I know resumes.
Before I joined the CareerPro Global team, I worked in management for two decades, with a dozen or so years spent as the company’s human resources liaison. There were few things I dreaded more than having to place a help wanted ad because I knew I would soon be overwhelmed with resumes. And not just any resumes: boring resumes. After a while, one looked exactly like the next, and they all said the same thing:
WRITER, Company Name, 2000-01
Wrote news headlines.
Wrote text copy.
Wrote artwork captions.
Wrote…
wrote…
and wrote….
Yawn.
That was all wonderful and good, but it didn’t tell me why I should interview one candidate over another—let alone consider hiring one of them. So I had to devise my own methods of choosing:
“This one likes animals, she must be okay.” … “I once knew a woman named Martha, and I didn’t like her. Sorry, Candidate Martha.” … “This man has a lot of experience, maybe I should talk to him.” … “This man has so little experience; maybe I can give him his big break.” … “Can anyone start tomorrow?”
Needless to say, I hired many duds and probably overlooked some talented people.
Every once in a while, however, from out of the blue, I received a resume that was just a little bit different. It caught my attention. It differentiated the candidate. It made me believe that he or she really might be able to fill the vacancy perfectly. At the time, I couldn’t put my finger on what the difference was. The color of paper? The type? Did this person have more or less experience?
Of course, now I know what made those rare resumes stand out from all the rest: ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
When a candidate listed his or her accomplishments in a resume, it gave me a much better picture of that person’s talents and achievements–and potential–then a simple laundry list of duties that someone may have failed in completely.
Accomplishments led me to understand that one candidate had successfully run a print production department with 20 personnel, producing two publications per month, with an annual cost of job budget of $1K. Another candidate’s accomplishments shared that he had been a ghostwriter for seven technical journals, one of which had won an award for most comprehensive presentation. And yet another set of accomplishments allowed me to spot a woman who illustrated children’s books, gave me a listing of the books, told me she was capable of producing more than 30 original full-color pieces per month, and the average job commission was $6K.
It’s a bit more telling than Generic Writer’s laundry list above, isn’t it?
Speak to any of our career coaches and they will all tell you the most important piece to a resume is accomplishments. Accomplishments are so important, in fact, that we’ve developed free training for men and women exiting the military to assist them in finding those accomplishments and presenting them in such a way to make them civilian friendly and to POP for human resources personnel. We have written books that pound in the need for accomplishments, accomplishments, accomplishments.
If you have been looking for work and applying to vacancies with little to no luck, look at your resume. Forget the paper color. Forget the type style. Forget if your name is written in big letters or small. Are you sharing your accomplishments or have you simply created yet another laundry list of duties? If the answer if the latter, give us a call. We can help. We’re the experts. And we have the accomplishments to share with you to prove it.
While you’re at it, if you are interested in looking at one of our most recent accomplishments, our free veterans’ training, follow this link, http://tinyurl.com/cpgfreetraining, and look for the “Five Steps” products. You might also want to sign up for the CareerPro Global newsletter at http//tinyurl.com/cpgnewsletter, which is filled every month with great advice for job seekers, information on the latest happenings in the career world, news of our latest free offerings…and maybe even an accomplishment or two of our own.
