You Majored in What? (30 page)

Here’s Justin’s first attempt at organizing his law résumé:

For his résumé for sports/recreation employers, Justin might lead with Sports/Recreation Experience and include his sports office, lifeguard, and canoe sales experience, and then list his other work under Additional Experiences. For his banking résumé, Justin might lead with Customer Service/Office Experience and include his law firm, commissioner’s office, canoe shop, and lifeguard experiences. In each case, he will likely change the bulleted point phrases under each job listing to indicate the most relevant parts of the experience.

Are there experiences you listed on your pages that don’t fit, or don’t seem as relevant? Consider leaving them off. You don’t have to list every job and every experience you’ve ever had on a résumé.

Now that you have decided which experiences fit best in the categories you’ve selected, look over the list of duties you compiled for each experience. Which aspects of your experiences best fit this field? Which skills most apply to your potential work setting? Can you phrase them to fit the language of the field to which you’re applying? Rank them from most significant to least significant, based on your job objective. Use action verbs followed by specific explanations of what you did. Remember to show, not tell. In general, you should leave out the insignificant or less important tasks.

Justin is going to include his law firm experience in all three of his résumés. For the law firm job, he plans to select his most valuable and responsible roles to highlight perhaps as follows:

• Researched cases, and created and filed documents for five attorneys

• Designed efficient billing system resulting in 20 percent greater collection of fees

• Organized office tasks to ensure all deadlines met and files properly maintained

For the customer service banking job, Justin might list the following entries under the law firm position:

• Provided daily customer service to clients, consultants, vendors, and staff

• Maintained financial records, created invoices, and reconciled accounts

• Interpreted and translated for Spanish-speaking clientele

For the sports/recreation field, Justin might choose to focus on organizational and management skills, such as:

• Explained legal documents and reviewed basic laws to clients

• Created PowerPoint marketing presentation for law firm

• Worked in a fast-paced environment, completing numerous tasks under pressure, never missing a deadline for over fifty cases

As you can see from the example above, one job or experience can lead to a variety of other careers—you just need to think about the way your experience fits the position you’re seeking. You’ll notice that the word
I
does not appear on Justin’s entries. He leads with an action verb and then the subject, trying to make his descriptions as clear as possible and free of fluff. Below is a list of common action words that might help you develop your experience entries.

Action Words

Achieved
Adapted
Administered
Advertised
Analyzed
Approved
Arranged
Attained
Authorized
Balanced
Budgeted
Calculated
Chaired
Collected
Communicated
Compiled
Completed
Computed
Conceptualized
Condensed
Conducted
Conferred
Consulted
Controlled
Coordinated
Corresponded Created
Critiqued
Delegated
Demonstrated
Designed
Developed
Directed
Drafted
Earned
Effected
Eliminated
Enabled
Established
Evaluated
Executed
Expanded
Expedited
Facilitated
Generated
Guided
Identified
Illustrated
Implemented
Improved
Increased
Influenced Initiated
Inspected
Instructed
Interpreted
Launched
Led
Lectured
Maintained
Managed
Marketed
Mastered
Motivated
Negotiated
Operated
Ordered
Organized
Originated
Oversaw
Participated
Performed
Pinpointed
Planned
Prepared
Processed
Produced
Programmed Promoted
Proposed
Provided
Publicized
Published
Purchased
Recommended
Recorded
Recruited
Reduced
Reinforced
Reorganized
Repaired
Represented

Reviewed
Revitalized
Revived
Scheduled
Strategized
Strengthened
Summarized
Supervised
Surveyed
Systematized
Tabulated
Taught
Trained
Transcribed

Transferred
Transformed
Translated
Treated
Tutored
Unified
United
Upgraded
Used
Utilized
Won
Worked
Wrote

STEP 7: THE INTERESTS SECTION

This is a completely optional section of your résumé and another area where you will get mixed responses from employers. Some say they like it because it shows your personality and can provide a common ground for conversation. Others say they aren’t interested. So let two factors help you make your decision: space and relevance. If you have extra space to fill on your résumé, an interests section is one way to do that. (Just make sure you don’t have a larger interests section than experience section! It might look as if you aren’t interested in working.) Also, if your interests are relevant to your career field, by all means include them. Just be sure they don’t conflict with your field (for example, someone whose hobbies are sewing and reading applying for a high-pressure sales job) or are risky activities that might indicate an insurance liability for an employer (motorcycle racing, skydiving, and so on).

That’s it! You’re done. No need to put “References available on request” at the bottom of your résumé unless, again, you have lots of extra room. Instead, create a separate word file that has “References of
Your Name
” and list your references’ names, job titles, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. If you want, you can include one line for each reference indicating how you know the person if it’s not obvious from title or place of employment.

So before we end this chapter, let’s go back and visit Justin one more time. The more Justin considered his after-graduation options, the more he found himself leaning toward a career related to sports and recreation, even though he had no idea what he could do. He started researching careers related to sports and found that many of them required advanced degrees or special athletic skills. But then he found a Web site called
CoolWorks.com
, which had a job listing for an office assistant at a tourist resort in Alaska. It was a short-term opportunity offered from May until September, and it involved working in the office of a resort that offered hiking, biking, kayaking, and all the other activities he loved. The salary wasn’t exciting, but housing was included, and the company was ranked one of the best employers in the nation, so he figured if he did well on that job, they might promote him or help him find other opportunities. Not only that, he’d get to live in Alaska for five months, which sounded like a great adventure.

The title was “office staff” at the resort and required strong organizational skills, basic bookkeeping/accounting skills, and strong knowledge of MS Word, Excel, and Access computer programs. He would be greeting customers and selling various adventure packages and tours. The advertisement also indicated that because the job involved arranging backpacking, rafting, and hiking itineraries for customers, outdoors experience was a plus. So armed with the job description in hand, he began adjusting his résumé to fit the position.

You may recall that Justin had originally planned to keep his study-abroad experience brief on his résumé for the sports/recreation area, but then he realized that while he was studying abroad he had spent his spare time hiking, biking, and doing all the activities listed in the job description. So suddenly a completely different aspect of his study in Mexico became important. He also decided that based on the job description, it would be better to lead with his office management skills rather than his recreational skills, since the advertisement led with office skills.

On the next page, you’ll see Justin’s final résumé for his possible career at a resort in Alaska. It would have been just as easy for Justin to create a résumé for a law firm or a bank, and he can still do that when he returns from Alaska in October.

Now it’s your turn . . .

What could you do in the next twenty-four hours to make your résumé stronger?

If you knew you couldn’t fail, where might you target your résumé? Is there a dream place where you’d like to work, or a field you’d like to try even though you might not succeed? It seldom hurts to write a résumé and see what happens.

WRITING THAT WILL GET YOU HIRED

You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD,
THE CRACK-UP

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story using just 6 words.

Actress/writer Portia Nelson wrote her autobiography in less than 150 words. Think you can write a good cover letter in four paragraphs?

During your job search you will encounter several opportunities to write. Everything you send out during this process has the power to cast you in a positive or negative light. You will be evaluated on many things, and well-written correspondence can be a decisive factor in your employment. It is your chance to make a good impression, demonstrate your writing skills, and convey your enthusiasm for the position or company. If you fail to represent yourself well in writing (even when it’s “just an e-mail”), you have given the employer a reason to choose someone else. Because cover letters, just like résumés, are so important to the job search, you will see hundreds of books and Web sites on the subject. And once again you’re going to find all sorts of conflicting advice: cover letters should be just two or three sentences to introduce your résumé, cover letters should be at least three paragraphs but never more than one page, cover letters are completely unnecessary, and so on. In this chapter, we’re going to cover the basics of good business writing and provide you with several illustrations to use as starting points for creating your own brilliant letters. And just as was recommended in Chapter 8, you will want to seek examples of good cover letters and other business writing from Web sites and books, and you will want to enlist someone to critique your letters.

No matter what career field you’re considering, good writing will not only help you get the job, it will also help you keep the job and get faster promotions. That’s a rather bold statement: I can hear some of you saying “Wait a minute. I’m going to be a_. I’m not being hired for my writing ability.” And you may be right. But do you think you might have to send an e-mail at some point to your supervisor? Is there a chance you will need to craft a letter to sell a product or your services? Do you dream of becoming an entrepreneur and developing your own business? No matter what field you’re in, you will write; and because so few people take the time or energy to hone the craft, good writers easily stand out from the competition. And good writing will serve you throughout your career.

Want one more reason for developing strong writing skills?
Money.
Good writing skills are consistently one of the most sought-after skills by employers. The employee who can write a great memo, send the perfectly composed e-mail, write grants that result in funding, or write the perfect proposal will stand out for promotion every time. In fact, even now you’re about to be “paid” for your ability to write a good cover letter and other business correspondence by landing a job, internship, or a volunteer opportunity that will lead to something better in the future.

For years you’ve been writing to please your teachers or professors with the hoped-for result of an A. Some of you have perfected this skill; others would prefer to avoid it and have mastered the art of finding courses that require tests rather than papers. If you haven’t enjoyed academic writing, the good news is that the type of writing you’ll be doing for the job search differs from the writing that professors have expected. Business writing is generally more direct and easier to write. If you’re a strong academic writer, you will find that you can adapt your style quickly. The basic rules of good writing apply everywhere, but business writing (the term we’re going to use for the kind of writing you’ll be doing to land a job) is a new skill even for experienced A writers.