Writing Your Best Resume

"By Better Understanding the People Who Will Be Reading Your Resume,
You Can Better Write a Resume that Will Get You the Interview"

First, Consider these Ironic Starting Points:

Most candidates erroneously believe that if the employers have any questions, they’ll call; most
employers erroneously believe that if the details concerning a candidate’s duties, projects worked
on, processes used, staff reports, sales volume, customers/markets served and achievements
are not in the resume, the candidate did nothing worth mentioning.

They will not call to confirm their belief that you have done nothing of interest to them.

If the employers initially think you are wrong for their job, you have probably lost your best chance to
compete for that great position you desire. In this negative assumption-filled environment, good candidates
often fail to be called to interview for positions that they could fill with great personal success and to the
great benefit of their company. And companies go many months "paralyzed" or "unable" to find the right
persons for their key positions, losing hundreds of human-hours and thousands or millions of dollars in
missed work and business opportunities.

If a resume is poorly done, it is an uphill battle to convince a careful employer that the
person behind that poor resume is a more appropriate candidate than he or she appears
to be.

Far too many candidates feel that the resume is merely an annoying formality, so little time is often spent to
write it as a showcase of their knowledge and achievements.

Employers feel that the resume is very critical --especially if several persons are involved in the screening
process or if several people have to be convinced to consider spending their time interviewing a vaguely
self-described candidate.

Ironically, as important as hiring managers view the resume as the most important factor in beginning the
hiring process, they often allot 2 minutes or less to judge an entire life of experiences summarized in the
form of a resume!

The Good News is that It is in Your Audience’s Best Interest to be Convinced that You are Right For the
Job

Imagine your résumé’s reader: A busy person who needs someone like you, but because he or she is so
busy, this boss waits until Friday at 4 p.m. to wade through that stack of 500 resumes, 450 of which are
totally inappropriate for the job. 40 are question marks, "maybes" that almost certainly will never be called
precisely because they are "maybes" and not seen as closer fits. 10 are OK, but nobody stands out above
the rest. Only 3 will be asked to come in for in-house interviews. You are the best
qualified person for this position, but your resume happens to be 499th from the top of the pile. Hungry,
wanting to go home, and weary from having to read so many inappropriate resumes, this manager
somehow doesn't "read between the lines" of your resume and tags you only as a distant "maybe." Your
resume will go into a file cabinet or a hard drive, never to be seen again.

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Sounds unfair? These are just the realities of career building. Even with "internet job boards" and
"keyword search" resume databasing, it all comes down to the quality of the material presented and the
attention span, intelligence and flexibility of the human analyzing the data given him or her.

WE recognize that all sorts of unexpected variables creep into hiring processes, but one of the reasons why
we have posted this page of resume tips is that we prefer to limit the chaos when our candidates are
concerned.

We believe our time, our candidates’ time and the time of our client-companies is better spent working
productively and enjoying life rather than going off on wild goose chases. On a typical search assignment,
we may send resumes of only one, two or three highly qualified candidates for our client-company to
evaluate.

Our client-companies know that we do a good job of identifying the best fits, but we can best understand
your best career options if you give us the right tools to understand your skills, knowledge and
achievements. You see, much of the vagaries of the hiring process can be eliminated if you start out with a
good, clear resume that tells the reader what you have done and what you are good at doing.

Being Specific is Being Understood

Without misrepresenting yourself, write your resume with a thought to the firm’s need.

Structure your resume to demonstrate to the hiring authorities how your expertise and personality fit their
needs. If you really care about your career, do not send out a resume that is a mere recitation of
employment dates, company names and job titles. It tells the reader nothing other than that the writer
either does not wish to take the time to explain himself, cannot explain himself or has nothing to say about
himself.

Employers (and recruiters) hate having to guess. Telephone calls following up on a resume or face-to-face
interviews are best spent building on the framework of your intriguing resume, not doing the tedious filling
in of the blanks.

Never assume your reader will automatically know what you do or what you have done or how well you
have done it. Duties, projects, products, processes, structures, philosophies, sales volume, customer base,
etc. can differ greatly even within groups in the same firm.

An example: if you are looking at a resume of a "Vice President" with past experience at AT&T, what
experience would you imagine that person might have? Computers? Doing what with the computers --
designing them, manufacturing them, selling them? What kind of computers and for what applications?
How many people were supervised and what types of departments were they? Sold to the military, to
supermarkets, to Baby Bells? Long Distance telephone service? For consumers, for large business
customers, for whom? Network Operations, Sales? Consumer electronics? What kind of consumer
electronics? Telephones or Answering Machines or both? Any experience with offshoring or partnering?
Wireless communications? Systems or components? What type? What products? What sales volume?
Responsible for the U.S., Worldwide or some other regional designation? Analog or Digital products?
What cellular format? Microelectronics? Design or foundry focus? What relationship with Bell Labs and
other divisions? Any experience with videographic chips (HDTV)? Switching systems? What kind? What
price level? Wire and Cable? At plants serving only AT&T customers or also sold to outside world? Pure
Research? For what application was the R&D done? What type of budget, what types of people were
working on these projects? Etc. Etc.

You see, the colorless AT&T V.P. resume would have in itself meant nothing and inspired no one to call
for an interview, but by adding meaningful details, this theoretical candidate could give a clear mental
picture in the mind’s eye of the employer of his or her actual capabilities to do the job.

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Be Proud of Yourself and Do Not Be Afraid to "Brag"

Sometimes it is due to cultural reasons or upbringing; sometimes it is a concern that the reader will be
bored by reading so many details; and sometimes a person simply is not sure that he or she has anything
interesting to say about his or her work experiences past and present. If you typically require others to
"discover" your "hidden talents," it is imperative that you break yourself of the habit of being ever humble
and all quiet about what an interesting person you are, at least when it comes to writing your resume. Why
change? Well, if you are reading this page, there is a reasonable chance that you feel your present company
does not recognize your "hidden talents" and because of it you may have been passed over for that key
promotion, raise or bonus.

Look at it this way: if a hiring manager is considering two candidates with remarkably similar
educational backgrounds, job titles, years of experience, etc., but only one candidate thought to say "This
new system that our team introduced saved the company $500,000 over two years" and "As a result of this
new strategy, our company achieved a rise of 28% in domestic sto a total of $8 million," which one do you
suppose would get the offer? The sad fact might be that you personally saved $5 million over one fiscal
year and increased domestic and international sales by 53% to a total of $120 million, but nobody would
know it because you didn’t tell anybody. Don’t miss out on opportunities that should be yours.

Stating your achievements is not saying you are better than other people, only that you are proud of what
you have done. An employer would like to know this information so that you both together could discuss a
better way of doing business.

By the way, when we say "brag," we don’t of course mean "be obnoxious." Nobody likes reading a resume
of a person who describes himself only in clichés. Generic, hollow phrases such as "detail-oriented," "self-
starter," "team player" or egotistical sounding words and phrases such as "single-handedly," "all by
myself," "against all odds," "tirelessly," "world class salesman," "natural leader," and so on do not in
themselves tell a reader so much about the circumstances under which the achievement was accomplished
as much as the psychological makeup of the writer.

Without context, your reader will not give you the benefit of the doubt that you are "a natural leader" (even
if you are) or a "tireless" worker (even though you are) unless you show them what you did. Rather than
use clichés, which often are used by lesser candidates to make themselves appear important, try to let your
actions speak for themselves. Example: A person who supervised three product cycles in a year when
previously there had been one a year is assumed to be "tireless" and may be a "natural leader," since such
an achievement requires the gathering and harmonizing of many departments and individuals. A great
salesman doesn’t have to tell us he is great, just the facts: how much sales increased (percent and dollars) or
what type of new customer base was opened up. These are the details employers want to know.

If you only have a few years in industry and think you have no achievements, you may be surprised to
know that even describing what you do and the circumstances of your duties will be of significant interest
to employers.

Many people mistakenly believe that if they write a resume that is very specific in detail they will rule
themselves out of certain hires, so they write resumes that are so vague and generic that they fail to show
the reader that they have mastered anything or have anything to show for being a "manager managing
staff" or a "project engineer doing projects and interfacing with customers." Tell us rather what kind of
manager you are, what kinds of projects you have worked on, what types of customers you have dealt with.

In the United States in particular, it is expected that the candidate should describe his or her duties and
achievements fully in a U.S. industry-style resume of between roughly one and three pages. The structure

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and tone of the results-oriented U.S. industry-style resume with one’s most recent job listed first (reverse
chronological order) are in direct contrast to traditional CV’s, and in many cases the submission of a
traditional CV for a position with a U.S. firm will yield negative reactions at stateside positions.
Internationally, check the requirements at each company, but increasingly, U.S.-style resumes are being
seen as belonging to more "dynamic" or "internationally oriented" candidates.

Traditional CV’s are nearly impossible to decipher without investing a great deal of wasteful time
contacting the recipient’s references and carefully examining one’s publications. (Reliance on Publication
Lists is itself a bad strategy. They only state titles and your name, but they do not tell a reader what your
conclusions were to a theory or what role you had in the discovery. Did you do 10% of the work or 90%?
Did you work on that project for two weeks ten years ago, while the next publication listed is based on
work you have been doing ceaselessly for the last ten years?)

The resume we require is an efficient document meant to rapidly tell the reader if you will fit a particular
position or not, and if not, to suggest other possibilities to the reader.

We ask that it ONLY be submitted U.S. industry-style resumes.

Good & Bad Leads: Specific Resumes & Vague Ones

One Company wants a specific type. It isn’t you, but your vague resume accidentally leads them to believe
it is. They call you in for an interview. Bad interview. Bad lead.
No offer. Wasted day.

One firm wants a specific type, and your specific resume suggests it is you. They ask you in for an
interview. Good lead. You receive an offer.

One firm wants an unusual, hard to find type. A person with all different kinds of experiences, with
maturity. A fast thinker who doesn’t even have to be familiar with their product--in fact they are the only
company in the world making this state-of-the-art product, so there are no "competitors" where such a
person might be found. They are path-breakers and need another path-breaker who has what they do not
have. A certain kind of experience or knowledge or personality. They see your specific resume. Not
exactly right, but nobody is. That’s OK. They are intrigued by your career. They ask you in for an
interview. You hit it off. You both offer a lot to each other. You could make a real difference here and they
will compensate you well for it. A very good lead. You receive an offer.

"Spelling Counts" & Other Protocols

Run a "spell check" and/or "grammar check" of your resume. After that is done, rest, and re-read it a day
later yourself. Most computers will not register "principle"(principal) engineer or "to" (two) years as errors.
If you are uncertain of spelling or usage, use words you are sure of or ask friends to review your resume.
While many employers ignore occasional typographical errors as trivial accidents, many employers view
such errors in documents as important as resumes as completely inexcusable, as evidence of sloppiness and
bad communication skills.

Use a good bond paper, preferably white, beige or light sand in color. Grey often does not fax or copy well.
Other colors, such as pink or blue or textures such as parchment are unusual. Some resume writing services
claim they will get your resume "recognized" --but as freakish and not serious.

Placement. Picture your resume as a "marketing device," not as a summary of the passage of
time. You are not obligated to give equal space to each job. You might end up minimizing your
valuable experience (and marketability) just so you could fit in some unimportant short lived job.
In one extreme case, we once were told by an employer that he received a resume of an
executive at a Fortune 500 electronics firm with 20 years’ experience who felt it necessary to take
up half a page to tell the world that for a few months during summer break from college he

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worked as a Night Manager at McDonalds. He was viewed as naive and became known jokingly
as "the McDonalds Night Manager" and was not interviewed. It could have been that he either
worked off an old resume and left the college job in or he wished to show some early budding
managerial ability. The brief McDonalds inclusion was unnecessary, as this man currently
supervised 3,000 people at a world-famous electronics firm. The space could have been better
used to highlight his current relevant experiences. As for "Education," if you have full degrees
relevant to your field, put them at the top, above "Employment Experience." If you have
incomplete degrees or degrees in fields not obviously related to your field, put "Education" after
"Employment Experience." The theory is that you always play to your strengths. Let the reader
see your strengths first.

When you dust off the old resume, try not to just add your current job to your old standby. Doing so may
create a lopsided end product. In some ways you are a different person with different marketability after
each job. Others will not automatically understand how it all fits together. It is up to you to shape their
image of you. Show a career progression but do not lose sight of timage you want to project. Aspects of
your present or last job may not be as important to your future employer as those of your next-to-last job.

Size. There are all kinds of theories going around on this one. One says that you devote one page for every
decade of service. The worst one is that "no resume should be over one page--it doesn’t get read if it is." Do
not worry about fitting your resume into one page if you have good achievements and several jobs to tell
an employer about.
But try to get it within two pages. Three if there is substantial information. Four starts looking like a book
and is almost always too much. Remember, you are writing on a "need to know" basis, not a "need to
show" basis. An employer doesn’t want to hear every detail about some job you had briefly twenty years
ago. It is all interesting to you, but it may cloud up the way you are seen. In many cases, people put in
repetitive information about the same job. If you do more or less the same thing as V.P. of Operations as
you did as Director of Operations or Manufacturing Manager, don’t repeat these details, just write it once
under your company data, noting job titles followed by dates you held each respective title.

Chronological Resume or Skills Resume? Generally, we prefer to know "when you did something" and
"where you did it"and "what it was." Context can be important in understanding a candidate’s background,
but in certain rare cases a "skills resume" is a better choice. If you have worked at many different
companies--particularly as a contract employee--the breaking up of your experience by dates does not help
your marketability. It is therefore easier to present yourself as a "unity." Have one section breaking down
your abilities weighted according to your strengths and amount of actual experience, then follow with a list
of dates and names of employers with a few details (products worked on, your title, etc.). Sometimes skills
resumes are useful for people who truly are equally marketable for two different positions, such as QA
Manager and Manufacturing Manager.

Recap: What We Like To See:

1. Your Company Name and Division, Its Sales Volume

2. The Chief Product(s) You Work With & Their Applications
3. The Chief Markets or Customers You Serve
4. Your Dates of Employment (Month/Year preferred)
5. Your Official Title (and translation if it is not clear or industry standard) If multiple titles at one
company, place dates with each title after the title (otherwise the casual reader might think you changed
employers more frequently than you did).
6. Your Duties. Think of answering the questions "who?", "what?", "when?", "where?", and "how?"
Try not to describe yourself as "we" (as part of a group) here. Tell us what YOU PERSONALLY do or
did. Never take credit for things you did not do, but do take credit for things you did do. If you were part
of a group that performed a particular task and achieved a certain effect, describe your role in the group.
7. Describe your achievements in tangible terms, usually in dollar values or percentages of
increase, decrease or improvement. Be aware that you may be asked to document your achievements.
8. If you supervise a staff, briefly state how many people report to you and what they do.

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9. Sometimes it is good to state whom you report to. If you report directly to a President or a CEO
this could be interesting information for an employer.
10. Your Education should accurately reflect true degrees earned or in process of being finished. If
you state "degree expected 1999" be prepared to explain how it will be granted. Do not mislead about
education. Offers have been known to be rescinded upon learning that a candidate has misstated his or her
education. Companies are often very interested in candidates wishing to improve themselves through
higher education or training. Be proud of your achievements here, but please do not pad.
11. Be truthful about your experience, your achievements and your career goals. The resume is meant
to open doors to a future of your own making. Make sure the person you are describing sounds like you
and is the person you want others to see you as. The new job may demand that you be that person they
thought they saw in the resume.

FREQUENTLY MADE ERRORS

Please send a brief cover letter with your resume indicating your current salary, desired salary, desired title,
type of firm or industry desired and location desired. Here are some errors frequently found in resumes or
cover letters.

NO CURRENT SALARY MENTIONED, NO DESIRED/REQUIRED SALARY MENTIONED

LOCATION NOT MENTIONED. If you do not specify location, we assume you are only interested in
positions commutable to you. If you are open to other cities, states, regions or countries, please specify
them, telling us how serious or urgent the relocation might be to you. For example, some people might say
"Hawaii," meaning in an ideal fantasy-world they would relocate to Hawaii. But by specifying that you
wish to relocate to Hawaii, it tells us to only call you about jobs in Hawaii. And there is no need to limit us
to any one locale or region, as we are equally at home placing people in positions the world over.

GARBLED COMPUTER CHARACTERS Unreadable possibly due to unusual document formatting or

unfamiliar font- you may try Arial, Times New Roman, Courier or other standard U.S. English fonts

NOT IN ENGLISH. Please send your resume in English. A resume or CV in the national language may
later be required, but please at this time send us a resume of the type described here.