Stop Using These Words on Your Resume

Posted April 26th, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Your resume is supposed to make you stand out.
So why are you using the same terminology as everyone else?

As most experts will tell you, it’s best to think of your resume (or your LinkedIn profile) as a sort of ‘teaser advertisement’ for you and your skills and experience.  After all, the goal of the resume is to get a recruiter or potential employer interested enough to call you for an interview.  You have just a few moments to capture the reader’s attention.

Recruiters typically review hundreds of resumes every week, and the truth is that 90% of them contain statements like “Passionate about delivering effective results in innovative ways while leveraging my skills in a dynamic environment.” Quite apart from the fact that a line like that actually says very little about your unique skills and abilities, it also doesn’t do much to help you stand out from the competition – because everyone’s using the same words to describe themselves.

Here are some words you should avoid if you want to make sure your resume doesn’t sound like everyone else’s – and some suggestions for alternatives:

Passionate

10-15 years ago, ‘passion’ and ‘passionate’ may have been unusual words to use in a job-seeking context; today, they’re so overused that they’ve become wallpaper. Instead, try statements which begin in different ways:

“I do best when I’m…”
“Very interested in…”
“I get excited by creating…”

Innovative

Unless you actually work in a think-tank which is designed to pursue scientific innovation, ‘innovative’ is another word which has become chronically overused, especially when describing skills.  Using more varied language will do a better job of highlighting your achievements:

“Developed a more cost-effective method of…”
“Used web-based technology to transform…”
“Created a proprietary system to…”

Dynamic

Most people use ‘dynamic’ in a resume/profile context as a sort of shorthand to convey that they’re comfortable with a fast-paced environment, but like many overused words, it can lose its meaning through overuse. Try these instead:

High-productivity
Entrepreneurial
Brisk
High-change
Growing

Utilize

One of the worst offenders in the jargon stakes, ‘utilize’ just makes you sound like you’re trying too hard, and if I could delete one word from your resume, ‘utilize’ would be it. Go for simplicity instead:

“Put my skills to work…” (instead of “utilize my skills”)
“Used existing resources to create…” (instead of “utilized existing resources”)
“Developed new process…” (instead of “utilized research to transform existing processes”)

Extensive

‘Extensive’, in a resume context, is one of those words that can mean anything – and therefore tends to mean nothing. You don’t have to state that you’ve got ‘extensive experience’ in something if the skills and experience you’ve listed clearly outline your achievements. For example:

“Managed 5-person client services team…” (instead of “extensive experience in managing people”)
“Coordinated $500,000 marketing initiative…” (instead of “extensive experience with marketing”)
“Implemented enterprise-wide supply chain management system…” (instead of “extensive experience with supply chain management”)

BONUS TIPS

  • Avoid repetition of adjectives – it can suck the excitement right out of your resume, and make it look padded with description rather than facts
  • Opt for verbs (managed, led, completed) over adjectives (pro-active, forward-thinking, innovative)
  • Don’t use long paragraphs. Describe each job you’ve had in one sentence, then list accomplishments in bullet points.  This makes your resume an easier, more compelling read

Remember: As with any advertisement, resumes are best when they’re simple, straightforward, and go easy on the jargon.

Didn’t get the job? Here’s why it shouldn’t get you down.

Posted February 17th, 2012 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Even princesses have to kiss a few frogs before they get a prince.

In many ways, looking for a new job should be a pretty invigorating activity.  After all, you’re exploring new possibilities, thinking of new challenges, anticipating a move up the career ladder…what could be more exciting?

Tragically, all the potential excitement tends to get subsumed under the other side of job hunting:  The (sometimes repeated) rejection.  Maybe you’re sending out lots of resumes and not getting callbacks; maybe you’re getting the interviews but somehow not getting the offers.  Either way, it can take its toll on your self-esteem and your morale.

But you shouldn’t take it too personally, and here’s why:

1.  Maybe it really wasn’t the right job for you

It’s likely that the person (or people) doing the screening and interviewing for the job know the organization and the job better than you do, and have a better handle on the kind of person who’s going to be successful in the role.  Maybe they need someone who is less ambitious than you are and will stay in the job for longer than you will; maybe they can tell that the job isn’t going to be challenging enough for you.  ”I really wished I could have hired so-and-so,” employers have often said to me.  ”I just know they wouldn’t have been happy in the long run.”

2.  Sometimes the person doing the hiring makes a mistake

From time to time, we send a candidate to an interview for a position that we know they’d do well in. But they don’t get hired.  Maybe the interview got off to a bad start and didn’t recover; maybe the interviewer didn’t really understand the role; maybe the hiring manager was simply having a bad day. Stuff happens – you just have to shake it off and keep going.

3.  The job might have changed

Sometimes a company posts an advertisement for a position, gets halfway through the screening and interviewing process, and realizes that the role doesn’t exist, or has changed, or has moved to a different office.  You – the job-seeker – gets stuck in the middle, and no one thinks to explain the situation to you.  It’s not a reflection on your abilities.

4.  You might be spreading yourself too thin

If you’re sending out ‘hundreds’ of resumes but getting very few responses, consider that you might not be focusing on the best opportunities for you.  It’s better to spend an hour or two crafting a very targeted response to a job that really fits with your skills and experience than to fire off applications to every job that looks vaguely suitable.  You’ll get better results, and your morale will take less of a beating.

5.  It’s a risk-averse marketplace

A trend we often see in larger organizations is a job that comes with a very specific checklist:  The successful new hire must have X education, Y experience, and Z skills just to make the shortlist, let alone the final cut.  That checklist may end up excluding some great potential candidates, but in a tough job market, it’s the way hiring managers can protect themselves if a new hire doesn’t work out:  ”But I followed the checklist for this role and didn’t do anything risky like hiring someone without the specified skills and experience…”

Remember, a positive attitude is your best asset when you’re looking for a new job.  It’s okay to feel frustrated and fed up with the process, but don’t let it creep into your communications with recruiters or potential employers.  Go for a run, punch a pillow, or have a glass of wine with a friend – then remember that eventually you will find the right job for you, and it just might be as exciting as you hoped.

 

 

Five reasons your career path has stalled

Posted June 26th, 2011 in blog_news, For Job Seekers

Successful people think long-term about their career.
Do you?

So you’ve been in the working world for a few years, and after some initial success, you’re finding that your career trajectory has slowed down – you haven’t had a big promotion, raise, or even a call from a recruiter in a while, and you don’t know why.

Well, assuming that you have some decent basic skills, aren’t living in an economically depressed area, and aren’t Lindsay Lohan, the answer probably lies somewhere in the following 5 areas:

1.  You’ve done too much job-jumping

If you’ve had more than 3 or 4 full-time jobs in the past 2 years, and aren’t able to adequately explain why none of them ‘took’, you may be looking like a bad risk to a potential employer, or a risky proposition to your current one.

How to combat this?  If you’re applying to jobs, offer brief explanations in your covering email (“The company went out of business” or “Seasonal contract position”) that make it clear that you didn’t just change your mind and leave previous jobs.  If you’re hoping to advance in your current position, you might just have to wait a few months until your manager is confident you’re going to stick around – it wouldn’t hurt to make it clear you’re thinking long-term by saying things like “I’m setting up the system so that when we do this next year we’ll be ahead of the game!”

2.  You’re invisible online

If you haven’t had a call from a recruiter in a while, it’s probably because you’re invisible from a Google perspective.  These days, 99% of recruiters start their search online, and most of them start from LinkedIn and work outward.  If you haven’t got a profile on LinkedIn, recruiters won’t find you, and if your only online presence is a LinkedIn profile that hasn’t been updated since 2009, you aren’t going to make a recruiter’s top 10 list.

3.  You’re invisible at work

When was the last time you put your hand up and asked for an extra project or to lead a new initiative?  It’s hard for managers to notice you as a rising star if you’ve just been keeping your head down and getting your basic work done.  No new initiatives on the horizon?  Invent one!  Offer to become the environmental coordinator, organize a charity event, or write a guest blog for your company’s website and then take it to your manager.  Even if your offers aren’t accepted right away, you’ll get noticed as an enthusiastic go-getter who really wants to do more.

4.  You haven’t kept in touch with former colleagues

Recruiters know that the best candidates come through referrals, so a referred candidate always takes priority over someone who just submits an application.  By the same token, the best opportunities tend to turn up because someone you know thinks you’re ‘perfect’ for the position.  It’s hard for people to recommend you if you haven’t spoken to them since the last day you worked with them, 3 years ago.

No, you can’t be best friends with everyone you ever worked with, but if you make an effort to keep in touch with, say, 3 people from every job you’ve ever had, you’ll increase your career prospects exponentially.

5. You’re not in the right job

It sounds like a cliche, but it’s true:  In order to have a really successful career, you have to genuinely love – or at least like, most days! – what you do.  When you enjoy what you do, you don’t mind coming in early and staying late, going the extra mile, and thinking about your future.  When you don’t…well, let’s just say that managers aren’t in a hurry to promote employees who they know aren’t fully engaged in their work.

If you’re finding it harder and harder to come in early, stay late, or make that extra effort, it may be time to consider making a move.  The first step?  Make a list of the elements you think go into the ‘ideal job’ (everything from ‘great co-workers’ to ‘managing a team’ to ‘a shorter commute’ to ‘opportunities to be creative’, if these things are important to you).  The more you know about what your ideal job looks like, the easier it will be to either transition your current role or look for a great new one!

 

 

When to say “thanks, but no thanks” to a job offer

Posted April 9th, 2011 in For Job Seekers

It’s flattering to get offered a job.
That doesn’t mean you should accept.

The only thing worse than being stuck in a job you hate for years on end is taking a job only to flee from it 3 months later:  A company who invests time and money to onboard you only to lose you almost immediately is definitely going to be cheesed off, and it’s a small world.  Plus it’s bad for your resume – having 5 jobs in 3 years makes you look like an unreliable job-jumper and a bad bet.

Approach the interview process as you would the dating scene

You already know that you don’t have to go out with everyone who asks you on a date, you don’t have to kiss everyone who buys you dinner, and you definitely don’t have to marry someone just because you met their family last Christmas.   Sometimes you just know there isn’t a future in the relationship.

Think of the interview process in the same way:   You may have a positive interview (or two), and the company may offer you a job – but that doesn’t mean you should automatically accept it.

Here are some situations in which you should probably decline the offer:

1.  It’s a counter-offer

You decided you hated your current job, so you went on a few interviews and now you have a good offer from another company.  But when you tell your current boss you’re leaving, s/he offers you a raise/title bump/corner office/car allowance to try to get you to stay.

Don’t accept it.  With a very few exceptions, all the reasons you wanted to leave in the first place will still be there (you’ll find that, after tax, that $5000 raise doesn’t actually compensate for the 60-hour weeks you’ve been working),  plus now your boss considers you a flight risk and your co-workers think you blackmailed your way to some kind of advantage.  99% of the time, people who accept counter-offers end up leaving within 6 months anyway, so you’re better off sticking to your guns and making a clean break.

2.  It doesn’t pay enough money to live on

Unless you’re living at home with your parents and just need some work experience, fast, you shouldn’t take a job that pays less than you need for basic expenses, even if they promise you a raise within a few months.  You’ll end up stressed out and resentful – neither of which are conducive to giving 100% to your new job.

What’s more, you run the risk of looking desperate, which means that promised raise may not be forthcoming (“If s/he was so desperate for a job that they took the absurdly low salary we offered, s/he isn’t going to leave even if we keep him/her on slave wages…”).

3.  You aren’t excited about the job

If you get a job offer and aren’t immediately on the phone to your best friend or your mother to tell them about it, it’s probably the wrong job.  It’s hard to succeed in a job, especially in the crucial first 6-12 months, if you’re not passionate about it.  What’s more, if you aren’t excited now, imagine how you’ll feel after a year or two.  Right:  You’ll be back on the market again.

4.  You don’t believe in the company or the brand

So you’re a die-hard fan of Brand X footwear, but you get a great job offer from their closest competitor, Brand Y.  Don’t take it. For most people, career success means being able to get fully invested in what they’re doing, and you’re only going to give yourself a serious case of cognitive dissonance when you have to pretend to love Brand Y all day and restrict your Brand X passion to the weekends.

Sooner or later your managers will notice this lack of enthusiasm and you’ll be passed over for promotion, while your co-workers move ahead.

(On the other hand, you should probably check out Brand X’s career opportunities, where your passion can be turned to good advantage!)

5.  You got a bad ‘vibe’ when you toured the office

Most of us have better gut instincts than we realize.

Think about the last job you really loved.  Chances are, the first time you walked into or through the office, you got a good feeling about it.  It may have been that people were friendly to you; it may have been that you picked up on good teamwork among the existing employees; it may have been the architecture.

We call our reactions to these things ‘vibes’, but in fact they’re quite rational:  People who are friendly to strangers walking through their office are likely to be friendly to new hires; people who appear to be working well together indicate a healthy office environment; and architecture you like means you probably have things in common with your potential new co-workers.

Well, these ‘vibes’ work the other way, too.  If you’re getting a bad vibe, it could mean that your potential new co-workers aren’t all that friendly, that the working environment isn’t healthy, or that you won’t have a lot in common with your teammates.  Regardless, it means you probably aren’t a good fit.

The good news?
Getting one job offer is a good sign that another one is on its way.

Job-hunting is funny:  It can take you a while to get on top of your game (finding the right opportunities, writing  a killer resume, getting confident in interviews, etc.), but once you do, it’s surprising how popular you start to become.

So don’t panic too much about turning down a job offer.  The fact that you got one – especially one that was close enough to what you wanted to be a serious contender – is a good indication that you’re putting your best foot forward and are attractive to potential employers.  Which means a better offer – one that’s more suitable for you, anyway – won’t be long in arriving.  Really.

Job interviews: Sometimes you gotta fake it til you make it

Posted December 7th, 2010 in For Job Seekers

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:   Job hunting is stressful and ego-bruising, and it’s even more difficult when you’ve been unemployed for a few weeks and are starting to really worry about your finances.  And it’s especially difficult at this time of year, for a whole lot of reasons.

So when you finally get a chance to speak with a recruiter or potential employer in real time – either on the phone or in person – and you’re talking about your career, it can be tempting to vent your frustrations, worries and resentment:  ”I’ve been sending out resumes for weeks now and no one ever gets back to me and I keep leaving voicemails but I never hear anything and I see other people getting jobs but no one wants me…”

Would you want to spend 40 hours a week with Debbie Downer?
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If you don’t know what job you want, you’re guaranteed not to find it.

Posted October 23rd, 2010 in For Job Seekers

Recruiters aren’t mind-readers. If you want them to connect you to your dream job, you have to be able to tell them what that dream job looks like.

In previous posts, we’ve talked about the basics of working with a recruiter (aka ‘headhunter’), and how to ensure they put you at the top of their callback list.

But this week I was reminded that before you start connecting with recruiters – before you even start writing your resume, in fact – you need to do one very important thing:  Figure out what job you want.

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Acing the interview starts with an hour on Google

Posted October 11th, 2010 in For Job Seekers

Last week I had lunch with an independent recruiter who had just received an angry phone call from a client who’d just interviewed a candidate the recruiter had sent over – and it hadn’t gone well.

She (the recruiter) had sent what she thought was a fantastic candidate for a finance-related IT position: With a strong resume, great communication skills, a polished appearance, he appeared to be ambitious and willing to go the extra mile to build his career. She figured he was a shoo-in for the position.

“But the interview was a disaster,” she told me after getting off the phone with her client. “He hadn’t done any research about the company. He kept talking about ‘going green’ was a nice thing to do, but that it should never take precedence over the bottom line, not realizing that one of their top mandates is to become Bullfrog Powered wihin the next 2 years, and lead their industry in environmentally-friendly business practices.  And it’s not like they’re keeping it a secret – it’s all over their corporate website!”

Why did this bug the client so much?  Because it’s hard to believe someone when they say “Oh yes, I’d really like to work at your company…” when it’s clear that they didn’t even bother to visit your homepage before they came to the interview.

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Looking for your first job in Canada? 5 tips to make it easier.

Posted September 26th, 2010 in For Job Seekers

If you’re a new Canadian, there’s never been a better time to look for your first job here in Canada: With many fields experiencing ongoing talent shortages, and more Canadian organizations establishing diversity hiring mandates, employers are increasingly interested in candidates from ‘diverse’ groups.

But job-hunting standards can vary from country to country. So if you’re currently undertaking your first job search in Canada, here are a few tips to make it easier.

1. Identify yourself as a diverse candidate
There is increasing pressure on organizations to demonstrate they have a ‘diverse’ workforce.  This means that even companies without diversity hiring mandates are on the lookout for candidates from diverse groups – identifying yourself as a diverse candidate can ensure that your resume/application gets a second look from recruiters.
Including a line or two in your covering email, referencing the fact that you’ve “recently moved to Canada from [your country]” or your education at “[your home country's] university” is a good way to let employers know that you’re a diverse candidate.

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6 Ways to Use Facebook to Get a Job

Posted August 2nd, 2010 in blog_news

I Love Facebook

If you’re like most people, you’ve made 2 erroneous assumptions about Facebook:

  1. It’s only for kids – real grownups aren’t on there
  2. It’s only for personal stuff, not work-related stuff

In fact, the 30+ crowd is the fastest-growing group on Facebook, and seems to be losing the teenagers – who, now that Facebook is so ‘mainstream’ even their parents are using it, are quite naturally looking for other online places to hang out.

And while Facebook is definitely a social media tool for managing personal (i.e. friends and family) relationships, consider this:  90% of referrals and job leads come from personal relationships (friends, family, current and former co-workers who have also become friends).

We all know that ‘networking’ is crucial to a successful job hunt.  Don’t discount Facebook’s ability to cut your job-seeking time in half.

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