Hi everyone.
Andy LaCivita, founder of milewalk and the milewalk Academy and awarding winning author
of the Hiring Prophecies.
Here with this weeks episode, I am so excited about what we're going to talk about today,
which is how to build the ultimate professional resume.
Not only am I happy to share this with you, but I'm glad I'm now going to have a video
to point people to for the hundreds of requests I get a week to just glance over my resume.
I'm really, really thrilled, because I know this is something a lot of people struggle
with.
It's very confusing.
It's not a fun or natural act.
I'm just super excited to do this with you today.
Just to give you an idea, I have looked over 500,000 resumes in my life.
As an executive recruiter who matches job candidates with hiring companies, I see a
lot of resumes.
I have personal experience.
I understand what resonates with me, but I also see the way that my customers, the hiring
companies, react when they look at job candidates resumes.
What I've done is I've stripped it down, I've looked at many of these resumes, and I've
curated and developed what I think is the ideal professional resume for virtually any
job that you have.
I think it works in 95% of the cases.
Before we get in, I want to talk about a few little concepts about the resume.
The resume itself, the goal, there's only one goal, the resume has only one goal, which
is to entice an employer to speak with you.
That's it.
That's the sole purpose the resume has.
It's not a vehicle to ask for what you want.
It's not a vehicle to tell them what you're going to do if they hire you.
You can use emails and cover letters for that and the job interview itself.
It's really just a vehicle to entice them and to get them excited about you, so that
they want to speak with you.
Now, before we go any further, this is going to work a lot better if you actually have
a template of the resume that I'm going to speak about in front of you.
There's a download button in the notes.
The great thing about video is you can pause me and download that.
I think it'll be easier to follow along.
It's the template and there's some instructions in there, I'm going to refer to it as we go
through it.
While your doing that, the goal for to day is really about helping you understand how
to think about the resume, what the format should look like, and give you a template
and some instruction as to how to fill it in.
It's not to write the resume for you.
I have other training and coaching activities for that.
It's really about just getting you comfortable with what the resume should look like.
If you have any specific questions that's what the comment sections are for.
Let's dive in.
As you can see, on the top of the resume, where your name is, I suggest first and last
name only.
The less the employer has to digest, the better.
You don't need to use 3 names, 4 names or other symbols or hieroglyphics at the end
of your name.
If you've got some credentials you want to put them there, that's fine.
I suggest sticking with first and last name.
It's cleaner.
It's easier for them to remember.
You don't want to tax them any more than they need to be.
Underneath that you got your street address, your city, your state, but there's a couple
of items in your contact information that I want to talk about.
Phone numbers, I get all kinds of goofy stuff.
People using their home numbers.
Google numbers.
The best number to use is your cell phone, so that they can get you directly.
You should have a professional voice mail message on there.
You don't want to use your home number where you've go the kids in the background screaming
or the dog's barking.
While I may think that's funny, because I have dogs and I understand what that's like,
why risk it.
You want to use your cell phone, so they can actually get you and you want to be mindful
of your voice mail.
It shouldn't be cheeky and funny, it should be professional if you're going to be fielding
voice mails from employers.
You're wondering, I probably spent about a minute on the phone number, you're going to
love what I do with the email address.
The email address that you place on the resume should have a couple characteristics about
it.
You need to think about, it's not just your contact email, it's what the employer does
with it.
I always recommend that it's personal and polished.
I would prefer johnsmith@gmail.com, as opposed to ilovedogs@gmail.com.
Let me tell you why.
You want them to keep seeing your name.
If they're going to contact you and send you an email, you want them to be able to go into
their system and just type John and have your email pop up.
A lot of these Mac mail and Outlook and Google mail, they retain that email address.
Don't have them hunt for your resume to find that your email address is ilovedogs.
These are things just to think about.
As we get into the rest of the resume, now this is just your contact information and
your name, it's the first thing that they're going to see.
You want to think of the resume as a funnel.
It starts large and you want to assume that they're going to read it from top down.
You also want to assume that at any moment they can jump out and stop or they can get
interrupted or disinterested.
You want to make sure that you start out with a bang and you give them a full digest of
who you are and what you offer, because you want to entice them.
That's the first thing they're going to see.
You don't want to ask, it's not, as a I mentioned, a vehicle to ask them for what you want, so
you don't want to put what you're seeking, what you want, what your preferences are.
You want to start planting ideas in the employers mind as to how they can deploy a great asset,
like you, and the value that they're going to get.
I recommend, as you can see, the career profile.
This is your Reader's Digest version of who you are and what you've accomplished and a
summary of your skills, that's it, three things.
Who you are, what you've accomplished, and a summary of your skills, so they have an
idea.
They get a collection of information.
It's a snapshot.
If I can take 28 years of experience and strip it down to 26 words, you can certainly take
your professional life and put it into 2 paragraphs just so that they understand who you are.
I want to spend a little time on this one, because I think this is extremely important,
because it's the first thing they're going to see.
You do want to get them excited.
Let's take a couple of quick examples that are opposites, I'll try to hit as many people
as I can.
I know I have a lot of sales people that are out there, that follow me, that email me,
that we recruit.
If you're a sales professional, the who you are, the what you've accomplished, and the
skill sets that you've developed might go a little something like this, "I'm a seasoned
sales professional who has, you generate revenue by securing new customers."
That's what it is that you do.
If you want to talk about that, it's, "I'm a seasoned sales professional," or you might
want to talk about what it is you sell, hardware, software, pharmaceutical products, whatever
it might be, "Who has generated revenue of x amount," how many dollars over the course
of your life time.
Remember you're aggregating here, so these numbers and these accomplishments should sound
bigger, because you're aggregating them.
Your adding up all the years of experience that you've had, even if it's 1 year or 2
years or 10 years.
"I'm a seasoned sales professional, who has sold 'whatever the products are' generating
X amount of revenue securing X new customers.
I'm proficient in researching, prospecting, customer relationship development, sales,"
and so forth.
The employer can get all of that in a paragraph or two.
Now they've got a snapshot and a memorable breadcrumb of you, of who you are.
Now, you might say, "Well, I'm not a sales person," or "I'm not a marketer," or "I'm
not something like that."
Let's take something just totally different.
For all of you hostesses out there, I love to go to my favorite restaurants.
I love people that greet me.
Well, if your a 25 year old hostess and you've been hostessing for 2 years.
Think about what you do.
You answer the phones.
Your organize the tables.
You greet the people when they come in.
You can say that and you can say, "I'm a hostess," or you can think of it in terms of what you're
actually contributing to the health of your restaurant.
Let's say you work 5 days a week and every day that you work your 8 hour shift or 10
hour shift, you work for a great restaurant who seats a hundred customers a day that you
seat.
You've been working there for an entire year.
That's 5 days a week, that's 100 people a day, for 50 weeks.
That's 25,000 people that you have greeted.
Are you a hostess or are you a hostess who has performed reception duties, who has greeted
people, who has handled over 20,000 or 25,000 customers per year for the life that you've
been doing this.
Think in those terms, you can encapsulate that.
I'm a hostess who works at a 4 star restaurant, who greets 25,000 a year, your proficient
in reception, organization, and customer service.
You get the idea.
This really can work with whatever your profession is.
You need to think about what it is that your actually doing.
Kind of in the terms of a noun and a verb.
That's the career profile.
That's just a little Reader's Digest of who you are.
The next section is where you start to build that excitement.
You want to talk about your highlights.
This is that 3 to 4 bullets of your major, major accomplishments in your life.
Now, when you think about what employers are interested in understanding, employers, they're
actually very simple.
No matter what it is that they do, they want to generate revenue, they want to save costs,
or they want to optimize the foundation or processes or overall structure, so that their
company is healthy and stable.
Those are the three home runs.
If you can think in terms of building, improving, optimizing, increasing the overall health
of the company, those are the highlights that they're going to be most interested in.
If you don't have that many years of experience and you haven't done something that has been
quantifiable or has as major an impact as that does, think in terms of what else you've
done.
Have you coached people?
Have you taught your fellow employees?
Have you optimized processes?
Have you written white papers?
Have you done anything that contributes to the growth and the health of your company
that you are personally proud of?
That's the highlights section.
Now they're really starting to get excited.
Here again, thinking in terms of the funnel.
Thinking in terms of they can jump out at any moment, this is what you're leaving them
with.
Now let's get into, let's actually get into the body.
Now, there's a couple of keys to victory in the work experience section or professional
experience section, whatever it is that you want to call it.
This is a listing of the organizations that you've worked at in reverse chronological
order, that's number 1.
Second this is you want to list the companies on the left side and slightly indent your
titles.
Reverse chronological order, companies, work titles, responsibilities, and so forth.
I'll take you through that.
Now, why do you want to do it that way?
People think in terms of time.
They think in terms of chronology.
They want to look at your track record of achievement.
They want to see your history, the decisions you've made, your evolution within your companies
and across companies.
It's very difficult for them to do that if you start listing your responsibilities and
then the companies that you worked at where you held those responsibilities.
It reads like a Rubik's cube, it's very difficult for them to understand that.
You want to stay in reverse chronological order for those reasons.
The second thing is, you want to put your company on the left side.
Some people that I see, they put their title on the left side.
While you might not think this is a big deal, there are a couple of really key points here.
The first is, for me, when I read a resume, I actually look at your name, I look at your
highlights or your career profile, something to get a good sense of who you are.
Then, I race down the left column to look for the companies that you've worked at.
The first thing I'm looking for, are those good, well known companies?
Do they have good pedigree?
Is this individual likely going to be coming from a well cultured organization?
That's important.
Second thing it tells me is, does this person consider him or her self a team player?
If I see your title, it's almost like you care more about yourself than you care about
the employer.
It might sound subtle, but your sending these messages and you're not there to clarify.
They're not there to talk to you yet, they're just looking at a piece of paper.
You want to make sure that these subliminal messages that you're sending are positive.
The other thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that you show some progression
within your titles.
It's best if you can show a nice evolution, if you can't, you can't.
That's another thing you want to make sure that you're doing.
Make sure that it's reverse chronological order, it's companies on the left, it's titles
slightly indented.
What I like to do, and as you can see this from the example, not everybody know what
companies, the companies that you worked at, what they've done.
What they do.
They could be very, very well know companies in your space, but a future employer might
not understand what it is that your organization does.
I recommend, that right underneath the company name, you put a one sentence description of
what that company does, what their goal is, what their contribution to the world is.
Just so that I have a sense.
Are they a product company?
Are they a service company?
What is it that they do?
Is in a nonprofit organization?
Whatever it might be.
Then, as you start to go down into the detail of your title, what is it that you are, in
a sentence, responsible for.
Is there a mini collection of highlights or responsibilities that you can give the person
a good perspective without actually having to read all the bullets.
Don't assume that they're going to read all the detail in your resume.
They read it like an outline.
That's what most people do, that's what I do.
Are you continually enticing them to read further?
That's another thing you can do.
You want to make sure that when you get down to the bullets and the specific accomplishments,
and I stress the word accomplishments.
There's activity based resumes, which includes what you were responsible for.
There's accomplishments or benefits based resumes, as to what your actual contribution
and benefit was to your company or it's customers or the people within the organization, whatever
it might be.
I have more detail on that in some other articles that I've written, which I can point you to
at the end.
As you keep rolling on down, there is the education.
Education, list your school, list the years that you attended, the location of the school,
and list the degrees that you got.
If you did not get a degree, you want to note that.
How many credit hours did you actually accumulate.
Are you currently in school?
When is your expected graduation or completion date, whether it's for an associate's degree,
a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, whatever that might be.
Then just list all the schools.
At the end, this is kind of your catch all section.
I call it extracurriculars or volunteer activities or other notable accomplishments and feats.
It could be anything from nonprofit activities, board activities, mentorship programs, volunteer
programs, anything that you do that is germane for them to know.
I generally say stay away from hobbies and other things, that while important and interesting
to you, might not really be germane for the employer to know.
There you have it.
You want to start with a career profile, that's the Reader's Digest of who you are.
Then you want to go onto your highlights.
What are your major contributions to your organizations and it's constituents, it's
customers and those types of relevant parties.
Then, your work experience in reverse chronological order, listing the companies, your titles,
and your responsibilities.
Then, your education and then your extracurriculars.
I hope you enjoyed this weeks episode.
If you'd like more information on resume writing, if you go to the Tips for work and life blog
at andrewlacivita.com and simply search on the word resume, there' probably a half a
dozen articles there that you can see and get more tips and tricks.
I also have an entire book dedicated to job interviewing.
It's called 'Interview Intervention: Communication That Gets You Hired.'
I give that away free, the eBook to anybody that signs up for the Tips for work and life
blog.
I also have an entire book experience that is on the front page of the milewalk academy.
If you go to milewalkacademy.com and you see the Interview Intervention experience, click
learn more you can get access to an eBook, all the audio, I've recorded all the chapters,
there's chapter notes and guides, helpful job interview guides, and other things that
are great aides.
I hope you download those.
Then of course, the ultimate resume template that is included in this post.
I hope you download that.
I hope you enjoy it.
Lots of luck.
See you next week.