Your Resumé - Getting Enough Hits?
Making the case for two different resumes
Resumés have always been a popular topic, but perhaps it’s even more important now as layoffs within a still-hot job market have created a flurry of activity (and competition for you!).
There are many schools of thought that you may have heard regarding resumes:
Make sure it all fits on one page
Bullet points and short fragments
Don’t write a narrative (unless it’s on an optional cover letter)
Sound familiar?
You may be preparing your resumé and thinking about the best way to stand out from a crowd. After speaking to many recruiters and HR professionals (and having some decent success “getting noticed” in a sea of candidates), I have some thoughts.
Simple is still best
Overall, I definitely agree that simplicity is best. We’ll need all the essentials including, but not limited to:
Name and contact info (email, phone, possibly city/state)
Industry certifications and degrees
Recent work history (if you’ve been in the industry more than a decade in more than 5 places, there’s fat chance of you fitting all of this into one page)
DATA - yes, that’s in caps, not an acronym. If you’re listing items, give some quantitative data (ex. grew revenue from $100MM to $300MM in 2 years, exceeded sales quota > 125% for 4 years in a row)
Additional information (skills, languages [spoken and programming!], volunteer activities, user groups, special projects, etc.)
Why do most recruiters encourage a format that may “short change” your chance to showcase all of your experience? Depending on the company/role you’re applying for, there are simply too many candidates and resumes to process. As you’ve probably seen while applying, many of these HR systems are parsing your resumé and attempting to fill in your work experience for you. This saves an actual human from the fatigue of sorting through 100s of resumes a day, but it can also feel like it’s stripping away some important data if you’ve included other important info.
One does not simply fit decades of experience onto one page
Look, I hear you. You spent time in the trenches and did years/decades of work. You need to make sure that’s accounted for. You’ll still have to do your best to simplify, but I think going past one page is still acceptable if it’s all relevant data. The overall advice is to work on being as concise as possible, like in the following examples:
When I was at XYZ, I helped lead the Solutions Architecture team focused on Cisco, VMware, NetApp, Dell, etc. as we doubled in size and added a security practice, collaboration practice, and managed services while promoting some first-time managers and providing leadership coaching.
XYZ - Grew Solutions Architecture team from 26 to 42 including multiple practices (Security, Collaboration, Managed Services), and coached new managers
Both examples give the same information that a recruiter would need to assess your experience, but one of them will allow you to get your point across while still allowing you to fit more experience from other roles.
If you’re going to require more than one page, definitely “front-load” with the most recent, relevant information first. For example, flesh our your most recent three roles with the bullet points and most important data. After that, squash everything else onto page two if you feel you must. Use a smaller font, even! Typically, recruiters will take less than 10 seconds on average to scan a resume! So include your most important data on that first page. They can (and will) dig into the rest if they’re really interested in pursuing you as a candidate.
You can (and should) have more than one resumé
It can be hard enough getting one resume down, but I think there are some key reasons to have more than one resumé available. I would recommend a very concise, straightforward one while the second could be more elaborate including a cover page and possibly an infographic. Yes, I said an infographic. This is counter to what most resumé coaches and recruiters will tell you, but I recommend it for a few reasons.
First of all, you are probably applying to companies of different sizes with different HR/candidate management systems. If you’re applying to a behemoth of a company, use a concise one that will probably be parsed by a tool. I’ve heard graphics can get stripped out or “mangled”. If you’re applying to a smaller company or if you get to email a recruiter directly, try the more creative and elaborate one.
Secondly, you will need to seize an opportunity to stand out. Most everyone will be playing by the “standard rules” listed at the top. If you’re competing with more than 100 or even 1000 candidates and you’re not a referral, you will need something eye-catching, like an infographic (there’s that word again!). Remember, you’re trying to catch their eye and make enough of an impression that they reach out to you again.
Lastly, nothing says you have to attach this cover or infographic on your resumé! In this magical internet-connected world, you can link or post the extra data on your LinkedIn profile or personal website. Include that link in your application or directly on your resumé and if they’re interested enough to click on it, give them all the info you want since the “one pager” rules don’t apply if they’re checking out your web page!
OK, so infographic?
You’ve seen these data-driven diagrams before for products and services. We, as humans, are very visual and an aesthetically pleasing image that also tells a story will be noticed and remembered.
Anecdotally, I’ve had a good number of responses to applications that I’ve submitted and when I get a call, they will mention that they liked/loved my infographic since it told them, at a glance, what they needed to know.
As many more organizations claim to be “data-driven” these days, they will want to know specifically what you did including some actual numbers/metrics/data to back it up.
You can easily create infographics for free using a variety of tools, but I like Canva since it has a lot of tools to populate data and turn them into graphs, charts, and other visualizations.
I’ve used the following infographic successfully on cover pages and added a narrative that’s customized towards the role that I was applying for. For example, if you’re applying for a leadership role, include a few sentences about how you built, led and grew some teams. How did it start? How many team members were there at the beginning/end? What was the revenue you impacted?
If you’re applying for an Individual Contributor(IC)/Subject Matter Expert (SME) role, call out the relevant technical experience so the recruiter doesn’t have to sift through your experience to find it. What programming languages are you familiar with and at what level? What stacks do you have hands-on experience with? How many successful products/releases have you shipped?
What about other stuff?
It depends. I think your concise resumé should not have any fluff, but if you’re including info on a cover page or on a linked website, then yes, include some relevant additional info that a recruiter or hiring manager might be looking for.
Examples might include:
Lifelong learner - what are you reading or studying now?
Non-technical training - Emotional Intelligence, Leadership, or Presentation classes
Non-technical associations - community service, animal shelter volunteering, etc.
Should I include my photo on my resumé?
Unless you’re going for a spokesperson or modeling role, I don’t think a photo should be included on your resumé. In recent years, bias (both conscious and unconscious) has been a hot topic and a photo could lead to bias or your resumé could be put aside due to the potential for bias. Sure, they could also simply remove the photo and review, but I think the recent consensus is to NOT include a photograph.
Be prepared and get critiques
It may be a struggle to get your data down into two different resumes, much less just one concise one, but fortune favors the prepared. Carve out some time and take a stab at updating or creating your resume. If you can’t find a peer, friend or colleague to help you tweak and fine-tune your resume, ask for help on LinkedIn or other professional networks. If you’re desperate, ask me =) I’d love to help whenever I can.