Writing a Job Winning Resume

Host: Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family and Consumer Sciences Extension, University of Kentucky 

Guests:  Caroline Francis, Director of Alumni Career Services and Amanda Schagane, Associate Director of Alumni Career Services

Episode 33, Season 2

0:02 Welcome to Talking FACS; what you need to know about family, food, finance and fitness. Hosted by the University of Kentucky Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Program, our educators share research knowledge with individuals, families and communities to improve quality of life.

0:21 Dr. Jennifer Hunter: Hello and welcome back to Talking FACS. This is your host, Dr. Jennifer Hunter, Assistant Director for Family Consumer Sciences Extension at the University of Kentucky.

Today, I'm pleased to have joining me, Caroline Francis and Amanda Schagane, Director and Associate Director at the University of Kentucky Alumni Career Services. Thank you both so much for joining us today.

0:41 Caroline Francis: Thank you.

0:42 Amanda Schagane: Thanks for having us.

0:43 Dr. Hunter: We are continuing on with our series focused on career development. And today, our topic is going to be how to write a job winning resume. And we were just chit chatting before we started recording today that this is a skill set that everyone needs. And I think that regardless of stage of life or where you are within your profession, that it's something that we all need to be reminded of.

And you all have some great tips to share with us today of what that job winning resume is going to look like.

1:15 Caroline Francis: Americans are changing jobs every 4.5 years and Americans are working a lot longer. So, we're going to have lots of opportunities to polish our resume and enter the job search throughout our careers.

Today, we'd like to share with you some tips that we have noticed in working with clients and some of the things that we share with job seekers on how to make their resume a top notch.

First of all, there are two main résumé formats. The first format is the chronological format, and that's the most commonly used resume format. It's where you begin in your work history with your most recent position and go backwards. Employers are used to seeing that and they prefer seeing it.

There is a second format though, that could be beneficial to certain clients. It's a functional resume or the skills-based resume. This format is helpful for folks that are changing industries or careers or perhaps have a gap in employment.

So, there are hybrids of those two, but chronological and function are the two main resume formats.

2:28 Dr. Hunter: For someone that might be a fairly recent graduate that doesn't have a tremendous amount of work experience, would their education be at the top or should they still put any work experience or internships that they have at the top?

2:40 Caroline Francis: At the top of the resume, under your header information, you would include a profile summary, if you're a seasoned professional, and even entry level can use a summary or a profile. Below that, for recent grads, you would picture education.

However, if you've been in the workforce for a few years, your education then falls to the bottom of your resume, pretty much for the rest of your career.

Once you have some work experience, employers are really most interested in your work experience; your transferable skills.

3:15 Dr. Hunter: Which makes complete and total sense. 

3:17 Amanda Schagane: We often tell clients to focus on what's most recent and what's most relevant.

3:21 Caroline Francis: A resume is a snapshot of your most recent and or relevant 10 or 15 years of experience. It needs to be limited to two pages; no more than two pages. If you're a recent grad, you can probably get it on one page, but if you have work experience, two pages perfectly acceptable. However, there are very few incidences when I would ever go more than two pages.

3:46 Dr. Hunter: I think that that's a key point because someone reviewing it, if it's three, four, five pages, that just becomes quite lengthy and for them to really kind of figure out, “Well, what is their primary skill set?” But if you highlight that early on in the first one or two pages, then it really speaks to the reviewer quickly.

4:03 Caroline Francis: Absolutely.

4:04 Amanda Schagane: Mm hmm. Another tip that we often share with our career counseling clients is to keep your resume draft modern and avoid resume agers. There are a few telltale signs on a draft that will age a person; we want to avoid these.

One that comes to mind is the font that you use for your draft. You should avoid using Times New Roman now. In some of the earlier versions of Word, that was the default setting.

4:28 Dr. Hunter: I like Times New Roman.

4:29 Amanda Schagane: I do too.

4:30 Dr. Hunter: Do you tell me that I'm aging myself when I use Time's New Roman?

4:33 Amanda Schagane: I know there's some comfort in using the Times New Roman. It looks good, it prints professional, but it does date your draft a bit.

4:39 Dr. Hunter: Oh, okay.

4:41 Amanda Schagane: So, we do recommend that you go with the –

4:42 Dr. Hunter: Is that with everything that I write or just a resume.

4:45 Amanda Schagane: We're going to focus on resume today.

4:46 Dr. Hunter: Okay. You're taking away my favorite font, Amanda.

4:49 Amanda Schagane: But I have other options.

4:50 Dr. Hunter: Okay.

4:51 Amanda Schagane: So, we're going to go with a Sans Serif.

4:53 Dr. Hunter: Okay, I can handle that.

4:54 Amanda Schagane: The newer versions of Word would default to the Calibri and those print very nice as well.

Other telltale signs of resume aging are using an AOL or a Hotmail e-mail. And I remember on one of our previous podcasts, I think someone in the room might have had a Hotmail. Is that right? Was that you?

5:12 Dr. Hunter: No, I don't think I've ever had a Hotmail.

5:14 Amanda Schagane: I mean, you're talking about a client who had a Hotmail. But we want to make sure that we're using a modern email system like G-mail or Outlook for our email.

We can cut those objective statements out of our resume. And after five years, you can leave the education dates off of your resume. Employers are much more interested in how many years of work experience you have than how many years you've been out of school.

5:37 Dr. Hunter: Okay. So, I have several questions on keeping it modern. And we were chit chatting just a little bit before we started recording that in my position, I do have several positions that we commonly hire and so there's lots of resumes that come across my desk. And I've noticed this trend where they try to be maybe flashy, for lack of a better word, but it might include pictures or some graphic design elements. How do you all feel about that?

6:04 Amanda Schagane: We don't like it. The problem with that, and we'll get to that later, is that it's not easily scanned by HR Tracking Systems, especially those with text boxes or design graphics. We want to go with the most simple, professional format possible.

6:19 Caroline Francis: If it's a smaller company and they may not be using computers to scan resume, then it would be acceptable. Or if your hand delivering for a position that would require you to be creative – a graphic artist or something in those lines, then it's fine to be a little more creative. But if it's a larger company, you really want to keep your resume plain and simple so that it scans properly.

6:45 Dr. Hunter: And I'm just going to add that it is really rare that one of those that has a tremendous amount of design work to it, that it comes across as being done well. And it may just be how it scans into the systems or something like that, but lots of times, there seems to be some shifting between the words or the pictures. And it's just it's just not smooth, it's just not clean, it's not easy to read.

And when you're reading a lot, that you don't want anything to make it more difficult, you want it to be, as you said, crisp and clean so that it stands out and that I can easily move through the information and sort it into my appropriate piles and hopefully it moves forward.

7:24 Caroline Francis: Additional tips we give clients regarding resume are keywords, keywords, keywords. Most larger companies do use Applicant Tracking Systems. So, any time you have to upload a resume and to apply, this advice would be something I would adhere to.

Highlight the job description: anything you have done or can do that is in the job description, you need to make sure that is in your resume and in your application. This will help you get through the computer screening devices.

Your resume may really is the most important marketing document that you have. The goal of the resume is to get the interview.

Once you're happy with your resume, then we also encourage clients to update their LinkedIn with similar information that they would have on their resume.

We also encourage clients to make it easy to read or scannable and concise. For example, using bullets versus paragraphs; beginning all your bullets with action words; and quantifying, whenever possible, your bullets:

“Generated income, resulting in a 20 percent increase in sales for this fiscal year.”

That type of language gets employers attention. It's transferable skills that could be relevant to the target job of the hour.

8:49 Dr. Hunter: Do you feel like on and when you're doing a bullet, just as the example that you just made, does that need to be a complete sentence with punctuation at the end or is it is it really okay if it's just a standalone statement?

9:02 Caroline Francis: It's okay if it's a standalone statement. It's perfectly fine on the resume.

9:07 Dr. Hunter: Excellent. That's one question that I've always had in my mind; do these need to be full sentences or when doing a grammar check here or is it really just kind of those bullet point keywords to stand out?

I also have another question about keywords. So, you mentioned to look at the job description and to pull keywords from the job description. Where would you put those on your resume? Would that maybe be in your summary at the top or would it be in those bullet points highlighting what the work it is that you've done?

9:37 Caroline Francis: Good question; a couple of places. The most important information, it's fine to put in the summary at the top. Otherwise, I would incorporate it into your descriptions, your bulleted descriptions, within your resume.

9:51 Dr. Hunter: Excellent. Thank you all so much for joining us today that I know developing a resume or updating your resume can often be a stressful process for people. And these are quick and easy tips to keep in mind while walking through that process.

10:07 Thank you for listening to Talking FACS. We deliver programs focusing on nutrition, health, resource management, family development and civic engagement.

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