The Elements of Résumé Style

Essential Rules and Eye-Opening Advice for Writing Résumés and Cover Letters That Work

Author: Scott Bennett
Pub Date: 2007
Your Price: $24.95
ISBN: 081447280X
Format: Hardcover

• The Elements of Resume Style
• Introduction
• Praise for this book
• Table of Contents
• Request an Evaluation Copy, INSTRUCTOR ONLY!

Introduction
Writers Make Choices

The content of your résumé, cover letters, and other pre­interview documents is really a series of choices. This guide will provide you with an employer's perspective so you can make informed choices. Apply this new knowledge and you will avoid common errors, create maximum impact, and generate more responses than ever before. The choices you make as you write are crucial to generating responses. But there's more going on here.


Why Sometimes You Can Do Everything Right and Still Get No Invitation to an Interview

An error-free, clear, focused, and targeted résumé and cover letter may yield no interview for many reasons.* Here are eight:

1. As bizarre as it may sound, many organizations advertise openings already filled. Advertising such "pre-wired" jobs seems silly, but policies, contracts, or regulations often require it.

*However, if you've hired people yourself, you'll know the following to be true: As an employer, if you receive 200 résumés for an open position, maybe 10 are error-free (if you're lucky). The rest are discarded. Of the 10 without errors, only around five will be clear, focused, and properly targeted. These five or so folks get called for interviews. Creating an error-free, clear, focused, and targeted résumé and cover letter is within your control - and this guide will show you how to do it.

2. Some less-than-scrupulous headhunters trawl for résumés by placing an ad even when no specific position really exists, hoping to attract candidates for potential employer-clients.

3. Sudden changes (reorganizations, budget cuts, hiring freezes, or layoffs, for example) remove the need to fill an advertised opening.

4. Inefficient organizations of all sizes may take months to move from placing an ad to contacting applicants.

5. Mismatch. An employer receives enough responses from other candidates whose skills and experience are more closely suited to a specific position.

6.Timing. A well-targeted inquiry reaches an organization with suitable positions but no current openings.

7.Employer idiosyncrasies. The varied preferences of decision makers mean that the most talented can­didate doesn't always prevail. For example, some hiring managers reject all graduates from certain schools. Decca Record Company rejected the Beatles in 1962 and declared, "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

8. Lack of civility often accounts for the absence of any response (e.g., an invitation to interview or a courtesy letter, card, or e-mail message).

Notice something in common about all these situations? The absence of an invitation to interview in such situations has absolutely nothing to do with you or your résumé or cover letter. These situations are beyond your control. Remember this, or you will mistakenly blame your résumé or cover letter or yourself for the absence of a desired response when none of these is at fault.

Pay Attention to Items Within Your Control

The trick to writing a winning résumé and cover letter is focusing carefully on the many items you can control.

Choose to use the tips in this guide and I believe you will increase the number of responses you receive from prospective employers. Here's why: Your compelling résumé and cover letter sent to carefully targeted read­ers will convey a lot about you even before any response phone call or in-person interview takes place. For example:

* You can organize data and thoughts.

* You can present complex information concisely.

* You pay attention to detail.

* You communicate in a clear and focused way.

* You are enthusiastic.

* You have useful skills.

In many ways, your résumé and cover letter are the "paper interview," and only by winning the paper interview do you have a chance at an in-person one.

Less Is More

Whenever you hear someone say, "to make a long story short," do you ever get the feeling it's too late? That ship has sailed. Again, writers make choices. I am going to encourage you repeatedly to choose your words carefully. The ability to "write short" is respected by most read­ers, including employers. No one is hired simply to read cover letters and résumés. Everyone who reads them has plenty of other work to do, too. If you're lucky, your doc­uments will get eight to ten seconds of the reader's eye­ball time. Direct those eyeballs carefully and use your precious few seconds of attention wisely. Respect the reader's time and you'll be ahead of most candidates.

Your résumé is not intended to list every task you performed at every position. Employers know this. I repeat: employers know this. It is a top-line, highlights kind of document intended to quickly give readers an honest sense of your skills, where you've been, and where you're going. It's not an autobiography. The art of the résumé is to briefly and clearly convey one's expertise and evoke enough enthusiasm from readers to get them to respond. If your résumé gets your phone to ring, it has done its job well.


Twelve Things You Can Do Without

1. Don't make stuff up. Embellishing or exaggerating the facts is the same as lying. When you don't do this, you can never get caught and you can feel bet­ter when your head hits the pillow at night.

2. Avoid automated résumé templates (i.e., "wizards" or other do-it-yourself and fill-in-the-blanks soft­ware). Résumés created using templates look like résumés created using templates. Your résumé is too important. These free or cheap tools are no replacement for time and thought. Remember: employers read many résumés. Identical formats are obvious. Different candidates will quite natural­ly have different résumé sections: Volunteer Experience, Language Skills, Memberships, Field Placements/Internships, and many others.

3. Avoid multiple résumés. Employers want from your résumé what you would want if you were an employer: some clear sense of where you've been, what you've done (this reveals your skills), and where you're going. One résumé provides this. Writing a different résumé for each prospective employer to "keep your options open" is a misery- making enterprise, and employers can detect the lack of direction it represents. Instead, investigate career paths of interest to you (see pp. 3-4 for ideas on how to do this) and focus on one before writing.

4. Don't load your résumé with jargon or buzzwords. Hoping their résumés will get electronically "scanned" for "key words," some candidates insert a lot of specialized lingo. If any reader-an entry- level human resources person or any other reader who appreciates clarity-cannot understand your words, then your résumé will not evoke the responses you seek. Electronic scanners capture plenty of relevant data from résumés that are clear and accurate rather than packed with jargon. Use no mumbo jumbo.

5.If English is not your area of expertise, don't wing it. If you don't have it already, buy and read the latest edition of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White (only 105 pages and around eight bucks) before you write. Really!

6. Don't count on your spell-check. Spell-check is not an editor: form vs. from escapes spell-check, as does their vs. there vs. they're, among countless other such examples. If one mistakenly types copletion instead of completion, several versions of Microsoft Word will suggest replacing it with copulation instead of completion. Use a dictionary.

7. Don't skip the step of proofreading your finished product. In addition to rereading your documents from start to finish to check for clarity, also read them backwards to catch typos. This will slow your reading and allow you to focus on each word.

8. Don't overlook having other qualified people review your finished product. Have your documents reviewed by at least two other people (a) who routinely hire people as part of their work and (b) whose writing skills and candor you respect. Here's the hard part: listen to what they have to say. As writers, sometimes we have to delete cherished words and phrases to create the clearest, most focused documents. It often takes another qualified set of eyeballs to see what needs to be done in this regard.

9. Reject free "critiques" from résumé sellers. A critique from someone whose livelihood depends on converting the critique into a résumé sale is not the kind of critique you need. Stick with reviewers who meet the criteria in item 8.

10. Don't broadcast ("blast") or post your résumé on the Web unless you are comfortable with (a) your co-workers or employers seeing it, (b) headhunters using it without your permission, and (c) format or content errors being sent everywhere.

11. Don't send your documents to prospective employers until you have a working answering machine or voice-mail service on every phone number that appears on your documents. Hoping that employers will call you only when you're home is folly.

12. Don't leave a silly outgoing message on your answering machine or voice mail. If you have such a message, change it to a brief, serious, audible, and clear one (without music) before you send your documents to prospective employers. Being taken seriously is crucial to your successful search.

Mindful of the foregoing, let's now address the common concerns that often—but need not—get in the way of creating an error-free, clear, focused, and targeted résumé.

© 2005 Scott Bennett.
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