2011-09-22-Writing Attention Getting Résumés
Seminars@Hadley
The Secrets of Writing Attention-Getting Résumés
Presented by
Trae Shaw
Stephen Pandov
Moderated by
Billy Brookshire
September 22, 2011
Billy Brookshire
I’d like to welcome to Seminars@ Hadley. I’m Billy Brookshire. Today we’re going to be talking about the Secrets of Writing Attention Getting Résumés. You know research tells us that the employers, prospective employers only look at those Résumés that come into their inboxes for about 30 seconds and then they move onto the next one.
So what you’ve got to do is put something on that résumé that draws people’s attention to that, and that’s what Trae and Stephen are here to talk with you about today. And I want to give them as much time as I can, so I’m not going to talk much more. I do want to say one more thing; Trae Shaw and Stephen Pandov are career guidance instructors here at Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center in beautiful Austin, Texas. Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center is celebrating its 40th birthday folks, big anniversary and so it’s great starting out this celebration with Stephen and Trae to talk with you about Résumés.
So that I don’t waste more of their time, let me introduce you to our speakers today, Trae Shaw and Stephen Pandov.
Stephen Pandov
This is Stephen and I’m going to begin to talking to you about Résumés. First of all, we thank you for moderating this seminar for us, Hadley very nice folks to make this available to the people out there who want to learn about how to make a good résumé that is likely to grab the attention of potential employers, and that is likely to hopefully get you an interview, that is the whole idea.
And a résumé is a really big part of the employment seeking process. A résumé really is a document in which you include information such as your education, your experience, your work history, whatever employment skills you have that you may want to list there relevant to the employment that you’re looking for.
And of course you definitely want to include some contact information, and I’m going to go into detail in a second here about how exactly to format the résumé, and what goes where, more or less. And I say more or less, because there really isn’t a widely-accepted format that is definitely the correct way to do a résumé. In other words, there is a lot of ways to format your résumé and to put things in there, and the most important part, as Billy said a while ago is to grab the attention of an employer and to make sure that your résumé stands out.
So more than anything when an employer is looking at Résumés, they’re looking for the qualifications that the particular job listing requires. So it’s important to know that you guys have the qualifications that are required for a position that you’re applying for. Other than that, Résumés can vary in the way they look and the way they’re formatted, the kind of things you put in there, but if the qualifications are not there, it’s going to be really tough. So I would like to encourage you to apply for positions for which you know that you’re qualified.
So your résumé is a chance to make a good impression, and it has to happen with the limit of a résumé is really not something everybody has agreed on as well, but most commonly you see something varying in length from one page to possibly even two pages. You don’t really want to go much longer than maybe a page, two pages, maybe even two and a half, but that’s really probably as long a résumé as I have ever seen. As Billy said, a résumé gets about 30 seconds.
So since the résumé is really the first impression is going to get from you other than the generic application that everybody fills out, but the résumé is really the document that will more closely give an impression of who you are as a potential employee, and so you want to make a good impression with your résumé. And that is done through format and what is in your résumé. But you do want to make sure that your résumé before you submit it, is ready to go, and everything has been corrected and everything is the way you want it to be, because it’s not likely that you will get an interview if your résumé does not look good. It’s kind of difficult to correct a wrong first impression.
So once your résumé has been viewed by the employer and he has determined or she has determined that you’re going to receive an interview, you need to know that that is because your résumé included the skills or the qualifications that the position requires, or because it definitely in some way provided the impression that the employer was looking for.
Now, to have that résumé prepared, the first thing I’m going to stress is spell check and reality check, that’s kind of what I like to call it, spell check and reality check. Spell check is really important; it’s very common for people to have misspelled words, grammatically incorrect sentences, it’s important to run your spell check. And then it’s important to have somebody proofread your résumé in order to be able to catch the things that the spell check was not able to catch.
I remember I was writing a paper and I meant to use with, which would w-i-t-h in a sentence, but for some reason I had typed w-i-t-h-e and the spell check did not catch it, did not correct, because w-i-t-h-e is a word, but it’s not the right one, so that happens sometimes. You type a word spell check doesn’t catch because it’s correctly spelled; it’s just not the word you wanted to use in that résumé.
At this point I’m going to move onto the information a résumé should contain, and what you want to have on top, at the very beginning of your résumé is your contact information, objective, education, employment history and skills that are relevant to the position for which you are applying. Generally, it agreed of people who are experts on résumé writing, agree that the contact information that you’re providing should probably the thing that your potential employer sees first, followed by objective.
So far as the rest, whether you put education or employment history or skills and in what order, that really is more up to you, and a lot of it depends on what you want to emphasize on. If you want to focus more on your employment history, because that is what you have more of, well then you probably should put that paragraph after your objective. If education is what you have more of, then you probably should put education on top. The whole idea is if your résumé gets about 30 seconds, and if it’s kind of long, the last parts of it, may not even get the attention that you would like for it to get from the employer. He just kind of looks over it and moves on.
Real quick thing here guys, no need to put references in your résumé, not that you shouldn’t or that you can’t. Again, these are all guidelines that most experts on résumé writing will agree with, but you know it’s not as if you did not get an interview because your résumé had a reference section, it’s not that crucial. But in general you don’t want to put your references in your résumé, you can just put them in a separate document, or in the application as you’re filling it out, any of those will work.
Generally, there are four types of résumé. This is a chronological in which you list work-related work history and education and other events that you want to focus on, activities that you’ve participated in, but you list them in reverse chronological order, so that’s your chronological résumé.
There’s also a functional résumé, there is a combination and there is a target résumé. Personally, when I wrote my résumé, I wasn’t really a fan of identifying one specific for my résumé. What I wanted to do is to convey my qualifications in a concise manner, my contact information and to me it really didn’t matter, oh, let’s see let me try to identify my résumé is it functional or is it a combination résumé or is it a target résumé. I did not focus on that.
Most important in a résumé is to focus on your strengths, whether it’s education or its employment history. Now, when you’re writing a résumé and it comes down to the details, again, there isn’t necessarily a specific format, other than of course making sure that your résumé is grammatically – the sentences are well-written as far as that is taken care of. But for example, would you put dashes between when you’re writing dates, so for example today’s date is September 22 of 2011, would you do 09-22-2011, or would you put a slash, really there isn’t a specific way to do it, just kind of whatever you want to go with. A lot of people like to be – I personally like to put a slash, but some people put dash, so there is no – are you going to put the area code of your phone number in parenthesis or will you not. That again is up to you, I personally prefer to do it in parenthesis, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be done that way.
So I’m almost at the end here of my share of the presentation, but before I pass you to Trae, there is just a few more things I want to say. You want to have résumé available for access by employers through the internet, and you also want to have a print copy. The fancy stuff that you want to have on your résumé are different size fonts or colors, different ways in which you want to lay out information or present it, that should be saved for your print copy. The reason for that is because these things don’t come through very well when you’re sending your résumé through the computer. So the print copy is the one that you want to present your fancy format through, and as you know a print copy is one you usually send through the mail, some positions require you to mail stuff still, or maybe you can take it to an interview with you, and it does look nice.
When you’re available on the internet, for employers to look at, because some of them do their search for potential employees on the internet, and it is important to do that because if potential employers do not know you exist, well then you quite frankly have no chance of being considered. So you want to make sure that you’re available. You want to make sure that you’re available so that they can give you a chance, read your résumé, hopefully get your interview.
The internet version of your résumé should have – you should just stick to a basic format, you know, highlighting stuff or fonts or whatever fancy stuff you want to do, that’s for your print copy, but your, let’s just call it the computer copy of your résumé that is going to be, you’re going to stick to a basic format for the reasons that I just mentioned a while ago.
You want to post your résumé on regular job boards as well as on other social media. One of the ones – or a few that I’d like to suggest would be LinkedIn and Facebook, and those are the most commonly used ones. But the whole reason behind that again is to be available for people to know that you are there, and that you have your résumé and that you’re ready to work.
So at this point, I’m finished; I’m going to pass the microphone to Trae.
Trae Shaw
Good morning everyone, this is Trae Shaw, along with Stephen Pandov, as Billy said I’m a career guidance instructor here at the Criss Cole Rehabilitation Center.
I think the first part I’d like to talk to you about is a little carrying off of what Stephen said about using the websites, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, for posting your digital résumé. It’s important these days that you focus on your online persona when searching for jobs; it’s a little detour from the talk of Résumés. But it’s important because employers out there are going to be searching for people on Google, and if you have a website, a more professional site like LinkedIn that has your occupational history on there, your education; it will be a good hit for them to find if they do do a search on you.
Stephen touched a little bit on the idea that format of your résumé, it’s very important, as he said, the first thing is of course your name, your address, the stuff they need to contact you, because hopefully they’re going to be trying to contact you. So we want that on there.
But the next part is that objective, and I think it’s important here if anyone has done any studying in college or something, I’m sure they’ve heard repeatedly from the professors about the importance of that first sentence in their essays, because that’s what really grabs the attention of the reader. And that’s what your objective is like on your résumé. You really need to encompass everything that you have in your job history and what you can offer to the employer when they’re going to be reading that, because no one is only reading your résumé for 30 seconds out of malice or anything that. It’s because in a lot of positions these days, people are getting 500 plus applicants and so they only have 30 seconds to spend on it, and if you have an attention-getting objective that really describes the entirety of your work history and what you have done to make you a good employee, that will really grab their attention and maybe they’ll spend a little more than that 30 seconds because you’ve been able to grab them and pull them into your discussion here.
Now, what I’d like to talk about is things that can date your résumé. It’s important these days with the generation of Baby Boomers and everything that people are getting older, and ageism is an issue that exists out there and the types of things that you can run into is you need to check your job descriptions for places you’re applying and see what type of terminology they use. Because sometimes terminology has changed from the way they used to describe things in the field you’re in, to how they describe them now, and you want to make sure that your résumé wording matches the same as the job description so it doesn’t show that yes, you had experience in there, but it might not be relevant, because it’s been too long.