How to Find a Resume Pro Who Understand
Scene: We are perusing the resume of a Technology Product Manager when we come across this tasty tidbit on his bulleted list of achievements:
- Introduced Agile-focused practices such as iterative development to enable rapid deployment, reducing development time by (x).
“Perfect!” we hiring managers say, nodding in approval. It’s a solid, specific skill with a quantifiable result.
Alternate, sadder universe: In place of the Agile bullet point, there’s a yawning black hole of nothingness. It’s not that there are no bulleted list items in the achievements section; it’s just that they give us deja vu—they’re a bit generic, and they lack that sexy domain expertise je ne sais quoi.
Frankly, we’re bored. Plus, there’s no Agile experience mentioned. “No Agile experience,” we hiring managers sigh, reaching for the next resume in the precariously balanced towering pile in the inbox.
Same Technology Product Manager, two different resumes, tragically different results. How could a bragging point like Agile, rapid deployment, and reduced development time be 100% absent from this guy’s resume?
Easy. In the alternate, sadder, Agile-less universe, the product manager didn’t go to a resume expert with domain expertise. Instead, he asked his colleagues for a peer review. In the sadder universe, he didn’t then manage to get his resume in front of Kathy Robinson, career coach, founder of TurningPoint, and noticer of missing technology bullet points. Robinson has worked in software and e-commerce companies, and she’s hired a ton of software people, and, well, she just knows what to ask. What she asked this guy about was Agile.
The technology product manager’s story has a thousand variations. Technology professionals, like anybody else, tend to get resume help through word of mouth. That could include former bosses, headhunters/recruiters, career coaches, neighbors, or referral by a local career coaching association. Some just search online. Some use a relative’s offspring, out of a good-hearted, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot sense of obligation vis-a-vis doing your family a favor, since, as Aunt Philamena says, your cousin Jim is really a darn good writer and could use a little support kicking off this exciting new resume-writing venture he’s taken on.
There are better ways. There are ways to find people like Kathy Robinson. There are questions to ask resume experts to ascertain that they know what the *&^% you do for a living. There are questions that good resume experts should be asking you to prove that they know what the *&^% you do for a living.
Here they are. But first:
Four Ways to Discern That You Need Domain Expertise
#1: The most common sign of a generic or incompetent resume redo is the fact that you’ve only got one resume, Robinson says.
“Many career coaches or outplacement professionals still think that one resume or cover letter will suffice,” she says. “These days, unless someone’s applying for an identical job with a competitor to their current employer, typically people need two or three base versions that represent the different permutations their role could take.”
For example, a software manager might look for a role that’s a development manager, development/QA manager, or engineering manager who oversees software, network, QA, or release engineering, she says. A domain expert knows the differences. A generic resume writer might not.
#2: Another sign of a generic resume is one that’s too specific about your current company. These don’t translate well into a future company, Robinson says. They come out of a generic career coach’s reliance on the Problem-Action-Result methodology: i.e. What was the problem? What did you do to solve it? What did you achieve as a result?
When she sees resumes written with this PAR formula, they’re typically too focused on a current employer’s product names, technology, department, or team names, she says.
It’s a problem. If you expect a recruiter to translate your company’s patois, you’re assuming they have both generosity of spirit and, shall we say, ample time on their hands. “When a recruiter reads something that’s too company-specific and not more broadly written to appeal to various types of companies, you can lose his/her attention very quickly,” Robinson said.
#3: Lack of current industry buzzwords.
One of Robinson’s recent clients, a technology marketer, had some peers look at his resume before he sent it to her. Like the product manager, the technology marketer had to be prodded to remember some excellent projects that Robinson knew would be compelling to hiring managers.
It’s easy for technology pros to get blinded as to their own worth in this way.
“When you’re too close to your own work, you often don’t think about the bigger picture of what’s going on in the industry,” Robinson said. “Many people don’t give themselves enough credit for things they have already done that would be interesting on a resume.”
Robinson often sees general bullets about what someone remembers of her day-to-day responsibilities. But what rises to most people’s minds when they sit down to update their resumes are whichever projects gained them kudos in their current workplace, Robinson says, regardless of whether the industry as a whole cares. “They prioritize those projects in their minds and on their resumes over others that might be more industry-relevant,” she said. “For example, if someone were picked for a company process improvement team, that often is a big deal within the company and not as important to hiring managers as people think.”
#4: Another blind spot is forgetting those things that are quantifiable, Robinson said: i.e., the work they’ve done that improved the business, whether we’re talking profitability, efficiency, or innovation.
For example, one of Robinson’s client’s resume bullets was:
- Identified primary content strategy for (Company Name) to transition from an exclusively B2C to also a B2B platform via first-person market research and comprehensive competitive analysis.
How many companies want to transition between B2C and B2B markets? Not so much. Such a bullet needs to go away, Robinson says. It might be mentioned in the job interview, but only if it’s applicable.
What is interesting, however, is that this client:
- Conducted comprehensive market research (2,000 users and 10 competitive companies) which led to the development of targeted, compelling content and the ability to penetrate a new market.
How to Vet a Resume Expert for Domain Expertise
Get a referral. To find a resume expert with domain expertise, ask people you know for referrals. Sharon DeLay, a certified professional resume writer and career coach, suggests that you ask people you trust who’ve actually used a given resume writer and gotten satisfactory results.
Look for Certification. Look for a resume expert with training or certification from an independent organization, such as the CPRW (Certified Professional Resume Writers) certification from the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches. The Association combines course work and tests to train and evaluate resume writers.
Ask when they were certified. Robinson doesn’t trust that a resume-writing certification is enough, unless it's from the last three or four years or the person has kept up with changes in resumes and can articulate current trends. For example, dusty old resume writers might use an objective statement instead of an executive summary and/or a descriptive title at the top of the resume. That change in resume-writing convention occurred in just the past few years.
“I'd recommend that a client ask when the person was trained on resume writing, what the most common fields are that they work with, the writer's own personal background, and how resumes have changed over the past few years,” Robinson says. “If the person answers, ‛Nothing's new,’ I'd keep looking for someone who's more in touch with the marketplace.”
Ask what you’ll get for your money. DeLay said the right answer to this question is a consultation and the right to edit a draft version or two.
Ask how to customize the resume. A good resume writer should show you how to customize the resume as you apply for various positions, Robinson said. For example, how do you adjust keywords to reflect a job posting? What’s allowable when it comes to tweaking your executive summary to reflect that you’re the perfect candidate for the job, and how do you avoid looking like you’re fibbing as you do it? This is important particularly if you’re applying for multiple jobs at one company.
Ask to review resume examples. “A writer who does not have examples is likely inexperienced or not qualified at all,” DeLay says. When looking at those examples, keep an eye on how she brands a candidate. Do you have a good sense of a candidate’s skills and expertise? If you don’t get a clear, strong sense of what the subject of the resume is about, what job they’re after, and why they’d be a good fit for it, get a different resume writer.
Ask for references. You want to talk to people with whom the writer has worked. Do they come from your industry? Do they have similar domain expertise, come from the same or a similar industry, or share your job title or duties? Ask for feedback on how their experience with the resume writer went and the feedback they’ve received on their redone resume from hiring managers.
Ask how familiar he is with appropriate keywords. Good resume writers should understand how and where to insert keywords in a resume, Robinson says. They should understand your industry well enough to know which buzzwords will be appropriate for specific positions, as well as how to swap out the words as you tailor your resume for a given job. They should also show a good grasp of how applicant tracking systems (ATS) work and how to create a resume that doesn’t glitch electronic resume-handling software.
Ask about her domain expertise. Knowing keywords isn’t good enough—ideally, a writer should also know what’s relevant or not in your domain.
“Personally, if I were in IT and were looking for a career coach, I’d want someone who’d worked in the industry or who has worked with a lot of technology people recently so they’re up to date,” Robinson says. A resume writer who’s worked in your industry is ideal but often hard to find, so look for one who has at least worked on resumes for other professionals in your line of work.
“A good resume writer should be able to take a look at your current resume and ask a few industry-specific questions that should clue you in to whether or not they know what they’re doing,” Robinson says. “For example, if I were talking to a software developer, I’d be asking what languages, what versions, what certifications, and, for example, whether the person has worked on anything SaaS, cloud, or mobile. I’d also be asking about the job titles they’d want to apply for and I’d be suggesting some that came to mind.” No resume writer could ever be conversant on every type of job or company, but you want someone who sounds more like a recruiter when they talk to you. After all, a resume writer’s job is to help you market yourself appropriately.
Don’t Take the First Draft at Face Value
Regardless of whether you put your faith in a.) a resume expert with technology domain expertise or b.) your Dungeon Master, resume experts implore: Do not take the first draft at face value.
“For a lot of IT/tech people, their skills across a variety of platforms, languages, etc. are their calling card,” says DeLay.
If your resume botches these things, believe me, the recruiter will not say, “Oh, well, their resume writer made a mistake.” Instead, the recruiter will say, “This flunky can’t even talk about the profession.”
Don’t Think Domain Expertise Gets You Off the Communication Hook
Domain expertise in a resume writer is a wonderful thing. It is not, however, equivalent to mind reading.
Which is unfortunate, given that a lot of tech people in the trenches—the programmers or the network administrators, say—are not particularly adept at articulating their value, DeLay has found.
“When I ask them to share with me accomplishments, they’ll typically say, ‛Well, I do my job.’ Or they undersell their contributions to a project,” she says.
So start identifying and documenting the contributions to the projects you work on. Figure out where you contributed tangibly, DeLay suggests, whether it’s through writing code, adding value by resolving problems, developing strategy, or figuring out the budget. Track it, document it, and store it away somewhere for when you need to give your resume a facelift.
What Your Face Should Look Like With the Right Resume Expert
After Robinson pulled the Agile rabbit out of the technology product manager hat, this is what his face looked like: kind of surprised. Maybe a little chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it. He wasn’t an Agile expert, after all, so it didn’t occur to him that it belonged on his resume.
“The look that came over his face was ‛Oh, how did I miss that?’” Robinson says.
So give yourself credit for knowing what you know.
Then, find somebody who knows what the *&^% that is.
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Email to a Friend
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
