Resume with value not tinsle

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

A good resume is much like a beautiful blue spruce tastefully decorated for Christmas.

I recently worked with a delightful young lady in Virginia who wanted her resume to have a greater professional feel,  one more likely to earn interviews in New York.   With only two years of real-life experience in sales, the resume had only so much to go on. Little is not necessarily bad.

This girl is brilliant; an early graduate with honors from Duke University, civically involved and socially a leader. From right out of school, she’s been an extraordinary employee with her company and branded with accomplishments.

The resume she originally created was well written but lacked a burst of value in the beginning of the resume and was overdone in superlatives, fluff and redundancies. Not that unusual in a early career resume.  Let me be clear, this girl knows how to write and she wrote well, but she wrote a little too much. We needed to come together on what to leave in and what to take out. So back to the Christmas tree analogy.

A spruce tree is a thing of beauty: natural lines, sweet smelling pine, tall and strong. When it’s time to decorate the spruce, the star is carefully centered at the top. It represents the significance of what the tree stands for – a celebration of a birth.

Much like the star, the resume is an affirmation: “I am a star.” A solemn declaration of a winner with education, experience, skills, abilities and accomplishments. I liken these qualifications to ornaments on a tree. Certainly not the foundation for the star. That’s the tree.  Its trunk pushes the star higher each year and multiplies its branches for more ornaments to dangle from. A resume with only ornaments and no tree will not compete in today’s job market.

Now, back to my young client’s resume with her star burning bright. She has good reason to be proud and shout out to the world that she is coming: quality education, overachieving employee, native intelligence, and unbridled ambition.  And that’s exactly what her resume needed to say. But it was shouting, screaming, bellowing an endless stream of embellishments of glitz and glamour that didn’t need to be on her tree . She was good enough without it.  She had cluttered her tree; a veil of glitter, plastic and confetti  was hiding the true value of who she was – a young professional who had real value and would be productive from the first day she landed in a job. Someone to be recognized and considered seriously by a hiring authority.

We stripped away the excessive tinsel, eliminated redundant glimmering balls, and removed the clutter. The final resume still holds her gems and treasures, but it’s toned down. Her core structure now comes through. Those skills, abilities and accomplishments she’s so proud of are easier to read; they pop; her stature is professional . She stands a greater chance for that interview in New York City.

To my point, let your resume breathe. Don’t smother it with cluttered tinsel. Prominently show your value ornaments, succinctly, clearly and accurately. Let your resume twinkle with stylish class under your star.

Resume Misrepresentation – A Bad Idea

Monday, September 14th, 2009

When I sit down with a job seeker to discuss what the best résumé should include, how it will look, and we outline the skills, core values and accomplishments, I make it clear that the end product is “owned” by the client.

What I mean by this is that I’ll craft the summary statement, probe for skills and accomplishments the candidate might be overlooking; I’ll format appealing, easy-to-read pages, and write all of these features in strong, accurate sentence structure.  But the bottom line is that the value of the data, the presentation document  is a product of information solely provided by and confirmed by the applicant.

Those who hire employees on a professional level or recruit know how misrepresentation on a resume can damage the candidate and entangle the recruiter in a frightening mess.

Misrepresentation usually falls into two catagories:

• Making blatant false or misleading statements
• Omission of significant details about background or work history
  • One of the most commonly-caught misrepresentations is stretching dates to cover employment date gaps. This is one of the easiest to catch, since all companies are obligated to give employment dates, but not obligated to give other supporting OR negative information.
  • Showing degrees or technical skills or certifications that aren’t real is another big mistake.  Again, easy to catch.
  • Exaggerating accomplishments, responsibilities, and titles are typical lies. In most cases exaggerating or lying is the lazy way to try and capture dazzle in your value.  Good creative writing with accurate details is a much better way to state your credentials.
  • And finally, some even make up fake employers.

Here’s what any candidate writing a résumé should know.  More and more companies are including a statement that any false or misleading representation during the application process or the failure to disclose an important detail will immediately disqualify the candidate from further consideration of getting hired. Here’s the irony. If you just tell the truth and you have the job description covered, the things that you try to cover up won’t affect your candidacy much if any.

The sophisticated companies are getting better at finding fraudulence.  Don’t get caught. Fabrications will eventually catch up with you. It’s stupid. Background check companies are proliferating. Companies are finding out it’s more economical to invest a little into deep background checks than to make a quick hire of a short-cutting, cheating employee that won’t stop at just fabricating on the application process.

There is no need to cheat!

There is nothing wrong with putting the best possible face on your skills, abilities and experience. You don’t have to resort to lying to win a job. There are ethical ways to address issues like job-hopping, employment gaps, minimal work experience, lack of or incomplete college credentials, being fired or having a criminal record. So, don’t even think of misrepresenting yourself. There are ways of making the résumé outstanding without resorting to hiding things or fabricating.  If you don’t know how, ask a Certified Professional Resume Writer to help you. And remember, you own your résumé and everything contained within it. Be proud of it and who you are.

And if you want to get ahead of the game and become verified as accurate going in on an application or interview, consider this brand new website – http://preverify.com/ . Check it out. It just might help by being proactive with this pre-verification of your background. It’s FREE yet exceptionally creative and forward thinking on any candidates part.

Happy Hunting,

Chet Baker