It’s all well and good to speak in the abstract about creating a theoretical resume for some imaginary dream job. It’s another thing altogether to be thrust into the flesh-and-blood situation of searching for work to support yourself and your family. For that reason I sat down with my good friend Juha who had recently been placed in that very same predicament. He had been working in the technology field with the same company for fifteen years. As the company fell on hard times, he and his co workers found themselves out in that scary world of the unemployed. We talked about his experience of preparing his new resume to secure that elusive job interview.
Fifteen years. That’s a long time to work for one company these days.
Yes it is. It was a job that I was really happy doing, but then came the day that the company started to lay everyone off and I needed to apply for a new job. It was a big life change.
How did it feel to get the layoff news?
It wasn’t really a surprise. We were seeing reductions in our workforce every year. My layoff really came at the last phase, so I had some time to emotionally prepare. Still, it’s a scary thing.
What was your thinking process when you had to pull out your old resume and start over?
I realized there was a lot to be done, I also realized that I needed some help in crafting it. I had worked in the same firm for so long that it was difficult to be objective about what I should include on my resume.
What kind of resources did you turn to for help?
I was lucky to have a generous pool of people close to me: colleagues, relatives and friends. It was a real help to turn to people who were not working in the same field. When they didn’t understand a point that I was making in my resume, I realized that I was trying to be too technical. They were also helpful in pointing out how certain skills that I had used could be presented to different kinds of companies. It was also necessary because my resume needed to be in English. I recruited some native English speaking friends to go over my document. It’s good to have friends.
What other resume services did you use?
Right away when we got the news of the upcoming layoff, all of my colleagues and I got together to start a “resume clinic”. We all started writing then reviewing each other’s resumes. We really decided, “Right! We’re in this together. Let’s see how we can help each other.”
That’s smart and unusual.
It is. But it was really helpful. We also had colleagues that had been laid off in the past come to our clinic meetings and give their advice. They were able to tell us what companies had looked for in their own resumes, and they were able to give encouragement to the rest of us. Hope is important in these situations.
You are now in a position with a new company?
I am. So the CV process was successful.
When you went to the interview did they ever mention your resume specifically?
They did. They referred directly back to list of skills and achievements that I had listed. We had specific discussions relating back to those items. Those were the things that really stuck out.
Do you think that the physical composition of your resume had any effect on you securing the interview?
I do. Keeping the information focused on only the most relevant skills and achievements helps your document to stand out. In this case that was really important because they received more than two hundred applications for just eight jobs. It’s an important process, and, in my case, it was a success.
The points that I took away from speaking with Juha were striking. The first is that you should go into the process with a goal in mind and determination. A resume is a tool you use to secure a job interview. It doesn’t write itself, but it takes investment of thought and time. Secondly, I saw that he used all the resources that were at his disposal. He used his past and present colleagues, his used knowledgeable relatives and he used friends with useful skills. Lastly, he didn’t lose hope, and neither should you.
If you would like practical advice in crafting your lean/mean resume, come and join us over at Good Resume Guide.
Good Luck and happy job hunting!
