Tweet

Resumes that Boost Interview Performance

Written by: Tom Hannemann

Article Overview: Your resume's primary job is to win you an invitation to an interview. But that's not all it can do. In this article I explain how a great resume increases your opportunity to shine in the interview. Your worst enemy in a job interview is time. Therefore, making the most of the time allocated to the interview is critical to gaining a competitive edge. How do you want to be remembered by the interviewers? As the candidate with whom they spent 75 per cent of the precious, never to be repeated time clarifying your skills, experience and achievements? Or as the candidate with whom they had an in-depth discussion about your ability to contribute to the organisation's future success?

Resumes that Boost Interview Performance

Listing your jobs in chronological order and succinctly summarising your duties is not enough. Consider what an employer really wants to know before they even pick up the phone to talk with you. They want to know what difference you have made to your previous employers. They want to know how your skills, qualifications, abilities and know-how have been applied. And they want to know how your efforts have added value to the organisations for which you have worked.

If your resume satisfies these needs, the interviewer does not need to spend valuable interview time discovering what you did, how you did it, what you achieved and what difference your achievements made. The interview therefore starts at a much higher level. Interviewers can dispense with clarifying the basics because it has all been clearly explained to them. They can probe more deeply and you can engage them in a more advanced conversation about how you do things and why you do them in that way.

In short, the interviewer gets more from the experience. They remember you as the person with whom they had an interesting in-depth discussion. They perceive you as knowledgeable, insightful and competent as you really are. They understand you at a deeper level: your motivations and drivers, your approach to tasks, how you would fit their culture and how effective you are likely to be.
Some of my clients have asked whether this is dangerous: the more they know you, the more likely they are to decide against you. I suggest looking at it from the point of view of the more they know, the better the decision. If you aren't right for the job or the organisation, or if the job or organisation is not right for you, isn't it better to know before you start? There is nothing worse for a career than finding out three months after starting that there is not really a good fit after all. Unless of course, you find out three weeks after starting!

Revising your resume also ensures you have more time at the interview to fully explore the career opportunity and the organisation being presented to you.

Emphasise outcomes not activities

Often we take for granted what we do in our day to day work. Employers and recruitment consultants do not have the same depth of understanding about what you have done as you. They want things spelled out for them. They don't want to have to read between the lines. Your resume should explain everything they want to know.

When I discuss this issue with my clients, many ask whether including all this additional information will make their resume excessively long. People will read what they find interesting and useful. There are ways of formatting and designing your resume that make best use of the page. There are ways of expressing information to minimise the word count without diminishing the value of the information. Knowing what to exclude is also important. Knowing where to position information is often as important as what to say.

Let's look at some ways of expressing achievements:

Before: "Developed and implemented a new data searching methodology."

After: "Reduced the time required to search the database by developing and implementing meta data structures."

The achievement in this example is not the development and implementation of the methodology, but the time saved by so doing. Anyone can see the benefit of saving time. But not everyone can see the benefit of the new methodology unless it is articulated.

Another typical way of presenting an achievement is:

"Successful tour of nine cities delivering key marketing messages to business partners."
My question was: "So what?" What did the tour achieve? In what way was it successful?"
These are the questions that an interviewer would be duty bound to ask. The question consumes time and the answer pilfers even more. And having to explain the benefits of each achievement at an interview is frustrating. You want to get on with it, but they won't let you because you have not satisfied their curiosity.

The fact that the person toured nine cities is irrelevant. Saying that they delivered key marketing messages is irrelevant and wasteful. Why would you deliver an unimportant marketing message?

Let's satisfy the interviewer's curiosity by saying something like: "Increased product sales and market penetration by 5 per cent after elevating our business partners' sales and marketing abilities through education programmes and advice and by providing more timely product information."

The achievement here was the increase in sales. The method was to improve the abilities of the company's partners. The process was education, advice and better product information. Does this take up more words? Yes. Does it deliver a more effective message? You judge. Could we have said even more than we have about how they went about doing what they did? Yes, but there has to be something left for the interview! It's a matter of judging how much information to provide.
The conversation at the interview can then start at a higher level by focusing on the content and process of educating the business partners, how they won the hearts and minds of the business partners and how they overcame any barriers in achieving this result.

If you do this for one achievement you will have one meaningful conversation. If you do it for all of them, the entire interview will have more depth. You will probably be so interesting that they will give you more time than your competitors!

Quantifying achievements

Some people ask me whether it is always necessary to try to quantify achievements. It is always best to try to do so if possible. Numbers make sense to people. They provide a universal way of expressing the magnitude and value of an achievement.

Before: "Negotiated and implemented a Queensland Workplace Agreement with the workforce."

After: "Negotiated and implemented a Workplace Agreement that significantly reduced overtime claims and rectified numerous anomalies in employment terms and conditions, reducing confusion and conflict and saving the company around $70,000 annually."

At the end of the day, the company must believe that it will get value from the new agreement and it should, if it is a good business, attempt to measure the outcome. In this example, there was a tangible cost saving as well as intangible benefits (reduced conflict and confusion). Although it is difficult to quantify the benefit of less conflict and confusion, I doubt any employer would like to see more of them!

Review your resume and ask yourself these questions.

• Does it showcase not just your skills but your achievements?
• Does it show your achievements in a clear, logical and quantifiable way?
• Does it show the reader exactly what you have to offer?

Related Articles
  The Job Interview Question Hated by Most: “Tell me about yourself”
  20 Recruiting Tips to Help Prepare for the Rebounding Economy
  Sales Recruitment and Hiring Process
  Will You Beat The Jobs Rush?
  Home-based Business Idea: Writing Resume

Article Tags: chronological order, insightful, interview time, interviewer, interviewers, job, jobs, motivations, organisations, point of view, resume, three months
Referred by: http://www.kyliehammond.com.au



Related Forum Posts
Re: New forum - online businesses! - Thanks Evan for this great Interview and I will be pleased to be part of the new forum on online businesses!
ARTICLE: Performance coaching in the workplace - To create lasting performance change it is necessary to first understand the positive and negative influence that a person’s personal behaviors has on their execution and what impact these have on their ability to achieve success. Only when we fully understand a person’s behavioral patterns and create positive self-managing coaching strategies can we assist a person to create lasting performance change. The vast majority of employers believe coaching can deliver significant benefits to both individuals and organizations. The majority of employers plan to increase the use of coaching over the next few years, according to a new survey by the Institute of Personnel and Development. Nearly nine out of ten interviewed companies expect their managers and supervisors to deliver performance coaching as part of their day-to-day work. In another large industry-wide study it was found that most managers reported that they were confident in their ability to coach. However, the study also showed that the managers’ actual skills levels as coaches were typically poor. As a consequence they were not nearly as effective in their coaching as they believe themselves to be. Often times, they believed that coaching consisted of just providing 1-to-1 instructional feedback to their staff members on what to do in a given situation to perform better. Many recent studies have shown that technical skills only represent at best 20% of the contribution into our performance. The remaining 80% comes from our ability to choose or make a decision, assertiveness, commitment to grow, ability to concentrate, honesty, optimism, persistence, ability to perform well under stress and so on. These traits are commonly called our soft skills or attitude. Few managers understand just how deeply rooted their own behavior patterns are, let alone how to positively change them in other people. Performance coaching is frequently confused with other types of coaching, such as Executive coaching and Life coaching. Performance coaching is a form of Directive coaching. Executive coaching and Life coaching are both forms of Non-directive coaching. Directive coaching is usually more suitable for a manager who sometimes acts as a coach. Performance coaching in the workplace has developed immensely from what it was only 4 years ago. To choose the right coach will make a huge difference. You also better make sure to know what you want. If your coach knows what (s)he is doing – you will get on your way to get it! [i:38tu5pgr]- Peter J Karlsson[/i:38tu5pgr]
The Game Inventor's Guidebook - by Brian Tinsman, 2002 I checked this out of my local library today and its pretty interesting... didn't address what I wanted to know, which was how to actually design an online gaming system (indeed this doesn't cover online games at all), but for board games etc. it's pretty good. Here's the TOC: 1. How they diid it: Trivial Pursuit Magic, the Gathering Dungeons & Dragons Pokemon Trading Card Game Interview with an inventor Interview with a publisher 2. How the industry works 1. What's in it for you 2. How new games happen 3. Anatomy of a publisher 4. Markets for games 3. Games and companies you should know 1. Mass market games you should know 2. Mass market companies you should know 3. Hobby games you should know 4. Hobby companies you should know 5. American specialty games and companies you should know 6. European specialty games and companies you should know 4. Self publishing 1. What am I getting into 2. Before you print 3. After you print 5. Selling a game step by step 1. How to invent a game 2. Game design 3. Game development 4. Targeting publishers 5. Before you submit 6. Eight submission strategies 7. Contacting publishers 8. Protecting your property 9. What to do if they don't say yes 10. What to do if they do say yes! 11. The game industry's dirty little secret 6. Resources and examples Publishers and mnufacturers Distributors Brokers Game conventions and trade shows Industry publications Sample query letter Sample record of disclosure Sample licensing agreement Sample option agreement
These maybe the coldest franchises out there: - Here are the worst 15 performing franchises in regards to having the highest Small Business Administration (SBA) loan failure rates. The list is dotted with sub sandwich shops, fitness centers and car shops. WORST FRANCHISE LOAN FAILURES Failure % 1 OBEE'S SOUP SALAD SUBS 55.56% 2 LADY OF AMERICA 41.94% 3 COUNTRY CLUTTER (BED & BREAKFAST) 41.18% 4 COPY CLUB 36.36% 5 ALL TUNE AND LUBE 35.71% 6 PICKERMAN'S 35.71% 7 PHILLY CONNECTION 35.59% 8 ROLY POLY ROLLED SANDWICHES 34.78% 9 COTTMAN TRANSMISSION 34.48% 10 HAIR COLOR EXPRESS 33.33% 11 LEE MYLES AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSIONS 33.33% 12 GODFATHER'S PIZZA 33.33% 13 SMOOTHIE FACTORY 33.33% 14 BLIMPIE 31.39% 15 GOLF U.S.A. (RETAIL GOLF EQUIP.) 30.77% Source: Small Business Administration, SBA Loan Performance Within Franchise Code for the Period of FY 2001 - 2005
Success Strategies - How to get the results you want now? Success Strategies and Action Steps I have used are: The Power of Choice Where you are at this present moment, is exactly perfect from the choices you have made. If you want to be somewhere else, you have to decide clearly what that is (your goal/outcome) and create action steps to achieve this. The Power of Focus The book "The Power of Focus" by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Les Hewitt, is one of my treasures in my Entrepreneur Library. If you focus on what you want versus what you do not want, your conscious and sub-conscious mind will direct attention to this. The movie, What the Bleep, Down the Rabbit Hole, explains this in detail about quantum physics and what we create in our lives. The Power of Commitment This is not about commitment to others. The first step is the commitment, your word, you make to yourself. Accountability and responsibility are additional success strategies and ingredients to creating the success, defined by you, that you want. The commitment to others reflects your integrity, your word and the team you work with. Co-workers, clients, yoru family, friends and community. My Success Acronyn in Success Breakthroughs(c) is: S pecific & self-directed U nlimited opportunities & possibilities C reate powerful outcomes C onsistent measureable results E xperience pwoerful transformation S olution and action-oriented S uccessful habits and outcomes Break Through to Powerful LIfestyle & Performance Choices Moira


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

The Neglected Art of Receiving

Setting Goals for your Home Based Business

A Guide to Franchise Financing

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.