End-to-End

I received a delightful email from a former client informing me that he had secured his dream job!  His new employer is located 10 minutes from his home, are a major player in his field of specialty, and the role offers a significant increase in scope, responsibility and of course money!

The client first approached me with a job specification and requirements portfolio issued to him by an international executive recruitment firm.  The data set outlining the position requirements and ideal candidate specification was thorough, complex and demanded a candidate of the very highest caliber.  The brief went on to detail part of the recruiting strategy which sought to attract local, national and international candidates for the position.

I accepted the request  to work with my client on the project and immediately began the consultation process which was structured around the requirements of the role.  My client's resume was in need of a complete re-design and re-structure due to the fact that it didn't reflect at least 40% of his actual professional skills and experience, which upon discovery, became crucial to the overall success of his application.

Phase one focused entirely on the resume and cover letter creation, which won him an interview with the executive recruiter leading the international search.  As soon as he was notified that his application had won him an interview with the President of the hiring firm, we proceeded to phase 2 - the interview coaching session.  This proved to be invaluable, as although my client was a highly capable, intelligent and forthright individual, he had not been in an interview situation for almost a decade, and it showed!  After the mock interview we conduct as part of our 2 hour coaching session, we discussed method, structure, interviewer strategy, and what they're looking for as well as the errors made during our mock interview.

I was delighted to hear that he had dazzled the President and associates, as well as receiving his gratitude for the part Vancouver Resume Writing & Interview Coaching had played in his preparation and execution of the process.

He was a great guy to work with and I wish him well in his new role!

Quips'n'Quirks

Quick tip - do NOT make quirky quips in your cover letter!  I was contacted recently by a rather senior executive who had not been receiving any attention from her job applications.  Upon reviewing her cover letter, I uncovered the possible reason for her buzz-free blackberry.  Her cover letter was replete with quirks'n'quips - here's a modified example to give you an idea;

"I am a senior executive (with a sense of humour;) and 30 years experience (yikes!) of operating at the highest level.  I would very much appreciate an opportunity (begging bowl extended) to meet with you to discuss my suitability!  Despite my age (i feel 25!), I am a technocrat and regularly tweet on the twitter.." and so it went on - all 2 pages of it.  Although this letter is guaranteed to get passed around the department, this bears no relevance to the likelihood of being hired!

On the face of it there will be some who will think that this is refreshing - injecting a bit of personality into proceedings (the twitter bit was my favourite) and if i weren't a hiring manager I may see their point.  However, attempting to layer a cover letter with "personality" is like tap dancing on a landmine.  More often than not it will blow up in your face.  Remember - her blackberry wasn't singing.  Her strategy wasn't working.

It may seem obvious but, when you don't know the intended audience keep the "personality" for the interview.  The cover letter should focus on forming a narrative around your skills, abilities and achievements.

New Year! New Resume! New Job!

We've been rushed off of our feet lately by a deluge of pro-active job seekers desperate to improve their chances of landing their dream job by having a complete resume and cover letter re-work.

New Year! New Resume! New Job! seems to be the mantra, and I can only applaud them for their foresight. I was speaking to a real live-wire sales manager earlier this week and he said that over the holidays, when contemplating the new year ahead, the thought of labouring away in his current position for another 12 months cast a dark shadow over the festive celebrations. He resolved to strike out immediately after the break and commit 100% to the pursuit of a role with a better work/life balance.

Judging by the ever decreasing number of available appointments I have over the next 2 weeks, he certainly isn't the only one. That first day back to the grind on a cold January morning is usually enough to put even the most talented procrastinator into job hunt overdrive!

I've been asked if I'll blog about employee issues such as work/life balance etc this year and yes, it is on my 'to do list', although it is free time dependent. Thanks for your suggestions - keep them coming.

Happy New Year to all! I hope your career dreams come true in 2010.

Cookie Cutter = Job Hunt Stutter

The whole idea behind seeking professional assistance to create a powerful resume and portfolio of career documents is to get ahead of the competition. You do this by crafting a document that truly represents your strengths and achievements while never losing sight of the expectations of those likely to be reading it.

I was talking with a client who had previously sent off her resume to a multi-national corporation that promised to deliver a resume and cover letter for $50 based on answers to a questionnaire she had to fill out online. If you needed it real quick -for an extra $10 you could get it within 4 hours!

When my client received her freshly minted document, she was surprised to find that the resume she put together herself looked better than the resume that had just popped into her inbox!

Companies that claim they can produce a resume document without speaking to you are going to regurgitate the content of your old resume and toss it into a cookie cutter template. What else can they do?

If you've read my previous blog entry "Content is King", you'll already know why this mass produced, cheap, cookie-cutter approach will pretty much guarantee a stuttering continuation of your job search. If you think it saves money in the short term - consider the long term impact a poorly crafted document can have on your ability to secure an interview for a job that you really want!

If you have decided that you need assistance in crafting your documents, consider partnering with a consultant who will take the time to understand your career, aims and professional accomplishments. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well!

Not All Resumes Are Created Equal!

I was contacted recently by a client looking to update their resume. The client wanted us to add in his most recent position but did not want us to re-write the resume as it had been "professionally done" by another resume writing firm.

After reviewing his documents, I was dumbfounded.

The format of the "professionally written" cover letter was unlike anything I had seen in a decade of reviewing resumes! The letter itself started more than half way down the page, with the entire top half dedicated to the inappropriate structuring of personal contact information and a sequence of bizarre spacing that made me wonder if a high school student had attempted to format it. The content of the letter repeated the detail found in the "Summary" section of the resume - never a good idea for reasons that will be explained in a future blog.

The resume itself looked like any other resume I've seen where job seekers have attempted to 'give it a go' themselves by using online templates and such like and the client had actually paid money for someone to produce this for him!

The content was bland, uninspiring and merely listed basic duties and alluded to "bringing value" and a "terrific ability to connect with people", without ever expanding upon these statements with facts, results, achievements or any other tangible benefit resulting from his corporate contributions or personal attributes.

The professional experience section gave as much weighting to his post-graduate entry level position 12 years prior as it did to his most recent advanced professional experience. They were afforded 4 bullet points each. WHY?

Tenses fluctuated from past to present within the space of a few words, full stops were missing in action, there was even a section on there where they had used a smaller text size to squeeze it all onto 2 pages. It looked terrible and I felt very sorry for him.

Here was a very nice guy trying to make his way and advance his career and who had invested in a service he thought would serve him well in front of hiring managers. Instead he was given a resume document that looks like he had thrown it together himself and a cover letter a high school student would receive a 'D' for (or a clip round the ear if it was 1960).

As much as I wanted to help him, I couldn't consent to working on the project as I could not associate my business with that resume unless I was tasked with completely re-working it. This was something which the client was unwilling to do as he had already paid for it to be "professionally done". I understood his predicament.

Choose your resume writing partner carefully. If a resume writer does not have an extensive prior professional background in recruiting, then they cannot possibly know how a diverse range of employers across a variety of industries hire, who they hire and why they hire them.

My background affords me the luxury of knowing what works and what most certainly does not work when it comes to grabbing the attention of a hiring manager.

Watch out for a future blog entry detailing 'what you should look for in a resume writer' and how 'telling isn't selling'!

Content is King!

During a recent association event I got talking to an old acquaintance who happens to be the CFO of a local junior resource company. We discussed career issues, hiring practices and resume writing, specifically, writing your own resume.

Having worked closely with this professional in my previous life as an executive recruiter, I had been responsible for re-writing his resume, providing interview coaching and actually placing him in a position he still holds.

During our discussion he gave me insight into the way some people in his network go about preparing themselves for career advancement and how some of them didn't see the value in working with a professional to help them with this process.

He wasn't complaining, as although his peers shared similar professional and experiential characteristics, he knew that he stood head and shoulders above his executive level competition on account of his superior personal branding strategy and portfolio of professionally crafted documents.

Apparently, some of his peers had scoured the internet for "templates" and inserted choice words and phrases into the slots in a bid to produce a document that at least looked like it had been formatted appropriately!

Further, how often have you been asked to tell someone what you do day to day and can only muster 3 or 4 sentences? Try it now. What do you do on a day to day basis? Do the sentences you have just articulated do you justice? Would you rely upon them to accurately convey the extent of your current level of responsibility? Are you confident they will set you apart from your peers and every other job competitor?

Such folly fails to appreciate that a significant part of the job of a resume writer is to extract minute detail and construct a narrative that incorporates the needs and wants of the hiring manager or executive designated to make a determination as to who gets selected for interview...and who does not. Templates are for the masses. Let everyone else use them!

By working with a consultant who has an extensive background in recruiting, placement, resume writing and interview techniques, we can uncover the detail you need to do you justice in front of the hardest task master of all - the hiring manager!

It's not just the way the resume looks - it's the content that counts. As the saying goes...Content is King!