Dressing Your Resume For Success Part Two
By: Kathryn Sollmann, Co-founder Women@Work Network
Last week, we covered the first of seven signs that your resume needs to be updated. Here are the remaining six ways you can keep your resume as up to date as this season’s fashions.
Sign #2: White Shoes Before Memorial Day
Grammatical errors and typos on your resume are as bad as a fashion faux pas. Wearing white before Memorial Day is not a hard and fast rule anymore, but few would argue that typos are the résumé’s kiss of death. Some employers flatly refuse to interview very qualified women who have a typo in their resume or cover letter.
Proofread your resume carefully — and get at least three other people to proofread it as well. Do not rely on spell check it won’t tell you if, for example, you typed “on” instead of “one”.
Sign #3: A Run in Your Stocking
Just as you carefully choose your clothes and fix your hair before an interview, your resume needs the same “grooming”. You don’t need colored paper, complex fonts or anything other than a chronological format. But, your resume should have a professional appearance — a readable (at least 12 point) typeface, consistent headings, a reasonable amount of white space and no more than two pages of text.
A resume is a business document so make sure that everything looks and reads like a professional. Your resume should not include any cute email addresses like momoffour@aol.com or personal information that has no bearing on your qualifications for a job (like your marital status, the number of children you have, etc.). We’ve seen resumes that have stated that women are happily married and others that list the jobs of husbands. Keep it professional and stick to the important information about you.
Be careful about what you reveal about your personal life. Listing hobbies is not important or appropriate for a resume but if you insist, leave out the fact that you write romance novels on the side.
Sign #4: No Personal Sense of Style
Don’t you admire women who seem to know exactly who they are…and they project that image through a consistent sense of style? When you see women who dress in 60s retro one season, bohemian chic another season and classic Brooks Brothers the next season…don’t you wonder if they’re having trouble figuring out the image they want to project?
Your resume also needs a sense of personal style that translates to who you are (a marketing strategist? a skilled negotiator? a human resources generalist?) and what you have to offer an employer. You need to be clear about your skill set—and if you’re clear and persuasive you can take that skill set to just about any industry. There will always be narrow minded employers who want only industry-specific experience—but the broader thinkers (and more interesting employers) recognize and listen to transferable skills.
Women who tell us that they need six different resumes to pursue six different kinds of jobs have not done a very good job of zeroing in on their skill set and thinking about how it applies to multiple industries. There’s only one you–and you should have only one resume.
Sign #5: Too Much Lip Gloss
Just as too much make-up can make a woman appear shallow and artificial, glossing over the details of your achievements can make it appear that you have achieved nothing of substance.
We see resumes from supposed sales pros who never once mention what their target was, if they achieved or exceeded it; or whether they expanded a client base by 10% in three months or three years.
Don’t gloss over the facts: make sure that your resume quantifies and “proves” your achievements. Use as many numbers as possible and be sure to highlight when you really rang the bell.
Sign #6: No Accessories
A resume that does not detail your responsibilities is like a brown wool dress without a single accessory.
If your resume states that you were the Director of Marketing the title sounds good, but what were your day-to-day responsibilities? What was the main objective of your position? Who did you report to? How many people did you manage? What departments did you interact with regularly? How did your position and your responsibilities change over time? All this information, distilled into one concise paragraph, gives employers a very clear idea of what “Director of Marketing” meant at that company and whether your experiences fit their current needs. Every company is different and you need to be very clear about the specific scope of your previous responsibilities.
This is especially important for returning professional women who often will simply write “Chaired the Book Fair” on their resumes. What did chairing the book fair entail? Did you manage 10 committees and 50 volunteers? Did you negotiate with book vendors? Did you redesign the book fair concept and include special events? If you are a returning professional, it’s even more critical to spell it out all out for employers: let them know that your volunteer work wasn’t baking brownies, you were using solid business skills for worthwhile and resume worthy projects.
Sign #7: Sensible Shoes
Are you a woman who stands on the sidelines of life wearing sensible shoes? That may be the image that you project if your resume is filled with low-voltage words like “coordinated” and “facilitated”.
A resume should use powerful, active business words—like managed, led, strategized, negotiated and conceived; words that make potential employers stand up and take notice of skills and achievements.
For more information about the Women@Work Network and more tips on resume writing, visit our web site: www.womenatworknetwork.com.
