Hired!

Use these 2 tips to create a resume that gets you hired.

Millions of you enjoyed Eight-minute resume a few weeks ago. One member “John V.” even said:

“This is by far the most comprehensive email I have ever received regarding assistance with career advancement.

Thank you for this email and the fantastic information throughout.”

Well, thank you to everybody for your kind words!

The two most common questions you all had, dealt with these two issues:

“You repeatedly mention quantifying my achievements. What if you’re in a field that you can’t quantify?”

To which I’d say there is no field that you can’t quantify.

If you’re in an industry that focuses on subjective outcomes such as hospitality, or fashion, or the arts, you’ll focus on the numerical results that your subjective efforts generated.

Similarly, if you’re in a field that is extraordinarily process- or technically-driven, where your accomplishments are difficult for non-experts to understand, you focus on the outcome for your clients, bosses and colleagues.

Always bring it back to numbers:
– # of customers acquired
– % user satisfaction increased
– hours of time saved
– $ that your efforts brought in, saved, optimized, cut, or increased – # of users increased, handled, or hosted

So that your awesome new fault-tolerant architecture is described in terms of the benefits it brought to the company, users, or your colleagues.

Or your fancy and clever marketing ideas are conveyed with number of awards won, percentage changes in target market survey responses, or volume of articles written about them.

And your leadership of the catering division of a major hotel group is quantified with customers served, celebrities photographed at your events, and dollars of revenue generated.

When you think about it, every new job hired at a company is hired for a reason — the company hopes this position will improve its value by improving its operations. So be specific and explicit about how you’ve helped a company improve its operations in the past.

And the second most common question was in response to this advice for your Professional Summary:

“Job titles: list 3 to 5 job titles of jobs you would actually accept as your next job. It does not matter that you have never actually had this job title in the past, but it is important that it is a plausible next step in your professional career.”

One member wrote: “Not sure how I can write a target role in the resume which I don’t have currently” and many wondered how this could be the case.

Well, a resume is a marketing document. It is not, strictly speaking, a log or listing or cataloging of your past career milestones.

And while you can’t and shouldn’t change the names of your past titles at past companies, the professional summary does allow you some flexibility in describing what you’re looking for in summary format.

So if you’re a QA Manager of some experience looking for a QA Director role, it’s appropriate to include that as a target title.

Or if you’re a Sr. Director Marketing, looking to move up to VP, Marketing.

Or an SVP Operations looking to be COO.

Positioning your resume to be for the job you’re going for rather than the one you had is helpful to your getting hired.

And in the case that you get an old-school stickler asking “why is this VP, Marketing title on here in your professional summary when you’ve never held that exact title in an organization?”

The appropriate and true response is “my career is about progression and moving up, and I wouldn’t be entertaining talks with your company if that wasn’t the case. The next logical step in my job search is VP Marketing, and that’s why it’s communicated on the resume summary as my target title.”

Because, after all, if you wanted to keep the same title, you could just stay in the job you’re in now, right?

Well, Readers, that’s how you can help yourself get hired this Labor Day. I hope you find the suggestions useful!

I’m rooting for you!