Magic Pot of Jobs

An email from a friend-of-a-friend was passed on to me this morning, and I thought I’d share it, and the advice I gave, with you. I’ve covered a lot of this at various times here at the Magic Pot, but it bears repeating:

I want to make an ultrapimp resume. I’m talking about the kinda thing that makes the reader pee their pants, if you know what I mean. I want it to be so pimp that people will not only want to hire me, but they will want to sleep with me too. Sleep with me naked, that is.

Resumes are boring as hell. They make me sleepy.

There is One, and Only One thing that makes a resume interesting- it has to convey that the skills you have are exactly the skills the employer needs. If it doesn’t, there is nothing that will earn your resume a second glance. Nothing. And a resume alone doesn’t make people want to hire you- it makes them want to interview you.

So…

- Customize your resume for EACH AND EVERY job you apply for. I know this is a lot of work, but suck it up because this is your career we’re talking about here.

- When the position comes with a moderately detailed job description, mirror the language of that description in the resume.

- Assume that the HR person screening your resume isn’t even close to an expert in what you do. Yes, ultimately you’re trying to interest the hiring manager in your resume, and you’d hope that person understands your field, but 9 times out of 10, your resume goes through HR first, so when in doubt, SPELL IT OUT so that the HR person understands that your resume is worth passing on to the manager.

- And don’t bitch that the HR people don’t understand what you do. That’s not their job- they can’t possibly be experts in everything.

- Don’t think of your resume as simply a list of skills and accomplishments, though these are certainly important. No one wakes up one day and says, “Hey, I’ve got all this extra money in the budget… I’ll hire someone new!” There’s always a problem to be solved- too much work for too few people, a lack of particular expertise on the existing team, whatever. Think of yourself as a solution to the particular problem and write your resume with that in mind.

Eluta is a great resource for finding jobs in Canada, in places like Toronto and Montreal.

I had a guy call me once looking for SysAdmin/Networking work. I asked him to send me a resume and offered my email address so he could send it to me.

“Uh, how about fax?”

“No, I’d like you to email it.”

“How about mail?”

“No, I need an electronic copy.”

I’m not sure why he resisted sending me an email, but I insist on electronic resumes for a couple of reasons.

First there’s the practical reason. I’m terrible with paperwork. If I have one paper copy of resume, I will lose it. I’m not strong on the paper filing, but I’m much better with digital file management. If I have a digital file, I can print as many paper copies as I need, and if I lose one, I just make another.

Second, there’s a very basic test in play here: If you can’t get me an electronic copy of your resume, I don’t think much of you as an IT person. Just moved and your internet access hasn’t been restored yet? Take a CD to Kinko’s. Take a laptop to any Starbucks and use the T-mobile Hotspot- usually you can get a free trial for a day. Any self-respecting IT professional either has Internet access at home, or at least has enough problem-solving skills to get it elsewhere for the 10 minutes it takes to email a resume.

Just want to take a moment to call attention to the tips in Niniane’s How to Write a Killer Resume, for Software Engineers.

The tips themselves are kind of no-brainers in the abstract, but difficult to put into practice when you’re actually writing a resume.

If Jeff Clark wants to come to DC, I bet I have some clients who would love to talk to him.

I received a job description today from a prominent local company. The description is in Comic Sans.

Why do people in business use Comic Sans for official correspondence? Did you want me to laugh and smile at your network administrator requirements?

In addition to looking amateur, Comic Sans is hard to read, as its edges are not uniform.

When choosing a font for a resume, a cover letter, or any document that will represent you or your company, it’s best to err on the side of conservatism. Times New Roman, Courier, Tahoma and Arial are easy to read, both on screen and in print. They give your document a clean, polished, and uniform appearance.

I’m not entirely opposed to working outside of this font set, especially for resumes for graphic designers or other creative professionals. However, use discretion. Make sure that you print out your resume to see how what is on your screen translates to paper. (I can’t reiterate enough how often recruiters/HR folks still print resumes.) If you have the opportunity, try looking at any non-standard font choices on different screens. What may look crisp and beautiful on your Mac at home could be muddy on the hiring manager’s PC.

I am not a perfectionist.

My house is messy, there is often a spot on my glasses, and I always forget to set aside some extra frosting when decorating a cake. (Take that, Martha Stewart!) As a result, I rarely expect perfection in other people, with one glaring exception. Please don’t submit a resume with spelling and/or usage errors.

Before you send off your well-crafted cover letter, make it a priority to proofread your resume. Better yet, have someone else read it for you. One thing that I learned as English major was that your eye sees what your brain intends, not what your hand wrote. So have mom, your best friend, your cube-mate, someone other than you carefully read the piece of paper that is supposed to represent you and your accomplishments.

Think about it — wouldn’t you rather have someone you trust break it to you that you’re the “director of pubic relations” for a major company, than have the CEO laugh at you and dismiss your accomplishments?

Here are a few points to look out for when proofreading your resume:

1. Font consistency. A resume that uses four different fonts, some bold, others italicized, and a few underlines thrown in for emphasis, is flat-out distracting. To spot this common complaint of resume readers, look at the first thing that you bolded/italicized/underlined/changed style/changed case: was it a header? Are your other headers bolded/etc.? Rinse and repeat for all font changes.

2. Periods. If you use them after bullet points or sentences, make sure they’re after all bullet points and sentences.

3. Spelling. Check the spelling of companies and computer programs. These are often not spotted by spell check. I recently read a resume for someone looking for an advertising position. She mentioned that she worked with “Leo Brunet.” What she meant was “Leo Burnett,” a prominent, well-known advertising agency. I wonder if hiring managers at the major ad agencies overlooked her resume based on this error.

4. Headings on multiple pages. If your experience warrants more than one page (more on that on another posting), create a header with your name, e-mail address, and phone number on all pages after the first. Most recruiters and HR folks still print and read resumes.

5. And + &. Only use & or + as a substitute for “and” in official company or product names. For example: “Created brochures + flyers for a local marina.” doesn’t look artistic or creative, it looks sloppy.

6. Too, to, and 2, two. For too and to, see http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/to.html. For 2 and two, Associated Press style dictates that numbers less than ten are written out. Exceptions include dates, addresses, phone numbers, and software versions. For 2 and two see http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/SOURCE/journal_links/AP_style.html#d.

7. Verb tense. If an accomplishment was from a past job, it should be in the past tense, as should all other accomplishments and duties from that job. If you are discussing your current role, define your tasks in the present tense.

8. General quirkiness. This is not always easy to spot when you proofread, but another person should be able to see anything strange. If you can’t rely on anyone else to proof your resume, try reading it aloud, SLOWLY and CAREFULLY. If you (or ideally, your proofreader) have to re-read something to understand it, it needs to be rephrased.

These are the first things that I look for when reviewing a resume. I’m interested in hearing feedback or your favorite tips.

I’ve been mulling a post on how people post resumes to Craigslist for some time, but the post I saw today inspired me to sit down and write it. The title of the post is “Posting in Vein- Employers Do Not Read These Resumes.” The poster goes on to complain that he or she sees the same highly qualified people posting over and over, so clearly they just aren’t getting read.

A few things ran through my mind when I read this.

First, if your résumé shows the same attention to detail that this post displayed, it’s no wonder, what with “Posting in Vain” being misspelled and all. Seriously, the number of postings that show no fundamental grasp of written communication in English is just astounding.

Second, I check CL for potential candidates at least once a day. Some of my very best people have come from Craigslist, but then there are people like this guy, who we’ve contacted a number of times and who consistently fails to get back to us with even so much as a “Thanks, but I don’t work with recruiters.” Now we just shrug at each other and laugh every time we see that he’s still looking for a job- we could put him to work pretty quickly, if he’d just return our calls and emails. Other notable CL flameouts have included the guy who disappeared in the middle of the application, never to return, and more than a few other candidates who blew off their interviews.

And then there are the “wishful thinking” résumés- the “I want a receptionist job three days a week (because you don’t need to have your phones answered the other two days)” people, the “I have no experience but I want a really awesome job!” people, the people who don’t tell you what it is that they do in the title of their post, the people who post two sentences about their experience and expect you to contact them to get their résumés (as if!), and the list goes on and on.

Do not even get me started about the people who list entirely inappropriate personal details in their Craigslist postings. We have this thing in the US called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. EEO laws are complicated things, and rather than get yourself all embroiled in it, it’s easier to skip over ALL postings that include any reference to a person’s sex, sexual orientation, race, level of attractiveness. Besides that, aside from showing me that you’re a “young, gay, black man,” or an “attractive, blonde female,” you’re just showing me that you’re not terribly bright and have no idea what’s appropriate in a professional environment. Note to jobseekers: The whole point is that it shouldn’t matter if you’re gay or attractive or male or whatever, but if you mention it, you put the employer in a position of having to prove that it doesn’t matter, so you’re better off not calling attention to it.

So yes, employers do read Craigslist résumés, it’s just that most of them aren’t terribly useful to us.

(Update: I’ve submitted this post to the Monday Morning Linkfest at Recruiting.com.)

I’ll be at the DC Web Women’s Networking and Résumé Consultation Mashup on Wednesday, November 9th to give hints and advice. My employer is sponsoring the event and it will be held at our offices.

The Mashup is cheap! Only $10! And it’s open to the public, so I hope to see you there.

Many thanks to Mark from The Long Cut for being our inaugural Pimp-ee. Mark is a Geographical Information System supervisor- essentially, he makes maps. Specifically, he supervises the people who make maps.

Mark mentioned in his email to me that, “One of my duties as supervisor is to fill open positions in my office and I can never get over just how bad some people’s résumés and cover letters are. I’d feel a lot better if I knew that my résumé wasn’t being laughed at by some HR department too.”

Let me put that one to rest, Mark. Your résumé is much better than many of the ones I see every day. The rest of you can download the sanitized PDF version to follow along with.

What’s good: Your format is clear, leaves plenty of room in the margins for an interviewer or evaluator to take notes, and contains no typos or grammatical errors.

What could be improved: Your experience text kind of runs all together, making it hard to pick out the individual items.

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Introducing the first of what I hope will be many new features here at Magic Pot of Jobs… Pimp My Resume.

I am shamelessy taking a page from Wil Shipley, who is in turn taking a page from MTV, but I hope Wil and MTV won’t mind.

So how does it work? You send me your résumé in Word, Rich Text, or plaintext format, along with some information about the kind of job you’re trying to land. I replace all information like previous employers, locations, and your name with generic info, and critique it. Publicly. Rewriting it as necessary. My commentary may be humorous or over-the-top, so develop a thick skin about it.

If it’s successful, and if I can actually whip myself into shape about maintaining this blog more often, it might be followed by the sequel podcast, Pimp My Interview.

UPDATE: This is what happens when I post when I’m tired- I forget to tell you where to send your resume. You can email that to pimp_me -!at!- magicpotofjobs.com.