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I was just part of a layoff recently and while the info within my resume was current I hadn't put alot of thought into the layout of it. I then purchased the Interview Series as well as the Premium Content and changed my resume to emulate the MT resume style.

I have been in telecom as an account manager, a technical consultant and a sales manager since 1995. On three occasions, I was promoted from within the same company from a technical consultant/solutions consultant to a sales manager. I had a lunch meeting yesterday with the person responsible for getting me out of my hometown to what I feel has become a fairly successful career (did I mention I was just laid off?). When I found out that he was in my area and asked him to lunch I just wanted to catch up with him and see what resources he may have to aide in my job search. He sits down at lunch and pulls out my resume and proceeds to tell me that THIS is why I am not getting any calls about my accomplishments. I spent a ton of time crafting the right verbiage and only focusing on my accomplishments only to be told that there is no "story" to my resume. He said that attention is immediately drawn to the company name and the date that I worked there vs. my job title and what I did for each company.

He suggested that I reconfigure my resume to go like this - Strengths, Accomplishments (sub section for sales management and sub section for account management/technical consulting), Employment (lists the company name, city, date and one bullet describing my role at the company) and Education (I only attended one semester of college right after high school but have since begun taking classes non-stop to get my Bachelors degree- he felt that leaving this off because I didn't graduate wasn't smart).

I know that M and M don't have to time to critique resumes for everyone on here but I sure could use someone's assistance to help get me pointed in the right direction. Suggestions>

timbarrow's picture

Just got on this board, but I'm extremely impressed. I've been looking for something like this for the last month and a half (now that I'm looking myself). Couple of comments from someone who is ignorant about resume writing...

1) My resume does suck. The comments in the podcast are going to totally change how mine is done. How many opportunities did I miss out on???

2) I've had a solid two pages and I'm concerned about getting it down to one. There are a lot of people who are agreeing with one page, but I'm concerned about cutting too much out. As a hiring manager in my previous position, I saw 100+ resumes. I don't know if I would have gotten everything out of it that I wanted (although it would have gotten me to notice!)

3) As someone who has lived in Australia and the US - different countries are asking for different things. The document is used differently and I had to beef up my resume when I was there in order to conform. Out of everything that I have seen, the US has the shortest resumes out there. As an IT manager, I can also attest to the fact that India resumes generally read like a book...War and Peace would be shorter. Isn't it a little risky to go so far away from the norm? Although I would agree that everyone from all countries could benifit from being more concise, what does it say when everyone else has a 4-6 page resume and you are the only one who has 1.

refbruce's picture

My thoughts in answer to your bottom line question:

-- As a job seeker, you need to know and study the culture of your industry and country and how resumes are read. Put on the shoes of the people who will be reading your resume and tell them what they need to know.

-- There are many "experts" on resumes and one will get wildly divergent views.

-- No matter what you do for a resume, you will miss some opportunities, unless you're able to specifically tune the resume for each specific individual. This is partially because there are so many "experts" on resumes and what hiring managers are looking for can be wildly divergent, even within the same division of the same company. IMO, at least some of this is because these managers haven't really thought carefully about what they're looking for (and I've been guilty of that particular sin).

-- Shorter is (usually) better, but know your market. Mark has a lot of relevant expertise for at least mainline international business.

In my previous life, I was in an industry where there wasn't a lot of hiring, so I wasn't looking at a lot of resumes. In this position, I've been directly involved in 10 hiring decisions in the past 2 years (about as many as I did in 18 years before). All other things being equal, an applicant's ability to be succinct and get the important points onto one page is something that will send a resume higher in the stack than someone who can't narrow his/her topic. If I want more information, I'll ask for it.

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