Resume what?
Quick (or maybe not-so-quick) rule of thumb about your resume:
You’ve probably heard all of this before, and none of what I’m about to tell you is anything revolutionary-it’s found on the web in various locations, it’s probably been told to you by teachers or career counselors, and I may have even told you myself. But I just want to summarize what I’m finding to be incredibly valuable in approaching your search for a great job.
You should have multiple versions of your resume, depending on what skills you offer and what job you’re applying to.
Example:
You’re a designer, but you’ve done, and would be open to doing, production work or retouching work. A hiring manager (the person on the other side of the CraigsList or Monster.com post) will want to see precisely the resume for the job that’s posted.
I ran into this recently with a photo retouching post. And for purposes of brevity, will say only this: yes you probably have done it in the past, and may even do it now in your job, but if your resume says “designer” or “proofreader” then what makes you a good fit for that project? You are capable, but are you ideal?
Think of it as it relates to another real-life scenario:
You go to your family practice doctor because they have a variety of knowledge. But you wouldn’t go to a dermatologist for a problem with your knee. Now, the dermatologist may have taken a class in bone-stuff (I’m not a doctor, people!) and may be familiar with that area of medicine, but they’re not a specialist in it and you’d probably find a more suited person for this problem.
From the horse’s mouth
The trend that I’m hearing from companies, corporations and agencies lately is exactly the same thing: although you are more than likely capable of performing a task related to your expertise, the person whose resume says they’re a specialist will be more highly considered than yours.
Why? Because of the onslaught of resumes and cover letters received from the web-post of the job, quick qualifiers have to be placed so that the pile of 100 can be narrowed down to 50, then down to 20 they may call and talk to, and so on. Colleges do the same thing by placing limits on admissions with SAT scores and GPAs. Though it’s not evaluating the entire person and a GPA is probably not the best indication of their merit, it’s easy.
SO, make the hiring manager’s job easier-give them exactly what they’re looking for!
Job Search=Self-Marketing Campaign
It’s a general advertising principle (and if you’ve talked to me recently, I recommended that you approach your search like a marketing campaign) that you have to cater to your audience.
Next steps: Know your audience. Learn as much about the potential position as possible so that you send the right version of your resume, to the right person. It may take a bit more effort, it may not result in sending 50 resumes a day, but you may also find that you’re getting more calls back to the fewer you’re sending.
Phew. Sorry for the long-windedness. But I think it works! It helps me as your career advocate, anyway. The more versions of your resume I have, the more quickly I can say to a client “I know just who to introduce to you” and the easier job I have of showing them why. Even though I know what you’re capable of, our clients want to know why we’d send a resume for a designer in reply to a retouching project. And I even talk to clients on the phone before sending them resumes!
[Note: I hope I don’t have to say this, but I will just to cover my own butt. Please don’t take this to mean that you should stretch any of your experiences. Do not create a resume that’s false, misleading or deceptive. This suggestion is simply a way to repackage yourself, with the product being the same. You can’t say you are a retoucher if you’ve never done it. You have to back up what it is you’re marketing, right?]
Technorati Tags: resume writing, self-marketing, specialists
November 10th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Great Blog! Even though it looks like a lenghty entry, once you read the whole thing you realize how beneficial it was to absorb all the information it has to offer. You also realize that you should read it again, just to make sure you get the important points. It is such great advice too! Thanks Maryhelen for always blogging with relevant, important, and sound/strong suggestions!
November 13th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Without being too product-promotional, I highly recommend emurse.com for building and managing multiple resumes. I’m acquainted with the developer behind it and they’ve really built a great product. The free accounts do an excellent job of helping you build a resume properly and then manage multiple versions of that resume. Also, the whole thing is optimized for search so if someone were to search “web developer philadelphia”, they might turn up my resume on emurse!
definitely check it out! (and no, i don’t recieve any kind of promotional kickback, i just think its a really great tool!)