A Longer Resume

I get the Ask the Headhunter newsletter as one way of keeping in touch with job and employment trends. Recently they had a post about resumes, and whether a 3 page resume is too long.

The post is really good, and covers some of the advice I’ve given in the past. Networking is your best resource for finding a job, and a resume doesn’t get you the interview.

Usually.

There are times that resumes do help. Some hiring people (HR, managers, recruiters) do struggle to get referrals, so they count on resumes. You shouldn’t, but be aware the resume does still matter.

What about Length?

The traditional advice in the US is one page. That has grown to two pages, but is three pages too long? As in the post, what I’d say is that the important thing is that you deliver some value to the reader. Let the hiring manager, or hiring filter person know right away that you are a good fit.

Don’t put keywords first. That’s a waste of the six, 30, or 60 seconds I might give you.

Keep your resume up to date. If I want to hire you, I want to know your current skills and status.

Keep formatting clean.

Tell me what you can do, what you want to do, and give me a touch of evidence to support this. You want to communicate that quickly and easily. Providing supporting information later in your resume, or in some digital profile, is good.

The one thing I’d note is that some individuals get annoyed by long documents. I’d stick with two, but you can do something else if you’d like. There are probably other people that don’t like to see something too short.

Make Me Want More

The idea of a resume is that when I look at yours, compared to others, I’m interested. I want to know more about you. I think you’re a good fit and worth examining closer. Your resume draws me in.

That’s your goal. Remember that plenty of people will submit resumes for the same opportunity. Yours should be relevant and to the point. I don’t have time to review them all, so I’m looking for something that catches my eye and gives me a reason to spend more than 10 seconds examining the page.

Give me that reason at the top.

Format Your Resume for the Manager

I once received a resume from an individual that looked like this.

It was even worse than this, with smaller type, designed to fit the most characters on a page possible and still have paragraphs. There were lines and boxes all over, ostensibly to separate sections.

Perhaps that doesn’t look to bad to some of you, but for me it’s too crowded. Especially as I age, I struggle to read small, crowded type.

The Reviewer

Who will glance at your resume, and give you the 30-60 seconds to decide if they should learn more. They may be young or old, but if they struggle with reading your resume, they may not decide to keep looking.

Even as a 30 year old, I disliked crowded resumes with small fonts. I look at enough computer screens. I’ve seen plenty of websites full of content with lots of ads and small boxes. I am less enamored with small type every day, as are others.

For the 25 year olds that might look, perhaps size isn’t an issue, but why take the chance. These days there’s a trend towards uncluttered, spread out displays, not the newspaper view of days past where white space was considered wasteful.

Use larger fonts, spread your information out, and most importantly, choose those items that make the most impactful statement about your career, or your goals. You pick one or the other.

You can always include links to other places, your website, LinkedIn or some other digital profile. These days, most people have access to learn more about you if they choose to.

Give them a reason to want more by limiting your resume to the best of you.

Touch Your Resume Today

How long has it been since you updated your resume or CV? If it’s been more than 4 months, take 30 seconds right now to look at it and see if there are changes you can make.

If you’ve completed a project, attended an event, written a blog, changed a contact email/phone/address, or something else, update your resume, CV, or online profile now. Take the five minutes to fix things right now.

Tomorrow might be the day that you need to look for a job because of a change at work, or perhaps you’ll hear about a fantastic position next week and they want your resume immediately.

Note: After you update things, send a copy to a friend for proofing.

New Year, New Resolutions

It’s 2016 and time to work on your career.

Much of the advice I’ve been giving, and will continue to press for, is echoed in many pieces I read. For example, here’s a piece from Microsoft recruiters for the new year. It contains many things I’d ask you to do, but I don’t want to overwhlem you.

I like taking small steps, baby steps. With that in mind, let’s look to the year with one new resolution: keep your resume up to date. It’s quick, easy, and low impact to your life.

I’ve written about touching your resume, and you should start today. Take the 30 seconds to look at it and the five minutes to update anything new. If there’s nothing new, maybe there’s something you can reword or tighten up. Being clear and concise will help you stand out over the other bland, boring, wordy resumes out there.

Reminders

Take two minutes right now to set a quarterly reminder. Create an appointment in your personal, not work, calendar. After all, you want to this to follow you across jobs. Here’s what mine looks like:

When it goes off, do what you’ll do today. Pop open your resume and look at it. Does it reflect who you are, and more importantly, who you want to be? If so, take 30 seconds and look forward to what you might change or do in the next quarter. Or why you haven’t improved things.

Make a few notes in the appointment that remind you for the next time of a few things:

1. Items I want to tackle moving forward
2. Reasons why I have’t changed in the last quarter

These are invaluable for looking back at the past and forward. You can refer to these throughout your year to help motivate you.

Don’t go a year without making positive change in your career. Even if you don’t change jobs, have a few reasons that you’re becoming better to show your boss at review time.

Be Awesome in your CV and Cover Letters

There are no shortage of posts and books written on how to write a resume or CV. However much of the advice that I find in various is safe and boring. It seems that being professional has become synonymous with bland, careful, and generic. It's the opposite of being memorable and standing out in the crowd. Remember, you've got to be memorable in the first 30 seconds.

I ran across a post on the StackOverflow blog. This is one of the great technology sites, and I would guess there are no shortage of developers or system administrators that would want to work there. I'm also guessing that they get a huge number of resumes and CVs on a regular basis from people looking for jobs.

In that crowd, where I wouldn't be surprised to find thousands of resumes submitted for each position, you would certainly need to stand out from the crowd. The advice in the post is to showcase what you're good at. Why are you awesome?

For most of us, we're not awesome. We are good, we can be strong, loyal, valued employees. Most of us won't do something that touches the world, but we can showcase the things we do very well at work. I point out that I get things done. I tell about the extras, the volunteer things I do at work that are valuable or useful to the company. I write about a project that I made a difference in, but in a way I hadn't expected.

If you had one paragraph to tell me the bets thing you did as an employee, what would it be?

On Hiring - Getting past the first cut.

I read this post on a company that had to choose who to interview. First, this is a company that is hiring people to interact with others. That's important in how they conduct the interview, but in general, I think many of the tips apply. I've got a few comments on what the post says compared with my experiences.

Reviewing the resume- 150 to 30

This is the part of the hiring process I write about. How do you get noticed? How do you get past the first review? How do you stand out in the 150.
First, no one wants to look at 150. My guess is that many managers do what I do. They look through resumes and the ones they like go in a pile. When they get 10 (me) or 30 (this guy) they stop.
I agree with the list for the most part. I can live with a typo or two, but somewhere around 3 or 4 I know this hasn't been proofed or the individual doesn't understand grammar and spelling. You're filed in the trash.
Don't be vague; be specific. Tell me what you did and give it the detail that's important for this job.
As I've mentioned in my talk, don't be funny. It's hard to do, and you (probably) aren't. If you're not, then you come off poorly. If you are one of the few that is truly funny, besides hitting the local comedy club on Tuesday night, save this for the interview.
I do like the part about numbers. Give concrete metrics that show you get things done. For people in technology, show me that you can monitor a server, or write code quickly, or something else. Here is where I'd link to posts with more details, but provide a good, solid, concrete fact in the resume.
I'd be careful about stalking someone or trying too hard. It worked in Wall Street, it might work here, but for many people, it's a nuisance. More than a few calls turn me off. It's a sign you'll bother me later when you want something and I need to work.
The last thing I think I can show here is that the cover letter matters here. It's being read, and it should be professional and relevant. Take some time with it, have someone else read it (and proof it), and good luck.
I'll tackle the interview thoughts next.

Don't Be Funny

I talk about this in my presentation, and it's time to write about it.

I've seen people try to be funny with sarcasm, irony, or jokes on their resumes. I've seen them try it in blog posts, and even in interviews. Surprisingly, the live attempts work the best because I usually have some context, some inflection and body language.

Trying to write humorously is hard. Very hard. Even when it works, it's often because the reader is being led down a certain path that provides them with a framework for the joke.

Most of you aren't funny at all. On your resume, when I'm in a frame of mind to evaluate your talents, it really doesn't work. You might get a smile or chuckle, but most likely I'll view you as not serious, and a bit of a crackpot. Most likely I'll just chuck your resume.

The one guy that tried to be funny, ended up really strange, and got an interview? We interviewed him only because we were wondering who would put that on a resume. We never had any intention of hiring him. I know, that was wrong and mean, but it happens.

Don't be funny. If you think you are, go to the local comedy club on Tuesday or Wednesday night for an open mike.

Be professional when you want a job.

My most recent job

A question I had recently during a talk was this:

"I worked for a long time for large company X, who many people have heard of. However I recently moved to small company y, which no one knows anything about. I'm looking to change positions. Do I include company y at the top of my resume or emphasize the work with company X??

It's an interesting question, and I have a few thoughts.

The first is that you or I can't necessarily build a resume that doesn't upset some recruiter, HR person, or hiring manager. There will always be people that expect a particular resume format and if you don't provide it, they dislike yours. I have seen people that expect a Summary at the top, your Education next, and then a reverse chronology of jobs, with the dates listed first and then the company name, with your title last.

I can't worry about those people, and honestly, if you're hung up on formatting, I may not want to work for you.

The second thing is that I would highlight my experience in a position or a project first, rather than worry about chronology too much. I would set a chronology on my profile (on a web page, CV, LinkedIn, etc.), but use the resume to convince someone that needs a person to do what I want to do, that I am that person.

Resume Templates

One of the things that I’ve been asked a few times is why don’t I present and give templates for a resume. Most of the reason is that when I show something, cut and paste in the technology business is far too common and I’ll send up with a large group of people using the same resume template and not thinking about how to stand out.

I’m rethinking that a bit, as it’s unlikely that many people will copy something directly, but I’m not sure I want to completely change. However I did see a link in the Brent Ozar newsletter for free resume templates, and I was intrigued. I looked over the list and have a few comments.

Demorfoza Template

I think the Demorfoza design is very clean and easy to read. It breaks things up nicely, but it seems more like an artist’s resume than a technical one. I can’t speak for other industries, but in technology where searching for skills is so prevalent, I don’t want any of my 30 seconds spent reading about skills shown in the upper right.

You might feel differently, especially with less experience. If I were to use this, I’d consider linking (or including a link) with my skills that might go to projects or blog tags that showcase that skill.

Ayoob Ullah Template

This template  is also very esay to read. I might move the “Languages/Skills” to the second page to keep it out of the reviewer’s eye. However the rest of the resume is very nice. Lots of white space, contact information set to the side and a clear space to catch the reviewer’s eye at the top.

Jonny Evans Template

The Jonny Evans template is very appealing to me. I like that the experience is large and centered in the middle. I’d probably be sure that I used this section to highlight projects more than jobs, showcasing skills.

I also like the “Profile” section at the bottom. I’m not sure I’d include a picture, but having a few ways to find out more about me is a good way to control what the reviewer sees. I might also put a summary of education at the bottom and use the “Education” section at the top to emphasize what I want to do.

The one thing I don’t like is the Personal details are a bit large at the top. I might put my name, contact info, and profile link there only.

Fernando Baez Template

This template didn’t do a great job of presenting itself, to me. All of the shots make it hard to read up close and get an idea of what I’d put in there.

That being said, it’s different. It uses graphics to stand out, and I suspect, it would be  challenge to put together. If I were hiring an artist, this would really stand out. For a technical person, I’m not so sure. All the graphs and image would seem to be more fluff and less substance to me.

If the images showcased some software the person had worked on, then I might feel differently, but I didn’t love this one.

Choose Your Own Style

All of these designs are very clean and easy to look at visually. I find them all much better than the standard templates that I’ve seen at so many career fairs and college offices. These stand out, and I would encourage you to choose some design that looks good.

However fill in the details your own way. Choose what you want to include, and that should be the things that showcase why you are a good hire. It’s not that you need to be the best at your chosen profession, but you want to display a high level of competence for the position. Whether that’s a junior or senior level position.

Showcase Your Competence

One of the things I recommend with resumes is that you want to show what you can accomplish. Explain on two pieces of paper, what you can do for the company that is considering interviewing you.

Sell yourself.

That doesn’t mean lie, and it certainly doesn’t mean that you need to be the guru or expert in your field. It means that you need to show what you can do for this position.

A few examples.

The Junior DBA

I don’t expect a junior DBA to have a lot of experience. However I do want them to have some passion and some talent. I’d expect a junior DBA that wants to work for me to be learning about SQL Server (or whatever platform). Blogs, projects, etc. that show me this person is trying to understand more provide reasons for me to call them.

The same impression comes from seeing them ask questions and interacting with anyone that helps them online. I would especially like to see some professionalism and courtesy.

The resume for a junior person shouldn’t be full of low level jobs. I’d relegate those to one liners, like I would for education. Instead, I’d use my parahraphs to talk about what I’ve learned. What I’ve accomplished so far with databases, even if they are contrived examples or exercises.

Senior DBA

A senior person should have lots of knowledge. I’d expect to see evidence of leading projects, performing tuning, giving me examples of solutions to harder-than-average problems on the resume. Don’t “manage 100 instance”. Tell me you’ve setup monitoring and caught issues before customers knew about them. Give me an example of a DR recovery. Show me something that impresses me in a sentence or two.

However be truthful. I’ll ask you in the interview and perhaps ask for references here.

Show Who You Are

The resume is your first chance to impress me with what you know and what you can do. I’m impressed if you worked at Google or Microsoft, but for most companies, I have no idea if it was a challenging environment, or if you rode the coattails of others. Tell me what things you have really accomplished.

And be prepared to talk about them in an interview.

Also be sure that the stories are true if I call your references or previous employers.

30 Seconds

I delivered this talk in the UK, at SQL Bits in Telford last month. As usual, I surveyed the audience to see who hires people and I had relatively few responses. Out of the 50-60 people, only 4-5 raised their hands.

One of them was a lady who hires in the Asian Pacific area, and she said that resumes get 2 seconds for review.

That's it.

She makes a snap judgment and then either reviews them more or tosses them. I suspect she gets far too many resumes that look bad, aren't appropriate for the positions, or something else.

While most people will give you 30-60s to impress them, not many will waste time if your resume doesn't stand out immediately.

That's what this blog, and my talk, are about. Standing out. Here's the image from my deck that I use:

 

 

Build a clean resume. Make it visually appealing. Search for examples that are easy to read, and look good from a distance. More is not necessarily better on your resume.

 

Be concise. Write your descriptions, summaries, etc. in a clear manner that explains what you can do for the employer and why you're a good fit. Include impressive points, but use fewer words where you can. Get the message across quickly and simply.

 

And include lots of links to other places. That way when the reviewer decides to give you more than that 30 (or 2) seconds, they can easily find more information.

Improving Yourself in 2014

What are you going to improve in your career in 2014? It’s the end of the year, and time for New Year’s Resolutions. The advice I’d give you for your career is the same as the rest of your life: make small, incremental changes that you can sustain.

I’ve embarked on the Powershell Challenge in my career, and while it’s moving slow with the holidays, I continue to move along. In other areas, I’m looking to do more development in 2014, and plan to get back to my Learning C# book again. I started it last fall, then misplaced it and got busy. I want to use those skills to build some software, updating my web site as well as building a mobile app.

You should pick something. As I’ve mentioned before, touch your resume every quarter, and think about what you can add. If you can’t add something, or haven’t added anything in the last quarter or two, think now about what you will add in 2014. It might be one thing a year, but make some improvement in your career.

This is a good time to set a goal and continue moving your career forward.

Touch Your Resume

It's getting close to the end of the year. While you haven't gotten busy with the holidays or lazy as work drags, take a moment today and open up your resume.

30 Seconds

Spend 30 seconds thinking about what you've done in the last year. Is there anything that you can change on your resume? New skills you've acquired? A project you completed? Something that would make you stand out from others that do your job?

If so, make the change right now, update your LinkedIn profile (or wherever you keep it) and go about your day.

If Not

If you don't have any changes to make, spend 30 seconds more thinking about why not. Have you been busy in life? Getting married, divorced, having a child, illness, or something else? There are certainly reasons why you might not have anything to change on your resume.

However,  think about whether you can do something in the next 90 days or so that might make a difference on your resume? Work on a skill? Complete some project that helps you or someone else at work? Chances are there is something you can do the next quarter.

Maybe next quarter isn't the time, but you shouldn't go more than 4 quarters without having something worthwhile to change on your resume.

It’s Working–Touch Your Resume

I stress in my talk a few times that you should touch your resume every quarter. It’s the last thing I leave people with, but I’ve rarely heard people come back to me and tell me they’re doing it.

That changed, as a friend mentioned me in his post recently called Dust Off That Resume.

Glad to see the advice is being repeated, and I think it’s the single best thing you can do for your career. Have this up to date, and thinking about the change you make, or don’t have to make, is a good way to keep you focused on your career.

Tell a Story

I recently ran into someone that was changing careers at mid-life. This  individual was trying to move into the SQL world, having had exposure to computers and programming but had mostly worked in another field. This person had been learning SQL Server, working through books and practicing things, but had not gotten any practical experience and was asking for advice on how to structure a resume and break into the field.

Note that I haven’t done this, but here’s my advice from the hiring side: tell a story.

Show me over some time that you have learned things and can relate those to business.

Show me how your past experience in another field is similar to that in SQL Serer, and that you can use logic and perseverence to work through an issue.

Tell me how you learned to do something, with research, asking questions or experimentation.

The past job experience you have in another field isn’t as relevant to me in the SQL Server world as the skills you have, or the work you’ve done to learn new skills. Put those near the top of your resume, and highlight the reasons I should give you a chance.

It’s a change of pace, refreshing, and should catch the eye of HR people.

Social Networking Matters

I checked over at CareerBuilder for their 2012 survey results and found the numbers down slightly, but there were a few interesting things. Of the 37% that checked your profile on a social networking site:

• 65% did so to see if you are professionally representing yourself
• 51% checking for a culture fit
• 45% looking at qualifications

Only 12% were looking for things that might disqualify you. That's good news in that people are using your profiles as a positive way to round out your resume and application. However it doesn't mean that they won't end up finding something that disqualifies you. 34%, a third, found a reason not to hire people from something on their profile.

Watch what you write/post/say, or do.

Resumes - Organization and Structure

A few interesting points from a couple people I talked to  recently. This is some advice that I’m not sure about, but it makes some sense. I won’t go as far as recommending it for now, but I will pass it on. I am trying to talk to a few more hiring managers and recruiters to see how they see the market going.

Replace Objective with Summary

Don’t use an objective. They all look the same. Instead write a short, one paragraph summary of who you are. What stands out about you? This is essentially your elevator, 30 sec pitch about what skills and talents you have. Give the reader three reasons to keep going.

Use Bullet Points

I’m torn on this, but essentially long paragraphs about your projects or experiences are hard to read. Use shorter bullet points, but convey the highlights about your accomplishments or the things that stand out about your career.

Don’t use “We”

Too often people write that a team did something, or we finished a project. The person looking to hire someone doesn’t care about your team; they want to know what you contributed. Don’t lie, but talk about the things you did that contributed to the project. Your contributions to a small, insignificant project are more important than impressing someone with a large project you barely worked on.

Don’t use We, or the Team. Use “I did such and such.”

The 30 sec Rule Applies

People still gets lots of resumes, so try and make yours interesting from the beginning. Give the reader a summary of your skills, and perhaps a summary of a couple things you are proud of on your resume so they are willing to come back and read more, or pass it along to the next person making a decision.

Resumes and Keywords

After delivering my modern resume talk on branding, I sat in on a couple other professional development presentations. One was from a recruiter, and I heard a few interesting things.

Keywords matter.

They don’t need to be at the top, but they do need to be in your resume. The HR people, and some recruiters play the Highlighter Game, talked about below. The higher your score, the more likely they’ll pass along your resume.

My advice still stands. Keep keywords on the resume, but move them to the end. Get the person that reads your resume something interesting to read at the top.

In terms of formatting, break those keywords up. Use categories and organize your skills. Here’s a quick look at what I’d do on my resume:

Databases: SQL Server 2012/2008 R2/2008/2005/2000/7/6.5/4.2

Languages: T-SQL, HTML, Powershell, C#.NET, VB.NET, XML, C, Perl

OS: Windows 2008, Windows 2003, Windows 7, Windows XP

I might not include the OS part, but the categories should be listed in large general ones that the non-technical person can understand (for the Highlighter Game).

The skills should be listed in order of strength, strongest to weakest. Or in order of the things that you want to do to things you don’t want to work on.

The Highlighter Game

Take a job listing and set it next to a resume.

Grab a highlighter.

As you read through the resume, highlight any keyword that is in the job listing.

Add up the score at the bottom of the resume.

Sort the resumes by score.

Not a great method, but unfortunately what recruiters have seen HR people use as a way to filter down resumes. Usually many of the resumes that meet some minimal bar as then reviewed again.

Recruiters Checking out your resume

Using eye tracking software, a series of recruiters were followed for 10 weeks to see what they looked at in a resume. You can read about it, but basically the things they look at are:

• Name and other identity information
• current position and company
• previous position and company
• education

They do this in about 6 seconds and then make a fit or no fit decision.
I’m not sure if that means these are good recruiters or bad ones, but the fact that they spend 6 seconds on average and only look at a few things is a little disturbing.
There’s also the fact that the more organized (titles and sections) a resume is, the more time spent on it. Not much time, but more. A good reason to perhaps organize things in your resume, and move those keywords to the end, as I’ve mentioned before. However inside the current and previous position, include a few mentions of the technologies you’ve been using.
Whether this is valid or applicable to actual hiring managers in companies is debatable, but the fact that someone passes judgment on you so quickly means that you want to make sure you optimize your resume for this quick review.
Clear headings, make the resume easy to read and have the important stuff on the front page.

Have you checked your resume lately?

It's midway through January, and hopefully you are starting the year off on a good note.

A quick reminder that if you haven't touched your resume, or reviewed it in the last 90 days, do so today. Open it up, scan it, and see if there's something you can add or remove. Did you done some interesting work at the end of last year, something that might impress a future employer? Add it now.

If not, close it and move on with your day.

But set a reminder for 90 days from now to check it again.