The perfect resume probably has not been written but a resume does not have to be perfect, it merely has to be good enough to get you a job interview.  The following 12 items should help in your efforts to write an effective, if not perfect, resume. 

1. Never, never lie on your resume.  Even stating that you are still working for a company when you are merely collecting some type of unemployment compensation from the company is a lie.  Intentionally misleading people into believing you have a degree when you do not is a lie.  Leaving a job off the resume that you worked at for six months is a lie.  I was ready to hire an engineer several years ago and I was very happy to have found someone after a long search.  I told the headhunter I was working with that I was ready to make the candidate an offer but when I found out he was not employed, I decided not to make the offer.   I withdrew the offer because during the interview I asked him if he was still working and he said yes.  I figured if he would lie to me about that he would lie to me when he came to work for me and that was a risk I was unwilling to take.
2. Make sure all contact information is correct.  I once had an executive making over $250,000 get very angry with me because my client company would not send him his interview expense check.  When I checked into it, I found out the check had been returned to the company several times.  The candidate had an incorrect address on the resume.  I have seen many resumes with incorrect telephone numbers.  This is not as important in the email era, unless your email address is wrong also, but it is not a good thing.
3. Make sure you have NO spelling errors on the resume.  Virtually everyone has access to word processing program with a spell checker.  If you do not, invest in a word processing program and use the spell checker.  Spelling errors send everyone who reads the resume a message that you don’t really care.  I once had a candidate who after interviewing with a company felt compelled to write a thank you letter, which is normally a good thing.  Unfortunately, the thank you note was hand written and full of spelling errors.  The company’s offer letter and the candidate’s thank you note passed each other in the mail.  After receiving the thank you note, the company withdrew the offer.
4. Talk about your accomplishment’s not the team’s accomplishments.  The team (in most cases) is not trying to get the job, you are.
5. List accomplishments, not your job description.  The hiring company wants to know what you did to make your company more successful, not that you watered the plants every morning.  This can be very important.  I rewrote an executive candidate’s resume (for a fee) that had been out of work for six months.  The main thing I changed was his to list his accomplishments and eliminated his duties.  A few weeks later I received a letter from him stating he had 6 interviews and was deciding between 3 offers.   He also sent me an additional check.
6. Minimize or eliminate the use of bullet  points (like this one) and fancy graphics.  My computer reads most of the resumes sent to me before I do and it gets very upset if it has to sift through bullet points or cute winking happy faces.  Also, more and more hiring companies are reading resumes directly into data bases and bullet points and graphics make this a slow process. 
7. Do not use tables.   Tables present a whole host of problems if the recruiter has to make a change on the resume or if the company is trying to feed the resume directly into their data base.
8. Try to keep the resume to two pages.  One page is usually too short but more that 2 page resumes often get ignored because no one has time to read more than two pages.
9. Do not call your resume a Curriculum Vitae.  They are all the rage in Europe but a true Curriculum Vitae is almost an autobiography and no one in Human Resources wants to see that.
10. Do not list references on your resume.  There are so many reasons not to do this that I do not want to list them here.  One of the biggest reasons not to list references is that the person you have listed as a reference may quickly become your strongest competitor for the job after the recruiter talks to him or her. 
11. Do not put your Social Security Number on your resume.   This seems obvious in this era of identity theft but I still see resumes with Social Security numbers.
12. Do not list personal items such as hobbies, number of children, church affiliations, etc.  These can only hurt you because most Human Resource Managers think they are Psychiatrists and if they see you like to read, they automatically assume your are an introvert and this could be a bad thing if you are interviewing for the Plant Manager position.  Also, deep down most companies believe you should not have a life outside the company.  If you have time for hobbies that means you could be working longer hours developing that perfect report no one is going to read.  I interviewed with a well known maker of orange juice in Florida several years ago for a management position.  The Vice President of Operations explained that he expected everyone to work on Saturday and after taking your family to church on Sunday morning, you should probably come into the office in the afternoon (if you had to go to church or synagog on Saturday, I guess you were in big trouble).  I think a lot of executives still believe all your waking moments should revolve around work, even though they know better than to say it.  I got the job offer but turned it down. 

Previously, I have talked about the fact that when an individual interviews for a job, the purpose of the interview is to get the job.  Recently another of my candidates lost an excellent job that he fit perfectly because he was worried about the potential commute during the interview.  The company took his reticence during the interview as an indication that he really was not interested in the position or the company, when really he was worried about driving to work in heavy traffic.  When told that he was not getting a job offer he was very disappointed because he had decided he really wanted the job.  When asked why he acted so cool during the interview process he explained that he was worried about the potential commute.  He asked to have the company reconsider him for the position but the opportunity was lost and the ironic thing is that he was probably the best candidate I could have placed with the company.

Unfortunately, the traffic he saw was from the airport to the plant site and the company was located in a suburb and had he driven a few miles west he would have found that he could have lived virtually in the country.   The moral of this story is during the interview, concentrate on the interview process and getting the offer.  The details can be worked out later and if the concern is real and cannot be eliminated, the offer can be rejected.  

The Future of Plastics Sales? – NO MORE WILLY LOMANS

Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman in The Death Of A Salesman has always defined what is a salesperson for me, possibly because I am an engineer by training and never truely understood salespeople.  Willy Loman always worked very hard creating relationships with everyone from the receptionist to the Chief Executive Officer.  I doubt that Willy would have understood that what he really did was reduce friction in the sales process, even though he believed creating relationships was what he was all about.  Through Willy’s sales efforts, he was able to bring together people who needed whatever product  he was selling at the time with people wanting to purchase that product or something very similar.  What he really got paid to do was simply to find a buyer and seller and reduce the friction in the selling process. 

Willy would be shocked today to find out that sales relationships are not nearly as important today as they were in his era.  The flattening world and the Internet have taken much of the friction out of the sales process.  Buyers can look up the price of copper, coffee, plastic resins, paper bags, etc. on the Internet and get a very good price if not the very best price.  Getting the very best price or product value still may require some help and that is where the salesperson of today enters the fray. 

In my capacity as a Third Party Recruiter for the Plastics Industry, I have several clients who are looking to sell plastic bags, plastic resins, plastic colorants, etc.  The companies are all struggling to find the salespeople they need.  Part of the reason for the paucity of sales candidates is money.  If you are not a salesperson, you must understand that money is very, very important to salespeople.  Salespeople often depend on money to help establish their self worth.  Taking a new sales position with less base pay may have little affect on them financially, especially if they can make up the money through commissions, but the lower base salary may impact the salesperson’s self worth.  Let’s face it, scientists and engineers usually determine their self worth by unique knowledge or skills, others do not have.  Self worth is very important to all of us.

Unfortunately for salespeople who have grown fat on reducing friction in sales process, keeping the high base salaries and incomes in an increasingly hypertransparent world is becoming increasingly difficult.  I have the resumes of several hundred plastic salespeople who once had a six figure base salary and are now out of work.  They are not out of work because they have poor sales skills, most are very good salespeople but the loss of friction in the sales process has reduced their value to potential employers.  The Web’s price-deflating impact and the ever Flattening World, as described in Thomas L. Friedman’s book titled The World is Flat, has reduced the ability of companies to pay the salaries many salespeople believe they should still be earning. 

Instead of six figure base salaries, our clients want to pay experience salespeople with industry contacts base salaries of $40,000 to $65,000 plus commissions and/or bonuses.  Obviously, cutting the base salary in half that a salesperson is use to making will not only negatively impact them financially if they cannot make us the difference with commissions or bonuses it will also negatively affect their self worth.  I believe that the potential loss of salespeople’s self worth is the reason they turn down these positions with lower base salaries even though they are unemployed.  Salespeople are also very optimistic, they have to be, and they may also believe a position paying their old base salary or more is just around the corner and I hope for their sakes it is.   

Ken Nunley, a third party recruiter and owner of Ken Nunley Gate House Consulting gave me a Questionnaire that he asks candidates to fill out and submit if they are interested in one of the positions listed on his web site www.QualityEngineerJobs.com.  I am sharing this Questionnaire, with Ken’s blessing, with my avid readers four a couple of reasons.  The first reason is that Ken is a very successful third party recruiter and this list provides excellent insight into what information a recruiter wants from a job applicant.  The second reason I am sharing this questionnaire is that before Ken became a very successful third party recruiter, he was a very successful human resources manager and has inside knowledge of what information companies want from job applicants. 

The following questionnaire should be used as a guide by anyone preparing  a resume, responding to a company job advertisement, responding to a third party recruiter job advertisement, or during a telephone or face-to-face job interview.  The questions are not in any particular order of importance but yet, they are all important. 

• As a part of our QUALITY process please indicate your SALARY and RELOCATION preferences, what type of products and/or industries you’re experience with?
• What is prompting you to leave your current or last employer?
• What prompted you to leave your next to last employer?
• What is your completed BS degree and/or your advanced degree in?
• Your  SALARY or RELOCATION preferences?
• Salary Range?
• Relocation – Urban, Suburban, Rural?
• Is the salary posted for this position within your interest range?
• Will you consider CONTRACT work?
• Are there any required skills in this job description that you are not experienced with?
• What types of products and/or industries are you experienced with?
• How many years of experience do you have in each industry?
• What is your availability to travel domestically and internationally?
• For DOD and DOE job submittals or no-US citizens – what are your current citizenship/VISA status and/or past or current security clearance?
• Do you require relocation support because you are a current home owner?
• Please list the contact numbers at which you can be reached, HOME #, CELL# and WORK#.
• Employment tenure of less than 36 months with any employer should be explained, i.e., lay off, plant closure, released, etc.
• Employment gaps of more than 1 year should be explained!
• Please provide us with the following information from your last two jobs:
   -  What was produced at that site? - Include:  Employer/Company name and product/services produced?
   -  Who were your major customers? – Include: Employer/Company name and services/products sold to?
   -  With what process were you most involved? – Include: Employer/Company name and your focused contribution   and accomplishments?
               
• ALL resumes MUST have dates of employment, employer name and job title!!!

Obviously this Questionnaire is written for anyone applying for a job.  I have a similar questionnaire on my web site www.discoverypersonnel.com that is tailored for someone requesting Discovery Personnel’s help with their job search.  Either questionnaire will provide a good overview of what information a company or third party recruiter needs from someone applying for a position or requesting help with a job search.  BE PREPARED!