What have you accomplished?
I hope that over the past few days everyone has gotten a few ideas for the framework of their resume. In order to “get into the game,” you need to have a clean looking resume with the major points discussed in the past few days “looking good.”\r\n\r\nNow that your resume has been selected for further examination, what you write in your accomplishments or bullet points can make the difference between your being picked or discarded in this final round.\r\n\r\nThe issues you develop for this section can take a lot of forms, and I don’t have a strong preference. All I can say for sure is that they all need to be well written with no typographical errors. While they should be in some kind of order of importance, moving from most important to least important, they also should be of interest to your reader and effective in “selling you” into the jobs you find of interest.\r\n\r\nThe FENG is about networking, networking and more networking. Still, the job leads you find in our newsletter and elsewhere can be helpful to you in creating a more effective document.\r\n\r\nGo through a week or two of newsletters and print out opportunities of interest, ignoring geography. I assume you can do these jobs. And, based on what YOU know about your background, you feel these are a good fit. Now, the question is whether or not your resume is selling to the key “must haves” outlined in these position descriptions.\r\n\r\nUnderline the key words in each position description and try to find these same key words in your resume. If you can’t do it, reread your resume to determine if you have left out experiences that you felt where not as important as others or if you are just using the wrong language to describe what you have done. Words are important.\r\n\r\nGo at this idea over and over again, especially when you are applying for specific jobs. Sometimes the unique language of an industry should be used, and other times a more general wording is more appropriate. In these cases, having resumes for different purposes is a good idea. If you feel you must know what resume you sent for a particular job, save your letter and the resume you sent on your hard drive. These days, storage is cheap.\r\n\r\nRead your accomplishments to someone else and find out if they understand each one. If you find them restating what you just said, consider changing the language to make it read better. In resumes, less is always more. And, simple is best.\r\n\r\nI had a discussion with one of our members recently about the job title of a position he was considering. The idea was that the title was a little less than he wanted it to be. I suggested to him that what he might accomplish in this new job would be of greater interest to a potential employer when he next changed jobs than his title. And so it is.\r\n\r\nYou get paid for what you finish. Measure your deeds and make them easy to repeat by those who might present your credentials. If you do, you will have accomplished a lot.\r\n\r\nRegards, Matt
