Military Careers, Second Careers - Army Times

Résumé revolution

Whether you’re starting from scratch or updating a résumé you’ve used in the past, you’ll find there are as many ways to build a résumé as there are people looking for jobs. We asked three experts for their advice on crafting a competitive résumé in this new era of high-tech job hunting.

All share a firm belief in these five rules for résumé success:

1. You’ll need more than one type of résumé.

“The résumé format should vary depending on the circumstances,” said retired Army Reserve Maj. Carl Savino, co-author of the “Corporate Gray” book series and founder and president of Fairfax Station, Va.-based Competitive Edge Services, a free career transition service for vets.

If you’re heading to a job fair, Savino suggests replacing the traditional “objective” section of your résumé, which tells employers what kind of job you are seeking, with a professional profile, which instead provides an upfront summary of your key accomplishments and qualifications. Such a profile may have broader appeal for a diverse employer audience, Savino said.

Randall Scasny, founder and director of MilitaryJobHunts.com and a former Navy petty officer first class, said he creates three different versions of clients’ résumés — one for traditional job hunts, in which a printed copy of the résumé is mailed to an employer; another for networking situations, such as job fairs; and a third for online job searches, for which résumés are uploaded to job-board databases.

More on online résumés later, but according to Savino, important differences from traditional résumés include a keyword section that is noun-centric rather than verb-centric and emphasis on content, not aesthetics.

You’ll also want different versions of your résumé for different types of employers, said Barbara Adams, a certified military résumé writer and the president and CEO of CareerPro Global, parent company of MilitaryResumeWriters.com.

If you’re looking for a position with a private-sector, Fortune 500 company, keep your résumé short, focused and completely “demilitarized,” Adams suggests.

If you hope to land a job with a government contractor, don’t shy away from using military jargon and acronyms where appropriate, she added.

2. Keywords will make or break your online job hunt.

Job-seekers need to realize that their old one-page résumés aren’t ideal for résumé databases because “they are out of sync with how an employer does searches,” Scasny said.

The résumé database for CareerBuilder.com — an online job site owned in part by the parent company of Military Times — contains more than 24 million résumés. If an employer goes to the site and conducts a search for, say, an office manager in Illinois, he could get hundreds of hits. To narrow the pool, employers change their tactics, Scasny said. “They ask, ‘What is important to me for this job?’ ”

If the same employer adds the application Lotus Notes and the software WebSphere to his search parameters, he instantly reduces the pool of qualified applicants. That’s great for him, because he has fewer résumés to wade through; it’s not so good for you if you have experience with Lotus Notes and WebSphere but failed to list them in the keyword area of your résumé.

“Employers are developing targeted keyword lists that specifically describe the type of candidate they are looking for in a huge database,” Scasny said. “Instead of looking for candidates with general skills, they want specific skills.”

Scasny recommends searching job boards and studying ads and job descriptions to find common industry keywords. Then incorporate those keywords, along with applicable skills and talents, into a keyword section of your résumé.

3. A good résumé can make you more competitive even if you’re less qualified.

A job candidate is “qualified” when he or she has at least 75 percent of the stated job requirements in a particular vacancy announcement, Scasny said. A candidate is “competitive” if, in an online database of 100 qualified candidates, he or she is in the top 10 percent selected for an interview.

That means if you do your résumé correctly, it could be flagged above the lesser résumé of a more qualified job-seeker in an online database.

Former military friends and colleagues already in the civilian work force can give tips for tailoring your résumé to a particular employer, Savino said.

“Get the inside scoop from someone who is already working for that firm who can help you shape your résumé and refine your presentation to align with what they know might be attractive to the people doing the hiring,” Savino said. “It’s important as the job market tightens that you work with inner contacts. … Different companies have different information they are most looking for on résumés.”

4. ‘Me-focused’ résumés are out. It’s all about the employer now.

Think of your résumé as your first chance to sell your “brand” to an employer, Scasny said.

“If you see it as a marketing tool, you are going to write it asking yourself, ‘How am I going to attract that employer?’ ”

Traditional résumés are flawed in that they tend to be “me-focused,” Scasny said. “The résumé is for the employer — period.”

Avoid a narrative approach that clutters your résumé by highlighting your experience and job history in boring, excruciating detail. Instead think of ways to convey to employers how your skills and attributes are going to work for them.

Adams recommends identifying niche markets when marketing yourself via résumé.

“If you have a top-secret security clearance, find job boards that recruit people with security clearances,” Adams said. Or, “find a niche market on military job boards and strategize for just those types of positions rather than generalizing yourself for every job and career field.”

5. Your success will reflect the effort you put into the hunt.

“You should approach your job search as if it were a full-time job,” Savino said. “You want to be your best possible self at all times. I think the résumé needs to be clean, clear and sharp. How you craft that résumé says a lot about you.”