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Now that your LinkedIn is somewhat cleaned up, let’s focus on the resume. Like LinkedIn, your resume needs to do a great job explaining what you did but in various terms. Also, quantify every last achievement you’ve had. Finally, get creative. We can use the Account Executive example, again. It should look like this.
Account Executive, Small Business Accounts
Company X
X Start Date to Present
-Served as the single point of contact for X accounts in the Southeast encapsulating X in quarterly revenue for the team.
-Built, maintained and sustained key client and company relationships while also providing X upselling opportunities to our Small Business Sales team that resulted in X additional revenue for the company.
-Identified as the “Best New Performer” on team despite previously limited experience in X prior to accepting this challenging yet rewarding position.
-Selected ahead of X peers to mentor and train new members of the team in procedures, policy, methods and compliance.
Okay, now let’s break this down.
ALWAYS quantify. I listed the number of accounts in the first bullet. If your number OR your company’s number is low, don’t use hard numbers, use percentages. If there are only 10 accounts at the company and you managed 3 of them, don’t say 3, say you managed 30% of all accounts or that you managed 45% of all revenue as it related to accounts. Go with the higher number.
Second bullet: in this bullet you always want to emphasize that while you are a rockstar, you are a rockstar with a band. Relationships are key as they tie into culture fit and people want to hire people that they like. Always demonstrate how you being a good person/team player helped contribute to the overall bottom line of the company. You want to seem like a stud, but you don’t want to appear like someone who doesn’t play well with others.
Third Bullet: best new performer. It doesn’t matter if someone gave you a trophy or your boss randomly said “hey you’re doing a decent job” and you were the only new hire that quarter. By default, you are the best new performer on the team if you were the only new person. If there is a team of 10 people and you were rated as number 4, but the three ahead of you have been with the company for 5+ years, then you were “the highest rated new employee on the team.”
Fourth bullet: If you recently joined the team and your boss said “hey man, you just joined the company 6 months ago and Jennifer here just joined last week, walk her through what that process looks like,” guess what? You just got selected to mentor and train a new employee. If your boss tells you to take the new person to lunch so they feel welcomed, you just got selected to mentor and train a new employee. Sure, it’s a stretch if that’s all you did, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.
What should your resume look like? Well, that depends on your targeted role. If you want to work for a company in a sales role or something more “business formal,” then your resume doesn’t need anything flashy. Get to the points, hit your achievements in the bullets, and then get out of there. If you want to work in a marketing/PR/creative design type position, then maybe get flashy with the formatting and the layout of your resume. In these types of positions, your resume is something you will be graded on. “You want to be the face of our social media outreach strategy but your resume looks dull? No thanks, bro.” Google example resumes for your career type and there will be some fantastic examples posted online.
If you have certifications that relate to your career field or your targeted career field, ensure that they are listed on your resume. Certifications and advanced education in a career field demonstrates that you give a shit about what you do and that you’re always trying to better yourself.
NEVER lie on your resume, but also know that your new desired company can never verify anything that you did at a previous employer. They can only verify with them your job title, your start date and your end date. If you acted like a total jackass and were fired, your old company cannot tell your new company that UNLESS you listed someone at your old company as a reference. Pay attention to who you use as a reference and NEVER include references on your resumes. If they ask for them on a job site while applying, say that they are available upon request.
If they request them from you, give it to them. Then, call up your reference and explain to them what you are applying to and how they can best serve as a reference to you. If you want to go from Account Executive to a Sales role, the number of accounts you managed won’t matter during a reference call. Your reference needs to talk about how you’re a winner, never accept things for how they appear and that you’re willing to go above and beyond when it comes to meeting the needs of your client. Having your reference provide a story/example that demonstrates what they’re claiming about you will work wonders and it will stick in the mind of the person calling your reference.
What do you do with this resume? Aside from applying for jobs, post it on Indeed. Indeed is what’s called a jobsite aggregator. This means that Indeed will suck up jobs posted on other sites like Monster and Career Builder and post those same jobs on its own site. Indeed is the largest job board in the world, so a lot of recruiters like to hang out around it and search on there the same way that we search on LinkedIn.
ONE CAVEAT: most recruiters will filter their resume search based on “recently updated” resumes. Searching for recently updated resumes means that the person is actively searching for a job because they’ve updated their resume recently. If someone hasn’t updated it recently, maybe they took a new job, or got a promotion at their current one and just forgot their resume was on Indeed. If you haven’t updated it within the past 3 weeks, I likely won’t be reaching out to you.
Go into your resume on Indeed once a week and change something then change it back. Delete “March of 2016” and then go back in and re-enter “March of 2016” and then poof, your resume updated and you move back to the top of the list.
Finally, whatever your strongest asset is, ensure that it is at the top of your resume. When recruiters view resumes, Indeed offers a “preview” of that resume that encompasses roughly the top half of the first page. Recruiters can scan this, and if interested, open up the full resume to view it. If you have your hard-hitting accomplishments on the bottom of the resume, there’s a good chance that your resume won’t be viewed. This is Tinder; if your first photo is hot garbage, swipe left and nobody will look at anything else. If your accomplishments aren’t special, but you went to a great school, your education is on top. If you have great accomplishments, that’s on top and your education is at the bottom.
How I View a Resume:
1. “This experience sounds interesting, let’s see what else is on there.”
2. “Where did they go to school?”
3. “What do you currently do?”
4. “Oh, you work at our direct competitor? Hell yeah I am interested.”
5. “Are your job titles and/or company improving as I read bottom to top of this resume?”
A lot of corporate positions aren’t what you know, they’re who you know. With that being said, when the “who you know” tries to reach out to someone in their company to hook you up, they’ll have to shoot your resume over to that person. Resumes matter, don’t blow them off..
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Kiawah Island Strip Club
I'd rather be golfing. Seattle sucks so I write about that. Also work...ish in recruiting. Shoot your resume to kiawahislandstripclub@gmail.com for any and all job hunt questions.
Best Stock Photo Of 2016.
they’re obviously man hands, but the nails look oddly feminine. it’s creepy.
Dude obviously gets a mani pedi after each close.
I said the exact same thing. You can get manicures but you don’t have to keep the nails that long.
Are you assuming they/their gender?
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====>>>http://tinylink.net/m35Np
2016 Best new PGP contributor – add that to the rezzy
I mean if you wouldn’t mind reviewing my res? I’ll venmo over beer money
Don’t worry about venmo, glad to help out. I can give most of this data because it’s fairly untraceable back to me. Let me create a throwaway email account and put it in the next article. Y’all can send them there and I’ll get back to you fairly quickly with tips and such.
I am very interested to see what you come up with for the throwaway email.
Same
I would also like this
Although I’m starting a new job next week, your articles have inspired me to clean up my LinkedIn. Stay hustling.
Quick question since there’s probably a few HR people reading this article. I’m actively searching for positions in a new city. My anticipated start date is January 15th or later. Should I update my resume to show a generic address in the new city before I move? Or should I put something advising that I’m moving to that city along with the anticipated moving date? Or none of the above?
If the company requires a cover letter annotate it on there. If they don’t, you should be g2g with your current address and current city on top. Ensure in the interview or phone screen they understand that you know they don’t have to cover re-lo to this city, leads to a few unnecessary emails as I see them a lot regarding relocation and if the candidate knows the company is or isn’t paying.
I work with a lot of transitioning Veterans who are in one part of the country but want to return home and/or work in a totally separate part of the country. People jumping cities and states is fairly common and part of the game these days.
To follow up on this with an alternate point of view: I’ve worked with a couple recruiters who, if they don’t have a relocation budget for a role, will gloss over resumes outside of their radius. USUALLY it’s not a problem, but sometimes you’ll get unlucky with a recruiter like that. If you have a friend in the city you’re moving to, ask if you can use their address on your resume. If there’s any sort of new hire packet to be mailed to you, tell the recruiter that you’ve recently changed your address and give them your new location.
That’s kind of what I was worried about. If there are several candidates with similar qualifications I feel that they would throw out the ones that are out of the city. Good idea on using a friend’s address though.
Yeah I agree with this. Good point.
I thought about using a friend’s address who lives in the city I’m trying to relocate to, but it’s a significant distance away from my current job. Wouldn’t someone looking at my resume notice your address says you live 4 hours away from where you work?
I guess this would be easier to explain but it might also be more applicable if you’ve already left your old job and are looking for a new one in your new city. You could always say you’ve already procured a new living situation but are hanging back to finish up some projects at the old job.
If you’re scheduled for an interview that’s not in your current city and is too far to make the round trip in one day (the company is aware you’re coming in from out of town), is it expected that the applicant will cover travel costs? Or does it really depend on the company?
Totally depends on the company….even on the team inside the company. I had a guy interview for a facility manager role and he had all of his travel costs covered. Had another guy fly in for a sales VP role and his cost wasn’t covered. Not a lot of rhyme or reason in those decisions.
so as a recruiter, whats the possibility you find someone currently working for your company, out looking for a job elsewhere? because that happened to a former coworker of mine (former for other reasons, but this didn’t help him).
Granted, i know he was using a narrower job search board, medreps
Recruiters usually don’t care. That dudes boss might.
I’d add formal sales training like Miller Heiman if you have it.
Yup. People only send their winners to get advanced education in a field like that. If you aren’t performing, there is no remedial schooling, you’re gone. Not only does having that on your resume demonstrate you have the training, it demonstrates that your company thinks you have a bright future and they are willing to invest in you. That’s attractive to other companies.
Something like 50% of sales people hit their quota every year. If you did, highlight that you hit it. If you didn’t, find different ways to annotate that. Example: Say each person on a 5 person team is supposed to get 1 million for a total of 5. Now say that you hit 800k in sales and the team only got 3.2 million. Don’t say you came up 20% short, say that you brought in 25% of team revenue despite only being quoted to contribute 20% of the team goal.
As an Active Duty guy on the fence about getting out do you have any recommendations about how to test the waters before dropping my resignation?
Email the address I throw on the next column and say you’re the AD. I did my REFRAD/ETS about this time last year, can help you through those steps and do the pro/con game with you.
How far back should your work history go in LinkedIn? I only graduated 3 years ago so there’s still some retail jobs, leave them or take them down?
Start in college and just go from there. The only exception is usually if you started your own company while in school and it was remarkably successful. Some companies have college graduate programs that’ll extend out to four years or so for eligibility. Might be worth checking out.