Writing a Good Resume

I will acknowledge upfront that I am not the expert at writing resumes but I have spent a great deal of time writing and modifying my own resume over the years and reviewing many in the process of hiring people. I’ve had a great deal of help along the way. I have also referenced and described below a website, “Resume-Resource” that provides an excellent source of help. I have also linked that site to this blog.

There are two points that I want to stress here that are key in creating a good resume, a resume that will separate you from the pack.

First, while employers certainly love friendly, community involved people with great personal relationship skills, what they really need and search for are people who can help their company make more money; people who can add real value to the bottom line. Telling someone in a resume that you have “great people skills” just doesn’t make it so. You can show then that during your interview. Also, a lengthy resume with a long and hopefully progressive list of impressive job position titles is nice for your ego, but a resume that shows a potential employer how you have helped others grow their businesses or save a company significant costs, will impress.

Second, I find that most people, when preparing a resume, don't really appreciate the many experiences, skills and value adding talent that they have acquired over the years. There are two reasons for this. When someone has worked in a position for a significant period of time, the things they do as part of their job become routine, and they don't realize that those routine talents from their perspective may very well be unique and highly desired skills from an employer's perspective. People just don’t recognize their unique talents when they have become second nature.

When I was moving from one corporate legal position to another, I worked with a placement firm to help build a resume. I frankly expected to be able to sit down for a half an hour, explain my extraordinary career path and have the firm churn out a well-crafted resume by the end of the day. As I continually learn, nothing good is ever accomplished without a lot of work on my part.

My “Coach” suggested that I take a pad of paper and write my own job history, starting with my first lemonade stand. In doing so he told me to think hard about every little skill I had acquired in each position and every accomplishment in those positions that added value to the job or company. During this process I was amazed to learn, as I said above, that many of the things I had done over time that seemed mundane to me, were true skills and talents that could very well be of value to future employers. It also helped me see where I had added real value to prior employer’s goals; and it did identify unique personal skills, such as communication, the ability to mediate disputes, and a talent for motivating and training people. All of these skills, accomplishments and traits created my package of sales tools.

This lengthy “employment auto-biography” was the starting point for writing a resume that proved truly useful in my job search. By the way, I didn't include my lemonade stand job and the fact that I had profited from it, nor did I include the fact that I was able to complete my egg route at 10 years old in record time without a single broken egg. But you get the point; the process helped me focus on true accomplishments and skills and allowed me to cite many instances where I had truly added value and brought a much-needed skill to an employer.

While, I may need to suspend this offer if I simply get too many requests, for the time being I would be happy to take a look at any reader’s resume and offer suggestions. No charge, no catches. Simply e-mail your resume to me at rickhoel@yahoo.com or rickhoel@hargray.com.

I would also highly recommend that you take a look at an excellent site hosted by Rob Thomas, “Resource-Resume” (http://www.resume-resource.com/). All of the content from this site including the articles, resume examples and cover letter examples are written by resume writing professionals. Most of these professionals are certified by the NRWA or PARW. Many of them are published authors of books on resume writing, so the content is high quality and reliable information.
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