Will You Pass the Seven Second Test?
A resume is a very important piece in any job search. It won’t get you a job–ultimately only you can sell yourself to the Hiring Manager. But it can play a great supporting role in your search by setting you apart from other job seekers.
Basically you have about 7 seconds to introduce yourself through your proxy. On the average that’s how long a busy hiring manager will take to glance at your resume and decide whether or not it’s a keeper. That means she or he may not even scan the entire thing before deciding what to do with it. In many ways the HM is looking more for ways to eliminate rather than consider you for an interview. An interview is a major commitment of time and that equals money in any company. Plus, much can be quickly gleaned about you through this writing sample. A resume with poor formatting and glaring grammatical errors loudly broadcasts a lack of commitment to quality. And what company wants to hire someone who doesn’t take pride in his or her workmanship! You may not be a graphic designer or a spelling champion, but there is no excuse for a resume with obvious shortcomings, given spell checker and the variety of resume templates included with most word processing software.
Now is your resume’s appearance alone going to get you an interview? No, but it will keep you in the running. And there’s something else that you can do to make those 7 seconds pay off for you. This is something that many resumes lack and including it will give you an edge. What is it? Stay tuned for my next post.
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Happy Resume´ Month!
You won’t find a special section of greeting cards in your local Hallmark Store to commemorate the occasion; nonetheless, September is recognized as National Resume Month. Now I don’t know how they come up with these “tributes”, but I will take the nudge and remind you to get out your resume and check to see if it is worthy of the honor.
You might wonder why you should bother since you are content with your present employer. But you must admit that you don’t know what the future holds and it’s possible to be out on the street faster than you can say “downsizing”. Or almost as sad, your real dream job could be posted and filled before you can locate and elongate your one-pager. If those scenarios aren’t reason enough to go immediately to the file cabinet and start searching, why not take a more strategic view for having a polished and ready resume?
Every worker is like a company, You, Inc., if you will. A resume then is a sales brochure for the product you are offering. It should be honest and forthright, but it should also highlight your best features and, along with the collateral cover letter, offer the potential “buyer” (hiring manager) a tailored solution to his problem. It won’t tell the whole story; but it must be enough to convince the buyer that this is a brand worth examining more closely.
So how effective is your current sales brochure? Looking at it from the “buyer’s” perspective, would you want to take a closer look at the product it promotes? If not, stay tuned for future posts in honor of National Resume Month and have better marketing material by the end of September.
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Mr. Mom Goes to School
There may be a trend in the making. Some young men are staying home with the children while the wife goes heigh ho, heigh ho each weekday morning. An interesting twist, this seems to be a workable solution for families in which the husband is in a non-traditional career like creative writing, has a technology job that can be performed on a flexible schedule from a home office, or is in career transition. A number of young men need to back out of their careers and start all over to become who they might have been. Online and evening educational programs make the Mr. Mom role especially attractive.
In my experience men seem particularly prone to bad career choices on the first round. Many young men just don’t give much thought to their future while in high school, or worse yet, harbor the unrealistic idea that they can become a pro athlete (you wouldn’t believe how many 12-17 year olds cling to that dream!) and then scramble quickly to land on a major in college. Often the major is one they think will bring monetary success without their having bothered to determine whether or not it fits their temperament and talents. Capability has been considered without regard for suitability. How often have I seen unhappy accountants, lawyers and engineers! Some suffer throughout an entire career.
Recently I became acquainted with a retired accountant, whom I could see was very knowledgable in his field and who had owned a very successful CPA firm a few years back until health problems arose. I marvelled that this man had remained so long in the field, because he has a personality and temperament that seem “out of character” for this profession. His mind races ahead with ideas that his speech can hardly keep up with (something I measure when clients work with me, because idea productivity is a real asset in some careers and a real drag in others). Howard’s a very gregarious fellow who enjoys enteracting with people and I imagine if he’d been an employee he would have been what I call an office prairie dog. You know, the worker who keeps popping up over his cubicle, much like a prairie dog pops up from his hole to look around. Some people just can’t work in isolation and I was incredulous that this guy had been able to focus to do the detailed, accurate work that accountants must be able to do throughout his professional life. Then I heard the rest of his story…..
Howard had married a woman, also an accountant, who said when he opened his business, “Just put me in a back room, send the work in and close the door.” Howard said she was such a highly productive worker, that allowed him to go out and do what he loved to do which was to bring in new business. Eventually he brought in so much he had to find more wives, er, clones of his wife, who were just as happy in the back office. Howard was really a salesman who spoke fluent accounting. It enabled him to use his education, but tailor it to his personality. And everyone lived happily ever after when he sold his business for a healthy profit.
Not every apparent career mismatch turns out this well. Some men can’t reinvent themselves and find a niche in the same industry. If that has happened to you, it might be time to admit that the career’s not working and go home to play with the children (a very worthwhile vocation in itself) while pursuing a more realistic path, one that fits you “just right” (you think as you read that fairy tale for the umpteenth time to little Brenton and Kaitlyn). The important thing is to be sure that you discover your true talents before taking making a hefty investment in time and money, because, hey, you’re the one paying for that degree this time!
What? You still aren’t sure what those talents are? Then your’re not very different from most everyone else, according to Peter Drucker. So get on the fast track and contact me to find out! We can set a time to work together by phone while the children are napping.
Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong. More often, people know what they are not good at—and even then more people are wrong than right.
~Peter F. Drucker
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Are You Tending Your Career Garden?
We’ve had a very hot summer this year in these parts with many days over 100. People lose their motivations in the heat and barely want to move out of air conditioned comfort. My friend, who’s entire yard is planted in beautiful perennial gardens that she has always lovingly tended, has let her plants just burn in the hot sun. “Not doin’ it, ” she says. “It’s just way too hot to get out there and water and weed in this heat! They’ll just have to fend for themselves. ” Well they didn’t. Plants that have thrived in her loving care for years are suddenly dried up to nothingness, somehow allowing me to feel smugly virtuous about not having ever started such foolishness. I’ve never planted or nurtured the earth (hey, I don’t even mow), but I’m not a plant killer, either! Perceived vindication sometimes takes strange forms.
Being the person I am, however, I soon began thinking about this in terms of our careers, and how they are really like gardens. There are a variety of plants within them, some native to the soil (talents)and other imported varieties (skill sets). Whatever we have in our career garden, it must be tended or it will wither and dry up. Talents are perennials but they will never take us anywhere if we don’t make the effort to identify, develop and employ them. Skill sets are annuals and only as good as the training we get to keep them updated.
What does your career garden look like? Are you planting it (getting education and training)? Are you taking time to identify all the varieties (natural talents) within it? Are you weeding and pruning, i.e. negotiating to trade job duties that aren’t your style for those where you can shine and produce more of a harvest for your employer?
There’s an old saying, ‘Bloom where you are planted.’ But plants don’t bloom without tender loving care.
If you want to get on track to become a master career gardener, contact me to begin today. There’s fertile soil awaiting.
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