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Showing Your Potential in Your Resume

Dec 22 2019

Here is my Holiday gift to you: you can apply for jobs where you have a majority—but not all—of the qualifications if you can show strong and relevant potential in your resume.

Why Your Potential Is Important

According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), over 40 percent of both men and women avoid applying for jobs where they do not meet every single qualification, simply because they do not want to waste time and energy.

The assumption of wasted time and energy reflects a mistaken belief that (a) hiring managers and recruiters know exactly what they need for a new hire to succeed; (b) someone somewhere is the ideal candidate who meets every one of the requirements in exactly the way they are written in the advertisement or posting; and (c) resumes are nothing more than a list of facts—tasks completed, courses taken, grades and promotions achieved.

In reality, all the hard qualifications in the world will not help if a resume fails to show how those qualifications can be valuable to the company. In addition, they are irrelevant if the resume does not include skills (like communication skills) that never make it onto an advertisement or posting. A resume should achieve more than a list of competencies. As HBR states, you need to see the hiring process as one where the ability to correctly frame your expertise—show your potential in your resume—can overcome a few disadvantages in skills and experiences.

If you don’t have all the qualifications, it can help you to network with the hiring manager for the job. This way, your resume will not be rejected by the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) before it is read. In some cases, I have found that companies and hiring managers can influence a job posting to match the experience of a job seeker who does not meet the initial, too limiting, requirements of a job posting. In some cases, they may redo the job posting, so you are the only candidate that can pass.

What You Should and Should Not Do on a Resume

You should never lie about qualifications on a resume. You should never entirely ignore requirements in a job advertisement or posting. You should also never rely on one factor alone when applying for a position; skills, education, experience, and achievements all have a role to play, but that role can vary depending on your own strengths.

Your resume should establish a trustworthy relationship with the hiring manager and recruiter that you can then develop more deeply during an interview. For example, suppose you do not quite meet the years of experience requirement; your resume might instead emphasize that your experience has been especially deep or wide-ranging—that quality, in this instance, makes up for quantity.

Why the Hiring Process Rewards a Professional Resume

A professionally written resume focuses your experience on those competencies most needed for the job you want; makes the most of the qualifications you do have; demonstrates your ability to contribute; includes your soft skills; and celebrates your potential.

The services of a professional resume writer can be essential to frame your resume in exactly the right way to show your true potential. To find out more, please contact me at Robin’s Resumes®.

Are Your Skills Up to Par?

Jun 16 2019

On Father’s Day, we celebrate the support that fathers give their children, including helping them prepare to find and succeed at a career.

Unfortunately, 42% of HR managers receive resumes from unqualified candidates, according to a survey by Robert Half Management Resources—not surprising, since 78% of professionals in the same survey admitted they would apply for a job despite not meeting the job requirements. I always urge job seekers to concentrate on positions where they can meet the job requirements. Otherwise, their job search will be mired in frustration.

Even if a company is open to training new employees (84%), the company wants to know that the candidate who is applying is very close in skills to the candidate they are hoping for. They also would like some evidence that the candidate is trainable. That is why it is essential that you:

Read the job description or posting before you send in your resume. Make a list of all the skills mentioned in the resume and other qualifications such as geographic location. How many of them can you fulfill right now?
Check that your resume highlights those essential skills and qualifications. A list of skills is not enough; you must show how you used your skills to benefit your previous and current employers.
Rework your resume if needed to describe required skills that you may not have used recently or used only in volunteer positions. You might add a few bullet points to your summary to focus on skills that would otherwise not show up until much later in your career history.
Find out if there are classes you can take to fill in any gaps. Even if you have not yet finished a course, attendance shows your willingness and ability to learn.
Remember to cover soft skills that are critical for learning, such as communication, collaboration, and experience in Lean or similar programs that lead to new ways of thinking and working.
Use the cover letter or email to reinforce your capabilities.

Meeting a company’s job requirements is essential if you want to move on to an interview and eventually get hired. If you are concerned that your resume does not adequately represent your skills and qualifications or if you are stymied by a job description that seems impossible to match, please contact me. I have years of experience designing resumes that help job seekers qualify for the jobs they want.

Is Your Resume Too Good to be True?

Mar 17 2013

You have multiple skills; you have contributed to the workplace in multiple ways. But is your resume so filled with diverse accomplishments that it seems too good to be true? Are you setting yourself up as “jack of all trades, master of none”?

One of my recurring refrains in the Robin’s Resumes® blog is that a job hunt must be focused. There is no such thing as “any job.” Every job requires certain skills, accomplishments, and education; you have to focus your job search on the jobs that match your talents and interests.

By the same token, employers are not looking for employees who can “do everything and anything.” They want someone who is focused on achieving his or her best in the job that is being advertised.

Your resume is your platform for describing what it is that you do best. As a supply chain specialist in a small company, you sometimes have to haul around warehouse stock yourself. But is that the job you want to be hired for? Is that the achievement you are most proud of? As an administrative assistant to the CEO, you proofread reports. But if the ads you respond to never mention proofreading, how much valuable space on your resume do you want to use for that skill? Maybe your boss chooses you to serve on every company committee, from selecting recycling bins to leading a Lean initiative. Which of those committees actually align with the job you want now?

Your resume should show off your strengths, not hide them under a bushel of facts that do not match your own desires or a job’s requirements.

If you have a lot of accomplishments and cannot decide which one will result in a powerful resume, please contact me.

The Most Important Information on Your Resume

Oct 14 2012

A LinkedIn participant asked the group to identify what information was most important on a resume. All of the professional resume writers and hiring managers who responded agreed that contact information topped the list: name, phone number and email address.

The next most important items were to show how your experience matches the job requirements and how your accomplishments make you stand out from the rest of the crowd.

To that all-important list, I would add three more items:

Proofread carefully. If you make a change, check the entire resume again. Your change may contradict a statement earlier or later in the resume. It may force a line over to the next page or make formatting disappear.
Create the resume in two formats. You need a format that is ATS friendly for online submissions and a more styled format for networking.
Remove irrelevant information. Remember, your resume is not your life story.

If you need help deciding what’s important for your resume, contact Robin’s Resumes® today.

Federal Jobs: How Federal Resumes Differ from Corporate Resumes

Mar 06 2011

When federal jobs are posted, they often require information that you never need to supply for jobs in the private sector. For example, some federal jobs are only open to veterans, military spouses or current federal employees (known as Status Candidates). Positions have grade levels indicating the level of responsibility (for example, GS-9), and you need to meet the criteria for that grade level.

In the private sector, you may be hired if you have the potential to gain the skills a company wants, even if you lack those skills right now. In the government, job requirements are mandatory: you must already have the right background, education and skills before you apply.

Your federal application must also conform to requirements for format and content. You must respond to all questions and provide all the essays requested.

I have prepared hundreds of resumes, Knowledge Skills or Abilities (KSA) statements, Professional and Technical Qualifications (PTQ), Executive Core Qualifications (ECQ) and other federal forms. If you find a federal job that interests you and believe you have the necessary qualifications, please call me for the help you need in adapting your resume to meet federal standards.