YouMap

by Kristin A Sherry

  Technical, Promotional

  This individual is seeking a promotion to a more senior role. The emphasis is on her relevant transferable skills and is less focused on the technical skills of an individual contributor. Note the increased emphasis on higher level skills and leadership, as well as illustrating her experience with a larger scope of responsibility.

  Some additional sources of positive, professional descriptors for your professional summary can be found in performance appraisals and emails from managers, peers, and clients that praise your dedication and hard work.

  I encourage you to be proactive about noting your accomplishments and start keeping a “Kudos” document. It doesn’t matter where you keep this document, though I do suggest a cloud-based service that is accessible across all devices such as Google Docs or Evernote. This makes it quick and easy to record achievements when they happen, or even when you recall them, no matter where you are (except the shower, I do not condone phone or computer use there!).

  What goes in this Kudos file? all the outstanding things that you’ve done on the job

  This includes:

  Tangible, quantifiable results and how you made them happen

  Great feedback you’ve received from clients, managers, or even your own direct reports

  Anything you’re proud of achieving

  Skills and Qualifications: Give Them What They’re Looking For

  Skills. Qualifications. Areas of Expertise. However you slice it, this is where you really want to match up the skills the employer is seeking from the ideal candidate with the skills and experience you bring to the table.

  How do you know what the employer wants? They tell you in their job postings.

  Leverage job postings the way Patricia and Kerri noted earlier. Look for keywords and skills that stand out, are frequently stated, and/or are prioritized (listed first or early) in the job posting. You can then take your research findings and align your skills with what the employer needs.

  When it comes to skills, you’re aiming to list skills in your resume without additional description because what you’re really going after are keywords. Avoiding assessment of your own skills is best, as you can’t measure them objectively. This also means you need to drop any graphics or icons that show a visual measure of your expertise in a skill.

  Here are some examples of how to identify keywords for your skills to include on your resume:

  Skill

  Keyword

  Strategic Problem Solver

  Strategy

  Good Customer Service Skills

  Customer Service

  Creating Budgets

  Budget Management or Budget Planning

  I often see “Excellent Communication Skills” included on resumes, but this is not ideal. There are two main problems with this approach:

  1. You’re subjectively evaluating your own skill level, which you don’t want to do.

  2. Recruiters/hiring managers assume you have communication skills.

  Don’t waste resume space on skills that lack impact. Instead, focus on specialized skills that pack a bigger punch.

  The resume structure in which you list your skills need not be complicated. Some resumes use a columned approach. Some include a list that’s centered and uses more of the page width. Avoid text boxes or tables to remain compatible with ATSs.

  I recommend customizing your skill list each time you submit your resume to a new job to ensure it is tailored to the employer’s needs.

  Here are two examples of Skills & Qualifications sections:

  Tip: Add a space before and after a slash (/) such as IT Operations / Quality Assurance. Putting a space before and after the slash ensures the ATS can read and parse two separate skills.

  Professional Experience: Show Them the Value You’ve Created

  The Professional Experience section is the largest section of your resume, often representing half of your resume’s total real estate. Its prominence requires a great deal of attention, care, and strategy.

  Write your Professional Experience section with two core objectives in mind:

  1. Giving context to the roles you’ve held

  2. Highlighting accomplishments and results

  Simple Structure

  When building my clients’ Professional Experience sections, I use a simple, consistent structure with the following formatting:

  1. On the left margin, enter the position title, with the organization name, city, and state (or province) listed below

  2. On the right margin, enter the date range of employment.

  3. A brief paragraph to discuss responsibilities and scope of role to provide context comes next.

  4. Then provide a few bullets to highlight quantifiable accomplishments, results, and achievements.

  It’ll look like this:

  Describing your role doesn’t need to be complicated. Rather than copying and pasting a job description, describe responsibilities that might be unique or unusual to the role or sought-after duties you share with target job postings.

  Watch your words. If you’re using profession-specific terminology, make sure it resonates across the industry and across all organizations. Resumes that are rife with acronyms and technical terminology can fall flat quickly.

  Accomplishments: Amplify Your Strengths

  Accomplishments back up the skills and expertise you’ve included in your resume while also backing up work you love to do. Remember the motivated skills you pinpointed in your YouMap® discovery work? Think about how you leveraged those skills. Your burnout skills, on the other hand, should get no attention on your resume.

  When you’re determining what accomplishments to include, revisit your Kudos file. Or, use Kerri’s stellar suggestion to use index cards to record accomplishments! This approach eases the daunting task of recalling important details by recording bite-size, digestible steps over seven to ten days.

  When you’re ready to start writing accomplishments in your resume, use bullets to draw attention to these noteworthy achievements. The bullets should lead with the main achievement or result. When possible, include numbers like dollars and percentages.

  Quantifying Your Accomplishments: Give Them Your Digits

  When you consider what accomplishments make the cut on your resume, prioritize quantifiable ones.

  Using numbers to illustrate impact is powerful. Numbers on your resume are essential because they quantify impact.

  Here’s how:

  Without Quantifying:

  Orchestrated shipping of a high volume of paper products to clients across Lackawanna County.

  What is high volume to this candidate? How large is Lackawanna County? How many clients do they have?

  With Quantifying:

  Orchestrated shipping of 10,000+ paper product orders to 250+ corporate clients across a 465 square mile territory.

  See the difference?

  For unquantified bullets, put the impact front and center. Some good scenarios to turn into resume accomplishments are:

  Earning a promotion

  Helping someone else earn a promotion (preferably a direct report)

  Building a new process adopted by other departments

  Shifting culture toward one that’s more client/service/delivery focused

  Eliminating or minimizing risk exposure

  Repairing re
lations between departments

  Here are some examples:

   Mentored two direct reports over a six-month period; both received promotions within six months

   Appointed as trusted “go-to” person to handle deal forecasting for complex Fortune 500 deals

   Recovered relationship with a client by uncovering a key problem and overcoming their skepticism

   Worked with external customers to resolve an ongoing sales reporting discrepancy

  In some cases, even accomplishments that don’t appear to be quantifiable can be.

  Here is an example:

  Before

  Participated in a year-long emerging leader program

  After

   Selected as 1 of 10 out of 280 applicants for a year-long emerging leader program

  In all cases, with or without numbers, the how is really important.

  Career Change Accomplishments

  When you’re writing accomplishments for your resume, the goal is to illustrate your experience for the role in question.

  For example, if you’re currently a sales representative and one of your accomplishments is:

  Grew Scranton territory by 25% in only 18 months through emphasis on printer and tablet cross-selling

  Then, let’s say through the YouMap® process you identified a different role that is a better fit for you, like an accountant. An ability to grow a territory through influence likely isn’t a sought-after skill. But the ability to uncover the opportunity to cross-sell additional products is. It reveals that you’re analytical and strategic, both valued transferable skills that would apply to a future role as an accountant.

  So, your accomplishment could be reworded like this:

  Identified new revenue stream resulting in a 25% increase in sales by analyzing historical sales data and trends to uncover high-potential opportunity

  In short, make your accomplishments relevant to your target roles.

  Education: Communicate Your Commitment to Learning

  Education isn’t just a piece of paper. It can be the foundation on which you build your skills or keep those skills up-to-date.

  For an experienced professional, the Education section should be the last, or nearly the last, portion of your resume. For new or recent graduates, I advise leading with your Education (after the Summary and Skills sections) as it’s typically the most applicable to your current career direction.

  When you’re listing your education, you want to lead with the credential itself, then the school, and include the graduation date on the right margin (similar to Professional Experience).

  It’ll look something like this:

  Bachelor of Arts in Economics2012

  University Name | City, State/Province

  When I work with clients who are concerned about their ages, I remove the graduation date. Education is valuable, but its value is eclipsed by work experience.

  Didn’t Graduate College? Don’t Worry.

  I’ve worked with many clients who started a university degree but put their education on hiatus for all sorts of reasons. How do you address this on a resume?

  Let’s say you started a degree in accounting and left university in your third year. Was all your studying for naught? Not exactly.

  This is how I’d capture it:

  Coursework in Accounting

  University Name | City, State/Province

  That’s it!

  This approach achieves a couple of things:

  1. It does justice to your studies by including it on your resume.

  2. It doesn’t raise a red flag that you didn’t complete it.

  Omit Obsolete Credentials

  As you’ve learned, you need to build your resume with your target role in mind. The Education section is no different. It’s best to eliminate any credentials that aren’t relevant to the job you want. For example, will your old Nortel certification help you land a job as a CIO? Probably not. Axe what doesn’t add value.

  Get Your Credentials Checked for Equivalency

  Different countries equal different education standards. When immigrating to a different country, it’s helpful to have your education assessed for equivalency. (Note: There are other benefits and requirements related to the immigration process.)

  By having your education equivalency assessed, you anticipate and proactively answer a question that will likely be asked by a recruiter or hiring manager.

  In Canada, you can check for Government-approved Education Credential Assessment organizations here: tinyurl.com/ya952klw

  In the U.S., you can check here: tinyurl.com/y98epfws

  Community Involvement: Exhibit Your Dedication to Giving Back

  Community Involvement or Volunteering sections add a boost to your resume. However, this won’t make or break your resume. It’s more of a nice-to-have than a necessity.

  Ensure the content you’re including is not too dated. That semester you volunteered for your high school basketball team selling hot dogs and popcorn at their concession stand probably shouldn’t make the cut. But the school board or city council you served on a couple of years back, should.

  My rule of thumb is to include volunteer work from the past five years.

  I’d list volunteer work as follows:

  Fundraising Volunteer2015 – 2018

  Organization Name | City, State/Province

  There’s no need to get into a lot of detail unless the volunteer work was done during a career gap, in which case you can leverage your involvement as work experience.

  If you have only one instance of volunteering in the past five years and it was for less than six months, I wouldn’t include it. This kind of singular experience stands out like a sore thumb and could lead to questions you don’t want. Why was it so brief? Why just one volunteer role? Did you take this volunteer role solely to beef up your resume?

  Personality: Highlight How Human You Are

  At the beginning of this section, I said your resume is a marketing document. It sells your unique value and tells your story. This means that showcasing your personality on your resume is an absolute must. But your resume doesn’t need to be casual for you to sound like a cool coworker. There’s room on your resume for personality and professionalism.

  Use active language and action verbs to create more of a visual in readers’ minds.

  For instance, “Initiated a company-wide health and fitness program, achieving 90% employee involvement in Year 1” sounds a whole lot more exciting than “Responsible for helping peers adopt healthier lifestyles.”

  Avoid using words you don’t normally use, simply because you’ve seen these terms on other resumes. Also, varied word choices help limit overuse. Don’t be afraid to refer to a thesaurus!

  Finally, have fun writing your resume and reflecting upon all the incredible results you’ve created throughout your career. Remember, your story and journey are yours alone, and they have allowed you to make a unique impact at organizations, amongst peers and teams, as well as with clients.

  Now, let’s hear from Lisa Jones on how Academic Curriculum Vitae (CV) formats differ from industry resumes that have been the focus to this point.

  The Academic CV by Lisa Jones

  Academic CVs differ from resumes because they are comprehensive documents. As previously mentioned, there is no magic formula for resumes, and the same holds true for a CV. However, a few critical differences are necessary to appeal to higher education positions including teaching positions, deans, and other lead faculty positions.

/>   When applying for higher level education jobs, include all parts of a resume along with the critical sections listed below.

  Statement of Teaching Philosophy

  This is the first section of your CV and should tell the reader why you want to teach (your passion), how you feel teaching will help shape future practitioners, what tools you’ll use to help reach students and keep them engaged (technology, discussion groups, etc.), and your educational theory (pedagogy).

  Courses Taught

  All courses you have taught should be listed with brief descriptions. Any teaching/training from your professional work experience in industry positions and the military should be listed in this section.

  Publications, Conferences, Research

  Because CVs are meant to be comprehensive, I suggest listing all your work in these areas to show the depth of your knowledge. You are writing for an academic audience so it is best to use APA format for each of these sections (Visit apastyle.org for more on APA format). Leave out items that don’t pertain to your subject matter expertise and those that are outdated.

  Highly Competent Subject Areas

  This section is listed at the end of your CV and should include the following: