Riffing on Resumes, Part 4: Checking

As you periodically review your resume, you will want to look at substance, structure, and style. Let's take these points one at a time.

Substance

Let logic determine whether to add, retain, or delete information. If you are seeking a job in project management for an architectural-engineering firm, it's all right to delete that job from nine years ago when you were a call center operator, especially if your last nine years can highlight your project management skills. 

You have likely heard that your resume should account for every minute of your professional life—leave no employment gaps. That is such old, played-out news. Employment gaps are okay, as long as what's in the resume shows you to be the powerhouse you are. You can always explain those employment gaps, honestly, of course, during the interview. 

Structure

The same holds true for structure: Use common sense to decide how to lay out your life. Is your employment history stronger than your educational achievements? If yes, start with employment; if no, start with education. Does a single-column or double-column format work? The answer depends on whether one of the formats spills your content over to a single-section second or third page. If yes, go with the briefer format to save a page.

Avoid prose paragraphs. Use bullet points. The game plan is for your reader, the prospective employer, to scan your resume easily. 

Style

Make sure the bullet points all begin consistently. Start bullet points about your past jobs with past tense; for your current job, start them with present tense. 

To show you are a doer, use visual action verbs (wrote, present, manage, lead, create), not softer verbs (understand, review, know, ensure, consider). Avoid at all costs being verb beginnings (was responsible for, am aware of), which show little to nothing. Also, keep bullet lists within a group consistent in terms of all actions (diagnosed, supervised, tested) or all accomplishments (achieved, increased, decreased). 

Finally, proofread carefully and have zero tolerance for the slightest flaw. If you are unsure about whether a phrase or word is correct or standard usage, ask an expert whose opinion you value highly. Proper detail, formatting, and style matter so much to your readers.   

Riffing on Resumes, Part 3: Articulating

After planning and formatting your resume, you will start populating it with bullet points explaining your unique credentials, accomplishments, and talents. Here are nine pointers in articulating those features.

1. Create an objective that guides the reader through the resume. Words like self-starter, motivated, and compassionate do nothing to foreshadow the bullet points; words like technician, manager, and presenter do. 

2. Portray yourself honestly by not overstating or understating your qualities and accomplishments. If you are a prolific writer, then what is Joyce Carol Oates? If you are a creative powerhouse, then what is Yo-Yo Ma? Everyone sees through such nonsense. On the other hand, do not undersell yourself. Just let your work, degrees, jobs, and tasks talk for you.

3. Employ industry-specific language. Do not worry about writing critical path method if you are a project manager or integrated development environment if you are a programmer. The people reviewing your resume will know those terms as subject-matter experts themselves.

4. Start bullet points in the employment section with action verbs, not being verbs. Instead of writing was responsible for planning projects and am tasked with creating presentations, write planned projects and create presentations. And make those action verbs as tactile as you can: avoid considered program revisions and ensure quality products in favor of revised programs and effect quality products. 

5. Show progress from one job to the next. Leave verbs like checked, entered, supported for your first job; follow with supervised, managed, and authorized for the next job; and lead, spearhead, and create for your current job. Of course, remember point 2 above as you do so.

6. Use lists and avoid lengthy paragraphs. For those who dislike bullet points, remember this: No one wants to become enraptured by the narrative style of your resume.

7. Quantify your work experience wherever possible. If you managed a $1.5 million project, say so. If you supervised a help desk of 15 associates, let them know.

8. Prefer achievements to tasks. Consider which is better to start the bullet point: Saved firm $300K in work process efficiencies by redesigning 25,000 sq. ft. office space than Redesigned 25,000 sq. ft. office space resulting in work process efficiencies that led to $300K in savings. Much depends on the recipient of your resume and the job you are seeking.

9. Make every word matter. As a rule, you can drop articles (a and the) and some pronouns (who, which, that)  in a resume, as long as the sentence makes sense. Other words for the resume trashcan are the phrases past experience (experience will do), each employee (employees is better), in a timely manner (timely is concise), on a day-to-day basis (daily is better), and many more to mention here. Be on the lookout for verbiage. 

The way we express ourselves represents who we are, so choose words wisely,

Riffing on Resumes, Part 2: Formatting

Now you've reflected on your career goals, ideal job, interpersonal and technical skills, and developmental opportunities, as discussed in Part 1 of this series. Next, you will want to format your resume. Here are seven general points to consider.

Size

1. Use standard 8½" X 11" (215.9 mm X 279.4 mm) paper. 

2. Limit margins to ½" or larger (no less) at all four sides. 

Font

3. Use a consistent font type. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, are more readable than sans serif fonts. Once you have decided on the font to use, stick to it throughout the resume. 

4. Use 11- or 12-point size, no more, no less, for readability.

5. Use font style consistently. For instance, use bold just for headings, italics just for job titles and degrees attained, and regular for everything else.

6. Use only one color, black, especially since your interviewer might print a copy your resume in black only. 

Layout

7. Use either one- or two-column format. From the no-cheat image, you can see the advantage and disadvantage of each format: You gain more space with a single column, but you offer easier scanning with a double column.

Riffing on Resumes, Part 1: Planning

I have written at least a post a week, over a thousand on this blog, for more than 18 years without saying much about resumes. Strange, considering I have consulted well over a thousand jobseekers during the past 27 years of my writing consulting practice. They were accountants, administrators, architects, artists, auditors, business analysts, clerics, designers, doctors, educators, electricians, engineers, executives, financial planners, information technology specialists, lawyers, mechanics, nurses, restaurant workers, salespeople, scientists, students, supervisors, technicians, and uniformed personnel (corrections, firefighting, military, parks, police, sanitation). I suppose it's time to correct this omission from WORDS ON THE LINE with a 21-part series on the resume and its related messages. 

Note: If you just want a job, read somewhere else. This series is not for those who say, "When I go home after a workday, I completely forget my job." I have always felt that such a statement comes from people who aren't honest even with themselves. But if you want to cultivate a rewarding career, read this series.

Let's start by planning a resume. Take an inventory of yourself at this point in your career. Your ability to answer these self-assessment questions with a yes along with an honest, direct, and, ultimately, extemporaneous reason for your answer will go a long way in shaping your resume.

1. Do I have a career goal? If you do not, stop reading here and get one. If you do, write it down and explain how it ties into the rest of your life.

2. Do I know the industry and organizations that can help me achieve my career goal? It's possible you have a terrific answer to question 1 but lack career experience to answer this question to your own satisfaction—and I assume you have high standards in these matters. If you answer no, do some research. If you answer yes know which organizations you want to apply to, look for appropriate job openings, and move on to question 3.  

3. What are my interpersonal strengths? Notice that this question comes before the one about technical strengths. Your ability to communicate respectfully, honestly, coherently, and helpfully to peers, managers, subordinates, customers, vendors, and other stakeholders easily trumps your technical knowledge and skills. I won't argue this point if you disagree. I have seen professional rewards granted to the excellent communicators over the technicians too many times to be convinced I am wrong.  

4. What are my technical strengths? I do not mean to minimize the importance of answering this vital question. Your job calls for certain skills, whether they are clinical, computational, linguistic, mechanical, technological, or a whole host of other abilities. Do not discount them. Even though interpersonal skills come first, the employer will ask first about the technical skills.

5. What interpersonal skills do I most want to develop? This question is helpful not because you want to brag about your weaknesses during a job interview. Answering it after answering question 3 helps you see how you can best develop that skill. Say you answered to question 3, "I make people around me feel comfortable," and you answer to question 5, "I am terrified of public speaking and I know the job I want requires it." With your ability to make people around you comfortable, you might (most likely will) gravitate toward those who are the best at public speaking and learn from them. They will be honored that such a cool person like you wants their help, and they will gladly give it. 

6. What technical skills do I most want to develop? Sometimes I get a brilliant answer to this question (no kidding): "I want to develop the very skills that are my strength." I love that answer because the person is telling me that even experts must sharpen their skills. This is why master musician rehearse every day and physicians take periodic licensing examinations. On the other hand, the more common answer to this question, understandably so, is something like the example in question 5. You might say, "I have outstanding skills with my hands (practical) but I'm not so hot at talking the talk (theoretical)." This was the very statement I made before deciding to go for a doctorate. I knew I was right about a lot of issues related to my field, but I couldn't explain the precedents that supported my positions. In the same way, a plumber may say he has excellent dexterity, instillation techniques, and knowledge of hydronics but lacks that same level of competency in reading blueprints, which is costing him to lose independent commercial jobs. Chances are he'll use his approach that helped him master hydronics to learning blueprints.  

7. What professional accomplishment has given me the greatest satisfaction? Answering this question is so important in putting you in the right mindset to tackle the job application process. Your answer might be, "I held a fulltime job as a server in a fast-paced restaurant at night while attaining a real estate agent license within six months during the day." You should be impressed. Remember that achievement as you confront all the other mountains ahead that you will need to scale. 

8. When have I shown a great sense of responsibility on the job? Even if your answer to this question helps you complete only 10 percent of your resume, it will help you manage 90 percent of the interview questions with confidence, candor, and class.  

9. When have I effectively collaborated to achieve an excellent common result? It is true that some jobs may seem like solo ones. But how, for instance, can a doctor cure a patient's high cholesterol levels without the patient's agreeing to follow through on her prescriptions? How can an IT help desk maven aid users without educating them to deal with some of their technical incompetencies so that they do not call her for every little issue?  

10. What do my answers to questions 1 through 9 say about me as a professional? Answering this question wins you the prize. Responding well to this question will get you started on crafting a great resume and application message.

Past or Present Perfect?

Here is favorite trick question I like to ask people in my writing classes: 

If you were writing to your manager about completing an assigned task, which is sentence correct: I completed the task or I have completed the task? 

The answer: Both are correct. It depends on the impression you want to give your manager. Let me explain why I prefer I have completed the task. 

The first sentence, I completed the task, is in the simple past tense, indicating a past action; the second sentence, I have completed the task, is in the present perfect, indicating an action started in the past and just completed. I would want my manager to know that I haven't wasted a moment from the time of completing the task to the time of alerting her about it. That's the value of the present perfect: its immediacy. 

Think of the importance of reporting to management in the present perfect tense in these cases:

• I have started the investigation.
• You have used an expired password.
• The client has contacted me about her concern.

In all three cases, you do not want management to think you're wasting time in updating them about the issue at hand. So use the present perfect to express that urgency.

BOOK BRIEF: Thinking About It

Woo-kyoung Ahn. Thinking 101: How to Reason Better to Live Better (New York: Flatiron Books, 2022). 284 pages.

The mantra over the past decade for most of us sounds something like: "I can't believe he just did that ... Did she really just say that? ... What were the thinking when they ...?" The shock value never seems to subside when we hear the words said or see the actions taken by politicians, pundits, other so-called celebrities, and those closer to us: our teachers, managers, coworkers, teammates, friends, and family members. In her first book, Thinking 101, Yale professor Woo-kyoung Ahn dissects not only the flawed thinking of such pronouncements and positions but the reasons behind them. 

Ahn observes with detailed personal, professional, and historical examples that faulty causal attribution often leads to rash judgments. She asserts that we can avoid irrational judgments by adhering to three concepts: the law of large numbers ("in most cases"), regression toward the mean ("forget the outliers"), and Baye's theorem ("experience tells me"). She deliberates on each of these principles in depth to underscore their usefulness in critical thinking. 

Ahn devotes a good part of the book to confirmation bias, a reflexive tendency of judgment that has contributed to many deaths, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. and negativity bias, our natural inclination to skew our thinking away from positive outcomes. She explains the value of these propensities when quick-thinking under pressure is essential, yet she does not stray from their often-disastrous consequences. Ahn insists that delayed gratification, while hard to achieve, is vital to cultivating advanced thinking and career development. 

Readers looking for theories and applications of critical thinking may ask for more from Thinking 101, but this book serves as a useful guide to why so many of us these days ignore facts underlying contemporary issues and, worse, distort them.

BOOK BRIEF: A Sacred American Text

Martin Luther King, Jr. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches. James Melvin Washington, editor (New York: Harper Collins, 1986). 729 pages.

When considering how much Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, we can easily forget that he died at 39. Looking at his short, historic life, not as a civil rights leader with a global reach in the infancy of globalization, not as a Baptist minister leading a devoted congregation, not as a husband and father of four children, but simply as a writer, even accomplished writers feel humbled. King completed nearly all his writings in the last decade of his life while relentlessly travelling the world, organizing boycotts, leading marches, and doing time in various prisons in America's South for speaking up and acting out for equality.  

A Testament of Hope is a must-own book for anyone interested in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, indeed of the American scene during this period in United States history. The book collects 58 of King's most notable essays, speeches, sermons, and interviews, including his nearly 7,000-word "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," dated April 16, 1963, an extraordinary reflection blending philosophy, theology, and politics in response to for clergymen who voiced concerns about King's engaging in civil disobedience. Also included is his nearly 1,700-word "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered to 250,000 people from the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963. This metaphor-abundant address perennially appears at the top of lists ranking the greatest speeches in American history, at once a celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation centennial, a tribute to the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution, a sermon on social justice deeply rooted in Scripture and Black spirituals, and much more. These two documents alone serve as singular synthesis of not only King's times but of American history and the human imperative to strive for the common good. Readers will learn a lot by comparing King's works created for the listener, rich with repetition and soaring imagery intended to induce action, and for the reader, replete with rhetorical devices reserved for prolonged contemplation. 

A Testament of Hope has much more than these two masterpieces. Read in it his brief but powerfully unifying 1958 "Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools," delivered to 10,000 students, and his 1967 "A Time to Break the Silence," delivered at Riverside Church in New York as a moral protest against the Vietnam War. Regard the intellectual and moral challenge King lays down merely by titling a 1961 speech "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience." Worth the price of the book are just the final prophetic words of King's "I See the Promised Land," his April 3, 1968, speech in Memphis hours before his death: "I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."