think you may have the skills for the job they won't feel that they could send the resume to the hiring manager without a lot of reformatting or a lot of explaining. Reformatting resumes is the bane of recruiters as it eats up their valuable time. The truth is that recruiters are more likely to submit a good resume over a poorly written one. The well written resume can be sent to the hiring manager right away and if the resume is accepted they may not need to, or it may not be in their best interest, to send more resumes.

So what does a good resume look like?

Dave says he spent many months researching best practices in resume writing as a consultant to a global staffing agency and has personally spoken to many hiring managers about what they look for in a resume and, most importantly, how much of the resume they read.

He goes on to say that most hiring managers don't like the hiring process as it takes up too much of their time and takes focus away from their daily deliverables. Hiring is not a domain of expertise that they are actively pursuing.
You can assume that the hiring manager is likely already overwhelmed by the hiring process and to make the best use of his or her time you have to have the right information in the right place to be selected for an interview.
Dave says that, just like a book, the first few lines of a resume are what gets the reader hooked so if you want to get the attention of a recruiter or hiring manger you must respond to their needs in the first 10 lines of your resume. To get inside the head of a hiring manager we have to understand how they think.
Hiring managers only think in terms of their own 4 walls. They think about the human and technical gaps in their environment. They need to see that you can fill a gap in their environment meaning that you have done what they need done and have worked in a similar environment. The environment is all about the numbers, number of people, number of processes, number of transactions, number of clients, number of industries, number of technical tools and of course the most important number the number of years of experience.

So now that we have the intelligence what are the rules?
Dave Soteros says that if you follow these rules you will get more interviews:

1. The purpose of the resume is to get an interview
2. Use a pleasing easy to read font such as 10-11 points Arial
3. Use basic document formating like bold, bullets and italics with black lettering
4. Write in point form with no more than 70 columns per line - Bullet points can be read quickly and easily where as paragraphs force the reader to read each word.
5. Do Not include subjective information as it will be ignored - Subjective information is tantamount to BS. Everyone can say they are quick to learn, team players or goal oriented etc... You have to be able to qualify this information. It's better to display your achievements like completing a specific project in less time and under budget, acted as the subject matter expert for the team, completed task in record time etc...
6. Do Not use an objective as objectives are subjective - see rule five
7. Use a summary of experience at the top of the resume as it is likely the only part of your resume that will be read. The summary should respond directly to the specific job requirements for the job you are submitting your resume for. You should have a list of summary items that are interchangeable depending on the job requirements.
8. Your work experience should reflect your summary - The work experience section of your resume only needs to be as long as required to reflect your summary. If you state in your summary that you have 8 years experience then you must have work experience going back 8 years.
9. List achievements in your work experience. What you were responsible for is not as important as what you achieved so turn your responsibilities into achievements.
10. Explain gaps - Any time you leave questions unanswered on your resume, like a gap in work history, you are creating more work for the recruiter or the hiring manager. Why? Because they have to ask and that may be the reason they don't call. So if you went to Tibet to discover yourself then fill in the gap with that information. You'll have to provide it anyway so clear up the question before it gets asked.
11. Tell the truth - Failing this is probably the best way to produce a gap in work history.
12. Do Not use a cover page - Cover pages are typically subjective and summarily ignored by hiring managers and recruiters. If they ask for one just politely say that you have included a summary at the top of your resume. They will appreciate this.

Here is an example of the resume format.
http://thecidervinegar.blogspot.com/2007/09/resume-format-example.html

Good luck!

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