As professional communicators, how good are we at blowing our own horns? Many of us will agree that we could be a lot better. We don’t always make sure our accomplishments are known, understood and appreciated, and we often don’t present our credentials well. We’d rather spend our time helping our clients or companies look their best.
But when we don’t channel a little energy into promoting ourselves and our work, there’s a heavy price. It can mean that we don’t effectively represent the interests of our department or our own business. The result: less desirable intra-company positioning, fewer clients, lost opportunities. Not good.
When we’re interested in advancing our own professional lives by applying for a new job or building our own business, getting our assets down in writing is even more critical. And in our business, we never know when we might be called on to do this. So, we want to talk about how to present ourselves in writing. At various times, you may need any of the following:
- Traditional résumé
- Functional résumé
- Curriculum vitae (CV)
- Professional bio
- Short profile
How do they differ? We’re glad you asked, because that’s our first point: Different purposes call for different approaches. You’re the same person, with the same experience, represented in your CV, profile or résumé, but your format and content should be determined exactly the same way you frame a communication project—by thinking through your specific goal, and targeting a specific audience.
What works when you’re applying for a job differs vastly from what works if you’re pitching a freelance assignment or competing for a contract. If you’re applying to teach a college course, your audience will expect a presentation in line with the academic world—lengthy and detailed. On the other hand, a professional bio for a web site, or to accompany a report or article, needs to establish your qualifications quickly and in a style suited to the medium.
Let’s focus on résumés. If you’re scouting for a new job, or presenting yourself as a candidate for, say, the presidency of a local association, you should be armed with a traditional résumé, perhaps several, each tailored for a specific job. If you’re looking for freelance or consultant work, you need a functional résumé, which is skills-based. Or—given the nature of our industry—you may number among the many who need both kinds of résumés.
It shouldn’t surprise you to know that as a communication professional, you need to meet the gold standard of résumé writing. Your credentials must be flawlessly presented—who wants to hire a communicator who makes grammar or spelling mistakes, has no aesthetic sense, and can’t make his or her own case effectively?
We consulted several experts to see what the latest advice is on using both résumé formats to self-market. The ideas they shared apply equally to print or electronic delivery, and to individuals at every career level, including the most advanced.
Sharpening a traditional résumé
“Aim for subtle confidence rather than using catch phrases,” advises Tina Ruark, who works internationally as director of strategic solutions for Lloyd Staffing in Melville, New York, and New York City. “You have 30 seconds to make an impression. Ask yourself, ’Would I date my résumé?’”
The goal, she stresses, is not to get the job—it’s to get the interview. “It’s a teaser. It’s your opportunity to get in so you can sell yourself.” This principle suggests guidelines on length. Unless you’re a physicist, keep it to one or two pages, maximum.
For Ruark, a great résumé has “flow, a presence…it captures the target industry…everything is professional and made easy on the eye. Break it up—you don’t want the reader thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s a novel,’ but you don’t want it all to be bullets either.”
In anticipation of our conversation, Ruark polled her colleagues on the most common mistakes they see in résumés, including those of sophisticated professionals, and came up with pointers on what to avoid. Her top five suggestions are:
- Don’t fool with the standard format: Stick to reverse chronological order—preferred by employers—and keep it simple. (And yes, employers still want to know what you were doing if time gaps are evident.)
- Don’t use a format that doesn’t e-mail easily. Use Word or something else standard.
- Don’t include typos: “That’s the biggest complaint we get; it just amazes me,” says Ruark.
- Don’t clutter the layout: You need to make the reading clean and easy for the 30-second capture, so don’t change fonts and vary sizes.
- Don’t use abbreviations that are not searchable, like “a.m.” for accounts management.
How to start
What should be at the top of your résumé? Ruark says recruiters differ about whether stating an objective works or not, but it should never be fluff. “If it says ‘I’m looking for,’ delete it and get to the guts of the résumé.” Ruark thinks that beginning with a brief profile—an elevator speech in print—is a personal preference. Her caveat: “You must be a strong writer to pull it off.”
We think that if you’re selling yourself as a communication specialist, you should take the opportunity to show that you can pull it off.
Doug Silverman, who is senior employee relations manager for Nikon Inc., and president of the Long Island chapter of the Society for Human Resource Management, agrees that a long, wordy objective is not advisable and may lose you the opportunity by boring the reader. And, he says, “a good résumé isn’t about your past jobs, it’s about what you’ve accomplished.”
To impress an employer, Silverman says, “fill your résumés with PAR statements: Problem, Action, Results. You state what the project was, your action and the results. That’s a good guide to get you through.”
In other words, rather than: “I redesigned a warehouse,” say, “Transformed a disorganized, inefficient warehouse into an efficient operation by totally redesigning the layout, saving an estimated annual US$50,000 in recovered stock.”
Another way to think of this résumé challenge is figuring out how to translate your job responsibilities into achievements, or even further, how to quantify your accomplishments. We think this is the most essential component of an effective résumé, and worth a great deal of thought.
People have trouble, in Silverman’s experience, because they think they must regurgitate everything they’ve ever done, or the reverse—they fail to expound on what’s truly important.
Tap the power of key words, he suggests, such as conducted, coordinated and directed. “‘I handled marketing issues’ isn’t as good as ‘I coordinated marketing campaigns.’ ‘I entered information into a database’ is completely different from ’I managed customer databases and upgrades.’”
Silverman does favor “putting together a powerful opening statement that says who you are and where your mindset is. You’re looking to give a nice overview.”
He shared with us his own résumé opener:
Results-oriented Senior Human Resources Professional with 12 years strategic and hands-on experience in highly competitive, diverse environments. Possesses a thorough knowledge of diversified HR practices including employee relations, labor relations, performance management, organizational development and change, EEO compliance, safety compliance, resource management, headcount planning and forecasting, policy development and implementation, management training, compensation and benefits. Strong problem solving, organizational, communication and interpersonal skills.
Easy to do? Absolutely not. In fact, in our own experience, and in advising others, we find the process of forging a strong opening profile to be intensive, soul-searching work. It can take weeks or months to develop the right statement. You need to review who you are, what you’ve done and what relevant generalizations you can draw from your experience.
When you create the right opening profile, it tells you what content to focus on in the rest of the résumé in order to back up the profile. You know what’s most relevant, and what’s dispensable. It also tells the reviewer how to read the rest of the résumé, setting him or her up to take the slant you want.
Think future
Even more: The opener should show what you’re prepared to do next. Look at your résumé and ask: Does this sound like I’m applying for the same job I already have, rather than the one I want? If so, go back to the drawing board.
The good part: When you get the résumé right, the phone rings—and even better, you’re prepared to answer it. Hammering out your personal statement is the ideal way to prepare yourself for an in-person presentation of your experience and strengths. It can also help target what you want from a new opportunity.
In fact, refining your target can be the best way to help your résumé hit it. Often we want change, but we need to know more than that. One of us, years back, was advised by a friend who’d been taking positive-thinking courses on the best way to get the perfect new job: Spend a few minutes every day thinking about what it would be like, getting more and more specific and detailed. When the vision was fully developed, she said, “You’ll get that job.”
I asked if that, was some kind of magical idea? “Not at all,” she said. “It simply prepares you to recognize the opportunity when it comes. Otherwise you’ll probably overlook it.”
It was great advice and brings us right back to applying what you as a communicator should always start with in your projects, campaigns and résumés: Articulate your exact objective and know your audience.
Next time: The best résumé for freelancers—a very different proposition.
