January 2005  Email this  Print this
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CAREER
A New Resume for a New Year
by Kimberly Lankford
The beginning of the year is a perfect time to give your résumé a major makeover -- even if you aren't looking for a job. It's important to be prepared if you're suddenly laid off, a headhunter contacts you or you see an ad for the job of your dreams. And if you have just completed a performance review and your accomplishments are fresh in your mind, the timing couldn't be better. Carl Dombek learned the hard way last June just how much the rules of résumé writing had changed after Genworth Financial eliminated his public-relations job. Instead of asking for a paper résumé, prospective employers requested an online version -- and Dombek's nicely laid out, bulleted lists turned to gobbledygook when pasted into an e-mail.
To get up to speed, Dombek worked with an adviser at DBM, a national outplacement counseling firm, to completely overhaul his résumé. Ultimately, he landed a PR job with the Small Business Administration's disaster-relief program in Florida. The lessons he learned could serve you well.
Create an e-mail résumé. In addition to a version formatted in a word-processing program, such as Microsoft Word, that you can attach to your e-mail, cut and paste the text sans formatting into the body of your e-mail. (Face it: Some companies don't open attachments.) For the e-mail version, keep each line under 65 characters and replace bullets with plain old asterisks, says Kim Isaacs, director of ResumePower.com, a firm in Doylestown, Pa. Isaacs also recommends pasting a cover letter into the e-mail, even if the employer doesn't ask for it. "The cover letter doesn't always get read, but it's a great place to sell yourself," she says.
Include critical words. Many employers dump résumés into a database and search for key words to narrow the field. "You can be the perfect candidate for the position and never get found if your résumé doesn't have the right language," says Isaacs.
The magic words are often job titles, skills or areas of expertise related to the position. "For accounting, it could be mergers and acquisitions, IPO, divestiture. In human resource management, it could be international compensation. In information technology, it could be a specific language or software package," says Emory Mulling of the Mulling Cos., in Atlanta, which provides career-transition consulting services.
"The best way to figure out key words is to look at ads for your target job and see the kind of language employers are using," says Isaacs.
Skip the objective. Forget the idea of starting your résumé with your objective. That's a waste of prime real estate at the top of your résumé. Obviously, your objective is to land the job. "It's just a bunch of fluff," says Mike Worthington of ResumeDoctor.com. "A job seeker has less than ten seconds to grab the reader's attention. You should use those seconds wisely."
He recommends starting with a brief headline that explains who you are and how your expertise meets the employer's needs. Then hammer home your skills, with five to eight bullet points that spell out exactly why you're the best person for the job.
"The summary of qualifications is the place where you position and package yourself," says Marty Weitzman, president of Gilbert Career Résumés, in New York City. "It sets you up so that when recruiters pick up your résumé, they can see that you're what they're looking for."
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