Three Guidelines for Excellent Résumés…

Recently, I had the priviledge of presenting the following speech to the Shanghai Women Leadership Network (http://www.womenleadershipnetwork.org/). SWLN is a phenomenal new organization “with the aim to empower professional women and entrepreneurs to connect, share and develop as strong leaders in the workplace and bring positive change to our community through philanthropic activities.”

There is no denying resume creation is a challenge particularly since so much is at stake. The field itself is fraught with all sorts of advice, some good, some not so good. Years ago the resume was a boilerplate document. In today’s hyper-competitive market, the resume must be considered a combination of business writing and advertising copy. I strongly recommend emphasis be on the latter. Some call it a personal or strategic marketing tool.

Writing is an art form, and in any creative process, there is much that must be left to the artist’s discretion. On a day-to-day basis, professional résumé writers such as ourselves work diligently to present their clients’ unique backgrounds in the most favorable light.

As you consider your own document in today’s workshop, keep in mind excellent résumés are sales-focused, relevant, visually appealing, quality-oriented, and succinct.

Three guidelines will lift your resume above the fray…

• 1 — You are the product & the solution
• 2 — The Sizzle
• 3 — The Quality Factor

1 — You are the product & the solution

A famous US businessman, Ted Levitt, once said, “People don’t buy things, they buy solutions to problems.”

The prospective employer has a problem or many problems and they are looking for someone with solutions. You are the product and you are their solution.

In all of your dealings with prospective employers and particularly in your resume, keep a constant emphasis on you as a problem-solver with a tremendous skills base. That means documenting tangible, verifiable achievements and talents highly relevant to the specific job listing. This is not a time for either modesty or over-embellishment. If you are newer to the workplace and don’t have a lot of experience, demonstrating leadership in organizations such as this one or reflecting competency at a high level in difficult disciplines such as sports or the arts can help employers better understand your character and skillset.

We recommend having a generic resume and then customizing a specific one for each job posting you are applying for. The manner in which you present your skills must be closely mated to the needs of the employer. Remember you are the product. That also requires you to tailor the resume so you appear a good match or slightly exceed the qualifications of the position. You don’t want to promote yourself as overqualified since that is as bad as underqualified and will result in a rejection. While promoting yourself as the product the employer needs, we move on to bringing the sizzle…

2 — The Sizzle

This concept is how the employer develops intrigue in you and provides the impetus to want to bring you in for the interview. how does this happen? With a strong summary section right from the outset. I am a bigger proponent of a bullet pointed keyword section vs. a short paragraph given how little time we know employers devote to each resume. Both formats can work however bullet points are easier to skim over and absorb. Choose action verbs and nouns which are relevant to your talents, the industry and the job listing. Avoid the use of empty terms and cliches such as “team player or fast learner” which don’t really convey valuable information to the reader.

When you focus the document on the challenges you’ve already solved in the workplace, use as much quantitative info as possible and front load it to the top and left of current and prior job descriptions. What can be said in words or numbers is always better stated in numbers. By doing so you are having more impact on the reader and using their time efficiently which they will appreciate and are likely to want to spend a bit more on your resume. Lastly is the quality factor…

3 — The Quality Factor

The resume is the only chance you get to make a first impression. It must be impeccable in design, relevance, and language use. There is no excuse for errors to slip in. This is one of the greatest areas of failure we see; mis-spellings, mix of British English & American English, and awkward grammar and punctuation. Not to mention a tremendous amount of Chinglish which will not stand up to scrutiny in an international business setting at higher levels of responsibilities.

When you believe you have a finished product, we recommend re-reading it three times; once for strategy, relevance and design, once for grammar, punctuation and spelling and once backwards since it breaks up the mind’s ability to gloss over sections and you are more likely to catch subtle errors.

The takeaways for today are:

1 — You as the product, you are the solution

2 — Bring sizzle to the document

3 — Make it one of unquestionable quality

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