So today let's talk about three big keys about
the resumes. Do and don'ts. But really great techniques. And I'm going to get into some really good
detail here about what you should be thinking about as you write your resume. And where this came from, I don't know if
some of you caught it, yesterday I did a morning talk show, one of the popular morning TV shows
called The Jam in Chicago. They're going through jobs month in September. The producer called me a week or so ago, wanted
me to come on the show, which is tons of fun. I love doing the morning talk shows. And he looked at me and he said "Hey, we've
got jobs month going on. My executive producer told me I needed to
call you. I looked at your stuff. You talk about everything. Is there anything in particular that you want
to speak to our audience about?" And I said "Yeah. Resumes. People hate writing resumes. It's terrible. It's difficult to do. People have lots of problems articulating
themselves in the best light. Let's talk about that." He said "Great. Give me three points." So I did. Now, I talked about them yesterday over a
maybe three or four minute clip. But today you're going to get tons of detail
on them. Let's get rolling. The first thing that I want to talk about
with resume writing is you need to know how someone looks at your resume. How somebody looks at your resume. Now a lot of you that have been following
me for a while, you know I got a lot of stuff out there on resumes, we've got videos, I've
got a great webinar, I've done a number of other special things related to the resume,
but resumes are not read left to right and top to bottom. People don't read resumes like they read a
book. Keep in mind what the employer is going through
or probably the recruiter or some human resource official, is opening up a resume, looking
at it very, very, very quickly. The first place their eyes go is to the top
center of the resume. They're just trying to get a feel for who
you are. So I want to talk about what that means for
you. If their eyes go to the top center of the
resume initially, it's like your smile, it's like the first thing that they see. Are you smiling, beaming bright, saying you
are going to love looking at my resume? Or are you going to fall flat? And I'm going to show you a few samples of
what the top of a resume could look like. But this is really important that you grab
their attention first. So top center, top center, top center. You need to be thinking about what is that
going to look like. Now, this is so critical. Actually I want to spend a lot of our talk
today on what to do, what not to do. First thing, let's talk about what not to
do. What not to do. Under no circumstances, it doesn't matter
if you're a college student or a pro, do not include an objective statement. I have absolutely no idea where objective
statements came from. None mind you. Because it would never make sense to me at
any point in our existence why anybody would put something that they want on a document
intended to show what you offer. So an objective statement is typically what
is your objective in seeking this job, in your career, whatever it might be. There's no place anywhere in the resume for
that. There're other vehicles that you can use. The email or the cover letter or some other
things. But definitely no objective statement and
for both of you, students and professionals, your education should also not be the first
thing somebody sees. They'll get to it soon enough. Even if you're a college student. Resist the temptation to put your education
at the top. Your degree is not a voucher to anything anymore. You need more. Employers are looking for more. So you got to give them more upfront before
they get to your education. The other thing that you shouldn't do is don't
go right into the current company that you are working for. And I'll explain in detail why we don't want
to do this. But if this is your place to shine and show
them who you are in all your glory, at least at a summary level, starting with where you're
currently working is just going to answer the question where are you now. And then they're going to have to look through
the rest of the resume to figure out who you really are. So don't put your company in there. We're going to talk a little bit more about
that. I'll give you some more clarity on that. Don't put tables. Don't put tables anywhere in your resume,
but especially not at the top. Especially not at the top. Tables are boring. They oftentimes don't include the right information. Applicant tracking systems don't like them. So don't put tables up at the top. And whatever you do, and nowhere in the resume,
but especially not at the top, should you be putting any opinions about yourself. So these are things like those meaningless
buzzwords that say that you are detail oriented, a strong communicator, a leader, or whatever
it is that you think you are and may very well be. But on a resume you need evidence to back
that up. So don't put those words anywhere. We want you to put evidence inside the resume
so that you can show the employer that you are a detail oriented person, great leader,
organized, or whatever it might be. So those are things that I don't want you
to do. Now I want to talk a little bit more about
conceptually what's going on at the top of the resume. Some people think "Well, I need to have a
lot of white space there. It's more pleasing on the eye. People have a difficult time, if there's a
lot of text there, skimming the text. And I've been told that I should list my skills
at the top and all that stuff." Now let me answer a few of these for you very
specifically. I want to actually show you a little something
about skimming. And I thought this might be a pretty decent
way to do that. Look at this sentence. I bet it doesn't take you but a mere two seconds
to read that. Or that. Can you make that out? If you can make that out give me a hey in
the chat or something. Say whatever you want. But I'm guessing that you could read that
sentence no problem. Absolutely no problem. Let me go back to my face for a second. I'm assuming you can read that. Imagine what a trained recruiter can do with
a few seconds when those words are spelled correctly and they see hundreds of resumes
a day, day in day out for years and years and years. So you guys get my point. If I know what I'm looking for and you are
giving me the right kind of context to frame it, I can pick that up in a nanosecond. So trust me when I tell you, this is what
I'm talking about. Now imagine these samples I'm going to show
you and I want you to just for a second think about how you feel just about the way they
look and the content that you're going to see. Let me switch back here. But let's take a look at John Smith. What do you know about this guy? He's a Senior Project Manager. See all that other stuff. Look at all that. To me, those three words he put there senior
project manager was really all I needed to know. It was all I needed to know because all that
other stuff below is stuff that any project manager would know. Especially a Senior Project Manager. I already know that. So I wouldn't even spend any time looking
at it. What about my girl Jane here? Look at Jane's profile. So in Jane's instance ... Now I want you to
also cut me some slack here because I had to frame these together and I made the font
bigger at the top because I had more real estate to do that. But assuming that all of these were the same
font and you took a look at Jane's profile. Look at her. So when I look at this, I can see Senior Project
Manager on the left. Information technology, Fortune 500, financial,
healthcare, software development, 500K, two mil, 525. I could get all of that in one or two seconds
and I know I am going to absolutely love looking at this resume. Now, below that she has this core competencies
paragraph. If you see that. Notice how in John Smith's case with the table,
I just listed all the exact same 12 things. Now, here's the interesting part. In John Smith's case I just blew by it. In Jane's case she held me up at the top because
I really wanted to kind of soak in that first paragraph because it looked like the way the
text reads is that she's got rich words in there. I can already tell there's more factual words
and interesting words rather than those buzzwords in there. The second paragraph. I want to go back to me. The second paragraph in the Jane Doe one where
she had the two little paragraphs. I wouldn't even have read that. I wouldn't even have read that. That's okay. That's not the point. She already had my attention. And she had laid the foundation which if I
would have read the second paragraph would have made the second paragraph believable
to me. John Smith, he didn't do any such thing. He gave me nothing, so I have to go by that. So now he basically wasted two and a half
inches of his resume telling me nothing. Some people, however, might read Jane's second
paragraph with the core competencies. They might look to see does she have anything
out of the ordinary? But you know who's going to read that paragraph
100% of the time? The computer. The applicant tracking system. Remember resumes are not solely for people. They are for hopefully people. That's the goal is to get them to the person
and then to wow them and then to get the interview, but you also, a lot of you, are going to have
to get them past the applicant tracking system. Well the applicant tracking system is going
to pick up the second paragraph of the second example. Jane's example. The applicant tracking system is not going
to recognize the bullets in the hidden table that's inside the Microsoft Word doc that
you looked at. So applicant tracking systems don't like tables. They don't like graphics. They don't like acronyms. They don't like a lot of these things. The research has shown this. And a lot of the tools that are out there
support this and educate us on that. So my experience of looking at over a half
a million resumes tells me the second one works more effectively. My informal interviews with hundreds of companies
who are my clients tell me that. The surveys that we run with side-by-side
samples of resumes and ask people to choose the preferred format tell me this. And the applicant tracking system tells us
this. This is why the top center of the resume is
so important. And if you think for one second that you are
repeating yourself, Jane Doe put together a profile that immediately got me excited,
gave me a frame of reference for what I'm about to read and she put my bias on the positive
side because now I'm excited. John Smith on the other hand put me to sleep. And when I have to go through all these resumes
if I'm a human resources person or a recruiter working for a company and I'm getting all
these, it's not exciting to me. I'm not in a great mood when I get down to
the rest of your resume. But Jane gets the benefit of the doubt. So you get to control the narrative plus for
all of you career changers, for all of you that are staying within the same types of
jobs, but maybe you want to get back to your roots or something that you did three years
ago or eight years ago, you can pull a lot of this stuff forward. This is why it's so important to have a career
profile. You get to say whatever you want to say up
top. So the top center. Stay away from those things that I told you
to avoid and this is more in line with what I would do at the top center. All right. Let's talk about point number two. There're lots of formats that are out there
and I favor, always have, always will favor, the chronological format. And I guess technically, specifically I mean
the reverse chronological format for the work experience section of your resume or the professional
experience section. Whatever it may be. That simply means you've got the company name
at kind of the top left of that section, then maybe you have a little line or two about
what the company does and what you're doing within the company, then your title, then
your responsibilities, and then your previous title and those responsibilities, and so on. And then the further back you go in time,
those companies, list those out in order as well so that your first company or the longest
ago company that you have on your resume, whenever you decide to cut your resume, is
at the bottom. There are other types of resumes. You guys have probably seen them or heard
of them. The skills based resume or the functional
resume. The skills based resume highlight those features
you have. So in John Smith's example where he has project
management or quality assurance testing or whatever, he might call those out and then
highlight the companies that he worked at where he actually gained those skills. The reason that those styles, those layouts
are ineffective is number one, the second question that an employer has after who are
you is where are you. Think about it. I know a lot of you are senior people. You're in my programs. You're in my community. You follow me. You email me. And you comment on my stuff. And I know you're in your 40s and your 50s
and your 60s. And a lot of you are hiring people. Think about when you get a functional resume. What's the first question you want to know? Where are they now or where were they most
recently? And it's very difficult to tell. So employers, hirers, HR people, recruiters,
whoever it is, they like to see that chronological order. Shows them the evolution. The other thing that the skills based or the
functional based resumes do is they put suspicion in the mind of the recruiter like you're trying
to hide something from me. As a matter a fact, I kid you not, when I
get a functional resume, the first thing that goes through my head is I now start looking
at what are they trying to hide? That's actually where my attention goes. So think about that. You've now put me in a position where I'm
looking for something bad like a gap in employment. I don't mind if you have a gap in employment. Show me where it is. So just really, really stick to the chronology. It's much easier. It's much easier for everybody to follow. Now, third point that I want to make is about
the way in which you articulate yourself in the bullets themselves or the sentences that
you write, whether it's in the career profile or I also recommend a career highlights section
for those of you that have the Andy Lacivita template. But I also want you to focus on your accomplishments
and your benefits. And I'm going to give you a little sample
on the PowerPoint here of what I mean. But employers, and I say this a lot in my
resume writing programs, that it's not just good enough to show them what you did, employers
want to know what you did, but they really want to know what happened as a result of
what you did. What happened as a result of what you did? So let me give an example. I'm going to flip back here to the screen
and let's leave Jane and John here. So if you manage the customer service department
with 10 employees ... I see a lot of resumes that say I manage the customer service department
with 10 employees. What doesn't this tell me? Are you a good manager? Do your people get promoted? Do they love you? Actually are your customers happier? Have you done anything to streamline those
processes or whatever? So this probably has some place on the resume. It could probably be broken up, it could be
buried, it could be up in the summaries, but I would much rather see a bullet that said
something like I raised customer satisfaction 33% by designing and implementing processes
that reduced time to answer customer inquiries by half. I put something in place. I put something in place that made our customers
a lot happier. Because it only takes two minutes to get back
to them or they only have to stay on hold two minutes and I can answer the question
in two minutes instead of eight. So these are the kinds of things that I think
are very, very important for you to get onto your resume. Whether you're putting them in the highlights
section, which you should be, and putting them in the professional experience section,
which you should be. Do's and don'ts. If you focus on making sure that the top center
of your resume sings and gets people excited to read it, you make sure that you lay it
out in a great format chronologically that's easy for them to see what hopefully is a nice
career evolution for you and there's tons of ways we can handle all your exceptions
and I've got a video out there on every single one of them. So you can find it whatever your issue is. And the third thing that I would do is I'd
make sure your focusing on your accomplishments and your benefits in addition to what your
responsibilities are. All right. Hope you enjoyed that. There was no way I was getting all that in
in three and a half minutes or four minutes or whatever my little TV segment was yesterday,
but I wanted to bring it to you, my people, because I get to be the executive producer,
the talent, the sound engineer, and everything else related to Thursday Live Office Hours
with Andy. So if you're loving this give me a thumbs
up, give me thumbs-
