This document provides tips and advice for creating effective resumes and online professional profiles. It discusses common resume mistakes to avoid, how to stand out in a positive way, using relevant keywords, tailoring content to specific jobs, proofreading thoroughly, and managing one's online presence. Elements like career objectives, vague descriptions, and announcing available references are identified as things to cut from resumes. Creating an online portfolio or video resume is presented as ways to enhance one's professional image.

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Résumés and other tools
The art of shameless self-promotion
COMM 180 |November 16, 2011

2. Résumés and other tools
✤ Résumés | How do you look on paper?
✤ Biggest résumé mistakes
✤ Stand out in a smart way
✤ The final cut
✤ Online presence | Your life is an open book
✤ E-portfolios, video résumés, and visual CVs

3. Standing out in
a crowd
The bad news
The bad news
✤ 45% of hiring managers spend less than
a minute on each résumé
(CareerBuilder survey of 2,654 hiring managers)
Photo credit: Library | Free Stock Photo.biz

4. Résumé
mistakes
How not to stand out
How not to stand out
✤ Forbes.com | Outlandish Resume mistakes

5. Stand out ...
in a smart, professional way
in a smart, professional way
✤ Use clean, clear content and easy-to-read
formatting.
✤ “You want to go easy on the eye,” Haefner says. “And you should only include
relevant and appropriate information.”

6. Stand out ...
in a smart, professional way
in a smart, professional way
✤ Tailor your résumé and cover letter.
✤ “A customized résumé resonates well with hiring managers,” says Rosemary
Haefner, vice president of human resources at the jobs website CareerBuilder.com,
“and that will help you stand out for the right reasons.”

7. Use keywords
✤
✤ Keywords are nouns and phrases that highlight technical and professional areas of
expertise, industry-related jargon, achievements, projects, task forces, job titles, etc.
• The best source of keywords is the actual job listing.
• Include plenty of keyword nouns and noun phrases.
• For technical positions, list your skills, separating each noun or phrase by a comma.
• Where appropriate, include accomplishments, as well, but include enough keywords to
satisfy the computer searches.

8. Use keywords
Keyword summary, example 1
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY: Award-winning corporate controller with more than ten years' experience in
two $500 million corporations. Impressive record in implementing financial record database
architecture that saved over $2 million annually. Proficient in Oracle, Prism, Red Brick, and SAP
systems, as well as MS Project, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and FrontPage."
Keyword summary, example 2
SKILLS
Languages: C, SQL, C++, Assembler, Pascal
Software: Oracle Developer 2000, Informix NewEra, FoxPro
OS: UNIX, Windows NT/95/3.11, MS-DOS
RDBMS: Oracle7, Informix 7
✤ from Job Searching Online for Dummies, by Pam Dixon

9. Stand out ...
in a smart, professional way
in a smart, professional way
✤ Include professional details only.
✤ “Including a silly detail or an email address with “shakinmybootie” in it may be eye-
catching, but it will bring only a gasp or a chuckle–not a job offer.”

10. Your résumé is ...
✤ A marketing document.
✤ “Your résumé should entice the reader to want to see you,” says James Borland, a
New York career coach. “It should be designed to sell you as an interesting person to
talk to.”
✤ Figure out:
✤ what’s special about you? What’s your personal brand?
✤ three reasons someone should hire you, and put that at the top of the page in the
form of a summary.
✤ Pick four to six accomplishments during your tenure at a job, and pull them out in
bullet points, using details and active verbs.

11. Your resume
should ...
✤ tell a story about the résumé-writer,
a narrative that captures the reader
and makes her want to know more.
✤ describe the reach of the companies
you’ve worked for.
✤ “My old résumé,” says Susan
Adams, Forbes writer on careers
and leadership, “simply said,
‘Senior Editor, Forbes.’ Her
coach insisted she include the
circulation (900,000 for the
magazine, and Forbes.com
reaches 20 million people a
month).
Photo credit: Benjamin Miller | Free Stock Photo.biz

12. ... but it’s not all about YOU.
✤ Research the company
✤ Focus on what the employer needs
✤ Demonstrate how you can fill those needs

13. The final cut
✤ Proofread, proofread, proofread!
Photo credit: Benjamin Miller | Free Stock Photo.biz

14. Cut:
✤ “Career Objectives”
✤ This is not only boring, it’s ineffective (and sounds a little juvenile, to boot). The top of your resume is prime real
estate, and it needs to grab a hiring manager’s attention with a list of your top accomplishments, not a summary of
what you hope to get out of your next position.
✤ Elizabeth Lowman, Forbes.com

15. Cut:
✤ “Experienced”
✤ Not: “Experienced in developing client reports” (vague and redundant).
✤ Be specific: “Created five customized weekly reports to analyze repeat client sales
activity” gives the reader a better idea of where exactly this so-called experience lies,
with some actual results attached.
✤ Also eliminate: seasoned, well-versed
✤ Elizabeth Lowman, Forbes.com

16. Cut:
✤ “Team Player”
Show, don’t tell: It’s much more effective to list activities or accomplishments that
portray your good qualities in action than to simply claim to have them.
✤ Say: “Led project team of 10 to develop a new system for distributing reports that
reduced the time for managers to receive reports by 25%.” Using a specific example, you
show what you can actually accomplish. But simply labeling yourself with a quality? Not
so much.
Also eliminate: people person, customer-focused
✤ Elizabeth Lowman, Forbes.com

17. Cut:
✤ “Dynamic”
Keep the content quantifiable, show tangible results and successes, and wait until the
interview to show off your “dynamism,” “enthusiasm,” or “energy.”
Also eliminate: energetic, enthusiastic
✤ Elizabeth Lowman, Forbes.com

18. Cut:
✤ “References Available Upon Request”
All this phrase really does is take up valuable space. If a company wants to hire you,
they will ask you for references—and they will assume that you have them. There’s no
need to address the obvious (and doing so might even make you look a little
presumptuous!).
✤ Use the space to give more details about your talents and accomplishments instead.
✤ Elizabeth Lowman, Forbes.com

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Your online life ...
is an open book

20. Social media flowchart
Where to post?
Flow chart credit: Breakingcopy

21. because the
internet is
forever ...
✤ Check your privacy settings on
Facebook, MySpace, etc.
✤ Set up professional profiles on
Linkedin and other networking
sites.
✤ Create a professional business
presence online.

22. Video resumes:
what NOT to do
what NOT to do
✤ Don’t be Dave

23. Video resumes:
What TO do
What TO do
✤ http://www.ismycv.com
✤ Keep it brief and professional

24. Try an
e-portfolio
e-portfolio
✤ http://www.foliospaces.com/

25. Try a visual CV
✤ “By incorporating the content from their one-
dimensional paper resume into new mediums
like VisualCV, pending graduates can present a
professional online image that goes beyond text
to include graphics, photos, video and relevant
links to showcase educational achievements,
internships, work experience, volunteer work,
interesting projects, professor recommen-
dations. It also allows them to highlight
important but otherwise difficult to convey skills
such as their poise, technical prowess, net-
working skills and public speaking capabilities.”
~Philip Merrick of VisualCV.com,
interviewed at gradtogreat.com
✤ Online presence | Ken Revenaugh
Photo credit: Benjamin Miller | Free Stock Photo.biz

26. Photo credit: Benjamin Miller | Free Stock Photo.biz
Mission: Accomplished
They call you for an interview

27. Questions?
Let’s have a look at your resume