GETTING STARTED ON THE JOB MARKET

OVERVIEW

The job market is somewhat paradoxical. Employers, whether corporate, nonprofit, quasi-governmental or academic, share much in common. Except for extremely technocratic or executive level jobs the following tenets holds true. Essentially, they want the most for the least; but in another sense they want younger, dumber, and cheaper. They want wisdom and maturity but they want new blood and the malleability of youth. Also, younger is more impressed by titles and non-essential perks, and generally healthier. On the one hand, they don’t want to spend big training bucks, but on the other they want to mold you in their personal corporate image. Don’t come with too many preconceived notions of how it should be done; so, too experienced or educated can mean too independent and a free thinker, therefore you won’t follow the company line. While they want education, quality experience is given more weight because classroom learning cannot replace hands-on. Too much experience, however, may render a candidate too old and/or too rigid and that is bad because the person commands or expects a higher salary, and could be heading towards declining health and retirement, which also translates to more expensive. Of course, these are generalities, but historically they are accurate in their broadest sense.

In the strictest sense, for the employer it’s a balancing act of ‘not this without that’ or you can’t have it all. Let me paraphrase that because it is equally applicable to the job seeker. You cannot have everything you want…there is no ideal job…you will have to compromise and take some of the bad to get the good. The job of the résumé, then, is to slant the odds in your favor and put you in the best bargaining position to get more of the good than the bad.

Of course, certain professions revere age and wisdom. They don’t generally look for an American-style résumé, but rather a European-style curriculum vitae (CV), and that is subject matter for a different article. Suffice it to say, it largely applies to positions of preponderant erudition such as advanced academes (Ph.D.), published writers, religious leaders and prelates, diplomats, politicians, scientists, doctors, lawyers, exhibiting and performing artists, and the like. For our purposes here, we will be dealing with the job seeker in their early to middle years of experience with moderate education.

While education is important and necessary, experience is preferable and weighs more heavily in the job market. Therefore, we will choose formats in the order of how much hands-on experience one has.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT!

So, you need to get a job and searching the job market! Well, pertinent skills aside, there are only two things you need to have: presentation and tenacity.

The foregoing may sound overly simplistic, but if you are reading this article it is axiomatic that you have prerequisite functional skills in the career of your choice, or are in the scholarly pursuit of same and have basic job hunting know-how. If not, get yourself to a bookstore or library to bone up on interviewing skills or other job search topics.

The sole purpose of this article is to comprehensively provide you with the rudiments of preparing a résumé designed to make the employer sit up and take notice when you are searching the job market.

Having said that, we reiterate our first two caveats:

* Presentation — You have only one initial opportunity to unlock the employer’s door and impress him with your potential value and that is achieved by your résumé. Once the door is unlocked, it will swing open incrementally by how well prepared, logical and encompassing the information. The more enticing the content, the more eager they will be to meet you.

* Tenacity — Looking for a job is a job in itself. Treat it with the same discipline and fervor you would put into performing the actual position you are seeking. Sitting on your duff waiting for the perfect job to miraculously drop in your lap is not going to do it. Be proactive and relentless. The race goes to the swiftest. And make no mistake about it, looking for a job is a race in which you are trying to outrun a densely-packed field of competitors. Of course, be focused and selective in your search. Don’t wallpaper your city with 1,000 résumés. You will dilute your effectiveness. Mass mailing and form letters are akin to sending flyers addressed to “Occupant.”

Remember, résumés are an appetizer best served hot. Prepare a delectable appetizer and you make them hungry to meet you. The sole purpose of a résumé is to present oneself in a flattering light, enticing enough to pique the prospective employer’s attention and motivate them to call you for an interview. In other words, it is a succinct promotional flyer with an air of sophistication and erudition showcasing your particular talents in a focused fashion. It should employ economy of words, making each one count and respond to the underlying imperative Sell! Sell! Sell!

Put yourself in the shoes of the employer and sell yourself to him. Keep critically asking yourself as you read what you have written, “Would I hire myself based on this résumé? Answer honestly. Own up to your deficits and rework.

No doubt you have heard the saying, ‘the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.’ Well, the same is true of résumés. You don’t want to take a circuitous route to tell the employer who you are and what you can do for him. Why take ten words to say what two words will accomplish equally well, and in shorter time.

While a strong vocabulary is a plus, alternatively the task can be accomplished using clear, concise language which, after meaningful content, is grammatically correct with absolutely no syntax, spelling or punctuation errors. Again, you are counting on first impressions to carry you over the wave of other competitors who are sliding their résumé in front of the employer. Keep the content succinct, focused and positive.

Think about it, the current job market is glutted with applicants!

If the firm is old school dealing with hardcopy, the employer must glean through hundreds upon hundreds of résumés for each position they seek to fill. This translates to mind-numbing hours of reading. After the first hour of any employer’s day, they are seeing spots before their eyes, their neck is stiff, and they are only glancing at the résumé, at best. Cut through the blur by getting to the point.

If they are computerized with a scan-driven database, the computer only picks those keywords which meet the basic search parameters and prints the resulting select few résumés for human review. We’ll pause for you to reread this paragraph and let it sink in.

Either way, they are certainly not hanging on every word as if it were a mystery novel. In fact, don’t make your résumé a mystery or a novel. What you do should not be clouded in obscurity of fact or language and it better not be a work of fiction since it is verifiable and may well be checked against the signed application you fill out, if you get that far.

If you lie on a résumé, it will be assumed by the employer that you are liar. If you lie about one thing, even if it’s a white lie, you probably tend to lie about other things. Moreover, liars and thieves are generally lumped in the same category. Not a winning attribute for a job seeker in any field, whether you will be handling cash, secrets or paperclips. Better you should err on the side of caution and be truthful. And never, never resort to superfluous hyperbole. Obvious exaggeration looks childish, subtle exaggeration is akin to lying.

In keeping with that thought, this segues nicely into the topic of language and content which is a multi-edged sword. You don’t want to be too elementary or you will sound undereducated. You don’t want to sound as though you are using words you don’t understand in an effort to sound impressive. You don’t want a choppy awkward flow. The language should be a comfortable fit and read mellifluously. If read aloud, it should roll on the tongue like vintage wine and be equally tantalizing.

That is not to say you shouldn’t elevate your vocabulary by a degree or two. It is laudable and certainly beneficial to use language that rises above your current station in education and employment. There is an old personnel adage which roughly goes “Dress for the position to which you aspire, not the one you currently hold.” This is also true of behavior, speech, and writing. If you were not afforded the advantage of advanced schooling, you needn’t feel relegated to monosyllabic responses. Incorporate better words in your job descriptions but be absolutely sure they are correctly used and that you know their definitions. It could prove embarrassing on an interview to not understand what is written in your own résumé. Make the dictionary and thesaurus your friends. They will give you ample definitions and lists of alternative words meaning the same thing.

The flip side of aiming for a higher language plane, however, is that you run the risk of having it seem contrived. In my office, I have a framed quotation which over the years I have frequently pointed to. It reads: “Basic events require simple language. For example, to the question “What did you have for breakfast” which answer is preferable…the upper part of a hog’s hind leg with two oval bodies encased in a shell laid by a female bird…or ham and eggs?”

David Belasco, the great American theatrical producer once said, “If you can’t put your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.” And that is the essence of a résumé: Keep It Simple and Straightforward. This acronym KISS is the mantra of all sales successes and your resume is a sales tool.

GETTING DOWN TO BRASS TACKS!

While we can’t give you a crash course in professional writing, this article culled and adapted from the instructions handed out to clients visiting our office should be a good first step. It will walk you through the necessary steps to properly pick a format, correctly name topics and logically sequence information. It has saved us both unnecessary time which would have been wasted on one-on-one coaching to elicit the necessary information verbally.

In marketing, one is told to mention the product three times as a means to make it stick in the reader’s mind. In that vane, you will see us reinforce certain advice by repeating it throughout the article. This may seem contrary to our warning not to be redundant. In this case, however, for the sake of reinforcement it is necessary.

In the following pages we will give you targeted recommendations and follow through with suggestions for succinct wording and formatting, all designed to capture the reader’s attention, focus on your qualifications and get you that all important invitation for an interview. After that, it’s up to you!

We will be discussing format, layout, and styling as it affects appearance and practicality, components and headings as determined by résumé type, and finally content with regard to absolute veracity versus allowable spins on the truth, also known as “Is the cup half empty or half full?”

FORMAT, LAYOUT, STYLING

Formats should be simple, straightforward and follow in logical order depending on the focus you have chosen. That focus may be strictly functional or chronological or a hybrid.

Once you’ve determined the focus, the best format is one which leads the reader’s eye from category to category easily, since recruiters usually speed read or skim

over the résumé. The average time they take to review a résumé on the first pass is 10 to 15 seconds—longer, if something catches their eye and warrants further attention.

In the 21^st century e-mail and scan-oriented computer age, it is not a good idea to use fancy borders, shadowing, shading, extensive graphics or logos; never photographs and moderate use of bolding and italics. Character sets vary between software, so a bullet or fancy arrow in one software might not be available in another and can be misinterpreted in the electronic conversion process.

Ideally, to save time, money and labor you want to have one dual-purpose résumé which can be used for aesthetic presentation for human appreciation when printed, and scanner friendly for the computer to “look” at. This is almost impossible to achieve. So, alternatively you create the master résumé in a visually appealing format for human consumption and then create a spin-off which contains the same content but in an extremely simplistic unadorned e-mail/scanner friendly format. This format will be flush left, without bolding, italics, diacriticals, or graphics. It’s a bland format but the computer doesn’t care. Some government agencies will tell you in their vacancy releases to send the simplistic version.

The computer database doesn’t equate information in terms of pages, therefore you needn’t cut out important information to save space. The information is absorbed by the computer through optical character recognition (OCR) which is spread out as a stream of data. The most important factor to a computer is completeness of content. When you are called for an interview, bring along the more attractive version.

If possible, the aesthetic version should be kept to one standard letter-sized page and is achieved through the magic of typesetting which allows you to compress a gallon of information into a quart container (the single page). This is accomplished by a combination of font and leading. More than one page is permissible but only if the extra space is not due to redundant information or excessive spacing.

Fonts are comprised of typeface (style of lettering) and size measured in points (how large or small). Some typeface designs are more space consuming than others because the characters are wider. So two different typefaces both in the same point size may consume slightly different amounts of space.

Typeface is an aesthetic issue. There are two styles.  Serif are curvy ornate styles and plain, straight, unadorned styles are known as sans serif (which means without curves). Generally, sans serif fonts are best for technical résumés in the fields of engineering, information technology, science and the like. The most popular are Universal, Helvetica and Ariel. A little bit more curvy, soft style is used for all others. The serif style is most commonly seen in Times derivatives, Times Roman, Times Omega, etc.

In addition to font size, compression allows you to put more information on a page by squashing the space between the lines (leading). If full single spacing is valued at 1.0 or 100%, you can reduce to 90% (.9) or 80% (.8). The danger to going lower than that is the lines will nest on each other and can prove illegible or migraine-inducing to a human being and confusing to the OCR scanner. The danger with the latter is that characters will be misread. So it’s a delicate balance of small font and degree of compression.

RÉSUMÉ COMPONENTS TO BE CONSIDERED ON THE JOB MARKET

It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the key parts of a useful résumé. The following is a list of the various components in no particular order and in some cases somewhat interchangeable, but with finer shadings of definition. Except for the heading, logical progression depends largely on the type of position you are looking for.

• Personal Information Header
• Profile/Summary (contains Objective)
• Key Qualifications/Skills/Strengths
• Expertise/Erudition
• Credentials (Licenses & Certificates)
• Experience/Employment/Work History
• Accomplishments/Distinctions
• Education/Training/Development
• Internship/Externship
• Professional Memberships/Affiliations
• Community Activities/Volunteerism
• Honors/Awards
• Publications
• Immigration Status
• Military Experience
• References and Salary History are listed on a separate page

Some or all of the foregoing categories, which may share commonality, can be used depending on whether they apply-to the direction you are taking and whether you possess the required information for that category. Perhaps you will only need as few as four or as many as ten to flesh out your background.

DON’T PROCRASTINATE ON THE JOB MARKET!

Schedule an appointment with yourself by blocking out an hour or two of uninterrupted time when you are most rested and hassle free with a clear head.

You will need a lined pad, pencil with eraser, red pen for editing, dictionary, thesaurus or antonym/synonym guide, old job descriptions from a co-worker’s résumé or given to you when you started in the position. Later on, when you’re ready to keyboard the résumé, you will need access to a PC with word processing software such as MS Word or WordPerfect.

Your workspace has to be conducive to thought and reflection. Not too hot or cold. No distracting noise or activity. Either total quiet or soothing background music, if you find total silence a distraction in itself. Choose a comfortable chair and table or desk with ample space to spread out your resources. Alternatively, a stiff lapboard in an easy chair next to a side table for your materials will suffice.

Don’t pick the day when you’re exhausted, hungry or have a head cold to prepare your résumé on the fly, in a hot noisy room with kids running about and the stereo

or television blaring.

Now you’re almost ready to get started, but…

WHERE ARE YOU GOING ON THE JOB MARKET?

Before you begin, sit back and contemplate the big picture. No doubt you have been thinking about your work situation for a little while now, and have been mulling it over in your mind. Now is the time to marshal your thoughts together and begin to construct an outline.

OBJECTIVE

The first question you must ask yourself is what is this résumé intended for? What are you looking for? This is called the objective.

The following are some options which cover everything from recent graduate, experienced worker, returning homemaker, to retiree looking for part-time employment:

• You’re uncertain. You just want a new job and it can be in any of the areas where you have experience.
• You are a trainee needing to be totally trained.
• Your experience is supervisory, or mid to senior management such as AVP or CEO.
• You are a recent graduate of college or technical training, no formal experience, or slight experience from internship, seeking entry-level.
• You are seeking a vertical promotion within the same company.
• You would like a lateral promotion to another unit, similar position, same company.
• You desire a transfer or relocation in the same company with same or related status.
• You are pursuing a new job in the same field at another company.
• You are planning a career change into an altogether new industry that shares nothing in common with previous positions.
• You are segueing or making a transition into a related field which has some commonality to your previous position.
• You are doing an about face and changing back to a position/field previously held.

This may seem obvious, but be patient because you will soon see how what you are seeking affects the logical order and focus of the résumé.

WHICH KIND OF RÉSUMÉ WILL WORK BEST FOR YOU?

Your objective will dictate the kind of résumé you need: functional or chronological.

A chronological résumé lists employers/job titles in reverse date order with job descriptions under each job title. A functional résumé isolates the targeted function, and ignores irrelevant job descriptions. In some cases, a hybrid style combining the two is indicated.

Functional

If your objective is in keeping with currently and previously held experience, where you have been repetitiously doing the same thing, you will want to follow a functional format. A wise human resource recruiter once said, “Someone with 14 years in similar positions may only have one year’s diverse experience repeated 14 times.” In terms of résumés, why keep repeating the same body of experience ad infinitum? In the interest of economizing on words (hence, space), outline it thoroughly once and then list the places where you’ve performed that job.

If your objective reflects divergence from previously held jobs but has some commonality, you would extrapolate those functions and skills pertinent to the job you are seeking to show the prospective employer that you are qualified to get the job done.

If you are only recently graduating college or completing a training program, with no commensurate hands-on employment, your body of acquired knowledge or erudition

is the functional component. It allows you to draw attention to your best skills and away from your experience.

Chronological

This category applies if:

• Your objective is open, and you are just looking for any job for which you have experience;
• You have been in a similar industry with progressively more responsible and dynamic positions;
• You are too young to be claiming a “body of knowledge” and you’re just happy to be able to prove that you can hold a job;
• You have held the same job title but in different industries, therefore different responsibilities indigenous to varied industries; i.e. all administrative assistants may answer phones, schedule appointments and type, but vastly different responsibilities are attributed to a medical or legal assistant;

Hybrid

This category is a combination of the best of both. It allows for more flexibility because you can use a profile of skills and strengths and still have a chronological listing of experience.

WHEN ON THE JOB MARKET A BRIEF PAUSE TO CONSIDER TOP DOs & DON’Ts

Now, you know what kind of job you want (objective) which has helped you determine the kind of résumé to use (functional, chronological or hybrid).

Shortly, you will be starting your template and outlining the rudimentary information, to be fleshed out later. The outline doesn’t have to be artful – just factual and brief, conveying the gist of what you do or did. In this early stage, a laundry list of responsibilities and tasks for job descriptions will suffice.

Take a minute to store the following tidbits in the back of your mind.

1. For the aesthetic printable version, don’t create poster art with too many fonts, shading, frames, boxes, etc. Don’t use a point smaller than 9. Bolding, underlining and italics should be used conservatively. Since we live in a digital world, when the document is translated to a database through downloading/ scanning, etc. you want less chance for the GIGO syndrome (garbage in-garbage out). In other words, if the software misinterprets your cosmetic attributes important information on the résumé will be garbled and deemed “garbage” and cast aside.

2. You should always use specifics. Don’t be vague or obtuse, thinking you are baffling the recruiter by hiding the ugly truth. They want to “see” you warts and all. Of course, nobody said you couldn’t use some camouflage or concealer to de-emphasize your bad or weak points.

3. You need only give an employment history for the last 10 or 12 years searching the job market. We are in an age-oriented market and if your history goes back too far you’re telling the employer roughly how old you are. If you’re very young go back to the first job after high school or college. Additionally, if you can go back ten years what you did in year ten is more important than what occurred in year one.

List your employment in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent first.

Indicate months and years in dates, e.g. either 2/2018 or February 2018. Do not precede single digit months with a 0; it is not necessary to use double digits such as 01 for January, etc. Never indicate day of month. And try to avoid using just the year.

Employers are suspect of years without the months because they cannot tell if you worked two days, two weeks or several months in that year. If you can’t remember the exact month, jolt your memory by reminiscing whether it was winter, summer, etc. Once you home in on the season, zero in on the month by remembering what else you were doing around that time. If you are slightly off, it is better than not showing the month at all. It all goes to credibility from the recruiter’s perspective.

4. On a corporate or non-profit résumé, don’t provide street addresses and zip codes for employers on the job market. A résumé only requires the city and state of employment. When you fill out an application you will be required to give full information. Don’t provide telephone numbers and supervisors’ names. It’s not necessary on a résumé. Again, when you fill out an application you will be required to give full information. However, a federal resume is a combination of résumé and application, so you’ll need to supply not only street addresses and zip codes, but also supervisor’s names and telephone numbers.

5. For education, unless recent (less than five years), omit dates. Once again, you red flag your age.

6. Try not to have gaps between employment dates of more than a few months, unless explained by education or parenthood. Big gaps create big questions. The recruiter could jump to the wrong conclusion such as prison or long illness as the explanation for no work for such a long period. By the way don’t write “stay-at-home mother” or anything similar on the résumé. If it is a big sticking point, mention it in your cover letter. And be careful! Everyone has families but employers don’t like to think your family comes first. Strange but true for the job market!!

Avoid listing too many short-term jobs of a month or two. Certainly, omit anything of a couple of days or weeks. You appear to the recruiter as though you are a “jumper” which could mean short attention span and easily bored, fired for cause frequently, or general instability. If it was a summer job state that parenthetically under the dates.

7. Don’t include salary information or list references on the résumé when scanning the job market. Those belong on separate pages called a Salary History and a Reference List.

8. Don’t use abbreviations when on the job market. You may know what it means in your industry but a recruiter may not. If you use an acronym such as CNA it could stand for Certified Nursing Assistant or Certified Networking Assistant, so put the full name in parenthesis: CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant). The exception to this rule would be if spelling it out would look silly because the acronym is in such common usage. For example: IBM (International Business Machines) or 3M (Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing).

9. Try not to use industry-specific jargon. In law, putting facts in chronological order is often referred to by a shortened version called “chroning.” The recruiter not familiar with legal jargon wouldn’t have a clue what you mean. Exceptions to the rule would be words in common usage such as fax (facsimile machine), phone (telephone).

10. In literary pieces numbers or numerical values from 1 -10 are written out (one, two, etc.). However, for the sake of drawing the eye to numbers in a résumé such as “decreased shrinkage by 10%” or “supervised as staff of 9” it is allowable to use Arabic designation.

11. Don’t use diacriticals on foreign language letters such as umlaut, grave, circumflex, tilde, etc. (e.g. José, über, Moreño, etc.for the job market). In scanning, this will be totally misinterpreted and consequently the name or word will be misspelled.

12. The understanding of a résumé is that it is written in first person with the “I” never written. So you would not say “I prepared invoices for accounts receivable department” but rather “Prepared invoices etc.” It is not written in third person, e.g. (he) provides. Use verbs in present tense for current jobs and past tense for previous jobs. Don’t use verb forms ending in -ing to start sentence, e.g. preparing, providing. Start the bulleted sentence with the verb in the proper tense and end the sentence with a period. It is not acceptable when searching the job market to leave a sentence without the proper punctuation at the end and résumé sentences end with periods, not question marks or exclamation points. If you are listing true phrases then you may separate them with semicolons.

13. You needn’t write a procedure manual for each job description with tons of minutiae when searching the job market. Just touch upon the overall responsibility and most important tasks and accomplishments achieved in performing that task. But be sure to include key words which the recruiter and computer will pick up on in the electronic version, when searching for the qualified candidate. If it doesn’t see the right key words for the position to be filled, your résumé will be passed over.

14. Proofread thoroughly using your eyes. Spelling and grammar checking software is great, but there are certain errors it will not discern—only you can do that. Employers tend to discard résumés they find with errors. Their logic is if you are that cavalier about such an important document, how meticulous will you be with their work.

15. No personal information such as health, age, marital status, religion, political affiliation, gender orientation, etc.

16. The approach you should take is serious but not dour, meticulous but not obsessive when searching the job market.