Resume Hint

I am working with wonderful client who is looking for a new position preferably inside his current company.  He hasn’t had to write a resume in eight years and has found out that much has changed in the world of resume writing.  He also has a lot more competition than he would have had in 2005.

The major area where this client and others have stumbled is defining their contribution(s) to the organization. When I ask them to specifically let me know their accomplishments, they usually send me a laundry list of their tasks.  This may shed some light on what they do on a day-to-day basis, but it does not showcase any of their successes and everyone has had some type of success on the job.  This is what I ask them:

1. If you must write out a task, ask yourself, “What did this result in?”
2. Who was involved, what happened, why did it happen, how did it happen and what was your role in this activity?
3. If the above steps don’t work, ask yourself, “So what?” What is so special about this activity?
4. Looking at your job, what have been your major accomplishments?
5. Pull out or think back on past performance appraisals and look for your accomplishments.

Today’s job seeker is competing with many others and first-rate positions are very hard to come by.  A well written resume that can answer the question, “Can this employee do a similar, excellent job for us?” is the first step to getting in the door for an interview.  Why take a chance?

Interviewing for Students

My soon to be 20 year old son has a job interview this afternoon.  He is a sophomore in college and this job would be perfect for him since he is burning through money by living off campus.  Last night I gave him some tips about interviewing for this particular job and today I sent him a few more about social media.  Here is what I said:

      Google the position.  My son is interviewing for a server position in a chain restaurant.  The qualities for a server job include:  an outgoing personality, ability to take orders and remember detail about the orders, customer service skills, a pleasant personality, a team player and others. I asked him to come up with examples from either school or other jobs where he had to demonstrate these qualities.  I also suggested going to the company website to read the job description and think about how his skill set matches these.

Note: If the position description says, “Greets guests and builds rapport”, how should you greet the interviewer? 

How would you answer the question “You haven’t been a server in a couple of years?  What makes you think that you could pick it up again with our restaurant?”  In the past few years, my son has been a lifeguard.  I asked him to list the qualities of a life guard (working with people, customer service, friendly and helpful) and align those with the server skills.

Be prepared to answer any questions about strengths, weaknesses and the ever famous, “Why would you want to work here?”  My son needs to come up with examples from school or past jobs to explain his strengths.  As far as weaknesses he needs to select a weakness that doesn't have to do with server skills and talk about he is doing to eliminate it.   For the “Why work here?” question, he suggested saying that he’s been going to this restaurant since he was a kid and he always thought that while it looked like a lot of hard work, it also looked like a lot of fun too and that he has the type of personality and skills that should allow him to fit right in.  Good answer.

Social media. I told him to Google himself and if he sees anything that might not look so good for him, to eliminate it.  This includes Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  He also needs to have a voice message that clearly states his name and message.

Dress nicely.  Wear a pressed collared shirt and slacks and wear socks with your polished shoes. Lay off the cologne for the day, too.

It’s getting to the time of year when the college kids are going to start looking for jobs for the summer.  Taking a few steps to be prepared and show that you care can help ace the interview.  

Your Social Media Presence

I was contracted to help an organization write their Employee Handbook.  Luckily for me they wrote most of it and wanted my help with editing and checking to see if they included all of the things that should be included.  I noticed that they didn't have a policy addressing social media so I wrote up some guidelines.

Today I was looking at some comments within one of my Facebook groups.  It happens to be a political group and I know better than to make any comments; I just like to read the updates. Someone made some very derogatory comments on the page so I did a quick Google search on their name (for the purposes of this blog) and I could see where they worked.  Ooops!

What do these two subjects have in common other than sharing social media (social media can include LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, blogs, wikis and others.)?

1. Your comments, especially in social media may be seen by your company, your clients, your vendors and suppliers.  If you are looking for a job, an organization can easily Google you and see these very same comments. 

 2. The photographs that you post on many of these sites may also be visible to others.

You can Google yourself by putting quote marks around your name in the search box like this, “Nancy Range Anderson”.  If you have an active social media presence, you’ll quickly discover your words and photos. 

Should you stop commenting? That’s up to you and your personal and professional needs.  Just be mindful of what you say and post because it can come back and bite you. Many companies have policies about the use of social media so you have to be very careful where you tread.