In 2013, 1.7 million students will graduate from college and enter the workforce. Roughly 340 thousand students (20%), will become underemployed. This means a life of retail with college loans to pay off, in addition to living expenses. If these students knew they’d wind up in retail, I’m sure they wouldn’t have added a $300 loan payoff on top of minimum wage! Related: Why It’s Absolutely Necessary To Discover Your Passion This isn’t the first time students have received the brunt of an economic downturn. When I graduated in 2000, my friends moved to California with dreams of overnight success at super sexy startups. Six months later, they were unemployed and all their stock options were worthless. I looked overseas to get employment, as did many others. The difference today is that we can begin to curate our own body of work more easily, less expensively, and more visibly than ever before. After I gave a talk I at Belmont University this year, Griffin Mckenzie came up to me to tell me about her blog: griffinmckenzie.com. There, not only does she display her resume, but she collects her thoughts, shares insights, and builds a professional reputation not attached to any job. In 1998, Tom Peters said in his famous “The Brand Called You” article, “You don't belong to any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular function. You're not defined by your job title, and you're not confined by your job description.” What was true for executives reading Fortune magazine in 1998 is finally true for everyone else today.
As a certified and award-winning resume writer, I face this dilemma on a daily basis. Most resumes contain a lot of "fat" in the form of run-on sentences, unwieldy skill descriptions, lackluster branding, and unnecessary details. By trimming these problem areas, your resume can become a lean, mean, brand communication machine.
But isn't it better to include more content so you can weave in more keywords throughout your resume? No, actually.
When it comes to resume writing, less is generally more. Here's why:
- Recruiters, HR professionals, and hiring managers are, like most of us, overworked and inundated with information overload. Crisp, lean sentences filled with the right details will stand out more in a sea of candidates.
- Too many keywords in a document can actually be a negative thing because it may make it appear that you are stuffing your document for the sole purpose of ranking high in resume searches. The database systems, or Applicant Tracking Systems, that recruiters, companies, and job boards use to store and analyze incoming resumes are sophisticated enough to identify which documents have the right range of keywords specified in applicant searches—enough to meet their needs but not too much to raise eyebrows. In other words, keyword density is important, but too many keywords is a red flag.
- Important details stand out more when there is less text, especially if those details have been whittled and shaped wisely. Clogging up your resume with unnecessary information and vague details impairs its ability to communicate your brand in the four to five seconds it is screened by humans.
Let's take a look at a few length targets to give you an idea where your resume is out of balance. While there are few hard and fast resume rules, these are general guidelines that most highly experienced and credentialed writers and career coaches follow.
Resume & Content Length Guidelines
Resume Length
Most recruiters expect resumes to be two to three pages in length, with a strong preference for two pages in North America. While this varies from recruiter to recruiter, most like to see two-page resumes for job seekers with up to 10-15 years of experience. For those with considerably more experience, a three-page resume may be necessary to capture and present all relevant details.
One-Page Resume Rule
There is (and never has been) a one-page-only resume rule, though. Those with limited experience may find that length most appropriate for their needs.
Career Summaries
Career summary statements have shortened since the 2008 recession and now trend at three to six lines of text. In mid-career, mid-management, and executive resumes, it is often appropriate to add branding content to this section of the resume, though generally such material is best restricted to up to the first half of the document's first page. Work It Daily recommends ditching the career summary entirely and focusing on a headline instead—a short summary of the problem you solve that highlights your personal brand.
Core Competencies
Core competency sections are best limited to six to eight skills. At Work It Daily, we call this the "Experience Summary," which is a list of any skills and requirements you possess that are needed for a certain job and are relevant to the position you're applying for.
Bullets Per Role
Too many bulleted statements in a resume overwhelm your reader. Limit bullets to five per role if possible, but don't list fewer than three, either.
Bullet Length
Ideally, bullets should be limited to two lines of space. If additional critical details must be included, consider separating content into different bullets.
Amount of Work History to Include
Recruiters typically are most interested in the last 10-15 years of your experience, so this is the amount of experience you will want to profile on your resume. Older relevant experience can be briefly summarized in your "Additional Experience" section at the end of your resume. In most cases, any irrelevant work experience can be safely eliminated altogether. The usual exception is recent college grads and young professionals just starting out their careers who already have limited work experience to quantify and show off.
Resume Shortening Strategies
1. Say More with Less
Cut out words that aren't needed and delete words that are repeated. When you're fighting a two-line bullet length, every word counts.
2. Leverage Action Verbs
While all verbs convey action of some sort, some contain more energy and action than others. It may be accurate to say you wrote the company's five-year plan, for example, but it's more powerful to say that you strategized, authored, and executed the company's first-ever five-year plan.
3. Eliminate Passive Language
Passive language on a resume masks the true role you played in the task you're describing. The sentence, "I was exposed to different cultures, people, and challenges" is weaker than, "Gained cross-functional and cross-cultural exposure to 5 ethnicities in 12 countries," for example.
4. Be Specific
Avoid vague descriptors and phrases such as "a variety of," "many," "others," and "successfully." Replace them with specific details that add value and meaning to the text.
5. Use Numbers Whenever Possible
Numbers talk, so it's imperative to use them in resumes to quantify key achievements and context information. Don't tell your reader that you exceeded sales targets. Show them how much you surpassed goals year-over-year. Every bullet point under your "Work History" section should contain at least one number. If you only follow one tip in this article, this should be the one.
6. Reformat
Many old-style resumes and built-in MS Word templates don't use the most effective format to get a hiring manager's attention. In your resume, make sure you're using a clean, 11-18 pt. font (Arial, Calibri). Also, don't shrink your margins to fit more text on a page. This will sacrifice white space and make your resume harder to read. Finally, place your titles and employer names on one line if you held only one role with the company, and eradicate widows and orphans (stray paragraph lines and single words on a line by themselves).
7. Categorize
Some content can be categorized or sub-categorized to convey information in more powerful ways. Subdividing a long series of bullets, say, into three to four categories that emphasize the cross-functionality of your skill set will not only make your achievements easier to read, but it will also showcase your multi-function brand while adding industry-specific keywords to the resume.
8. Contextualize
Give your readers the right quality and type of detail to help them understand the full scope of your impact. For instance, if you turned around an operation, that's a critical accomplishment to include. But including before and after context details will automatically strengthen the presentation. How much money was the business losing per month or year prior to your tenure? How much profit or revenue was it generating by the time you left?
9. Focus on Results
In real estate, it's location, location, location that is critical; in resumes, it's achievements, achievements, achievements. Numerically quantified statements communicate volumes of information in fewer words while conveying your accomplishment in specific, measurable terms. Here's a sentence from a client's original resume: "Managed multimillion dollars business and IT initiatives from inception to implementation to increase productivity, reduce operational cost, and improve service quality by collaborating with IT staff, C-level executives, business users, and external healthcare service providers." Here's a revamp that shortens the sentence from 35 to 25 words while adding content to dramatically improve its results focus: "Ramped productivity 15%, cut operational costs $7M, and strengthened service quality 14%, leading $25M to $50M cross-functional business and IT initiatives from inception to rollout." Notice that the original bullet spanned three lines while the revamp needs just two.
10. Ditch Extraneous Details
Choose carefully which details you include and how you do so. For example, in the original client sentence included in the prior bullet, you'll find a list of folks this person collaborated with in his position. The results he achieved are more central to his brand so I substituted the word "cross-functional" to cover my client's list of four groups that required 11 words to describe. A distinction that underlines many of the above points is to recognize the difference between resume content that is important versus that which is critical to include.
There simply isn't room for all of your skills and entire work history on a resume, so sooner or later you have to choose which important details are must-haves. By following the 10 tips above, you'll know exactly what to include and omit so you can successfully condense your resume without losing value.
Need more help with your resume?
Check out our FREE resources page and Live Events Calendar.
Or, join our career growth club today and get access to one-on-one career coaching, resume and cover letter reviews, online tutorials, and unlimited networking opportunities—all in your back pocket!
If you want FREE career advice in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily Dose!
Struggling to find the right job?
Check out Work It Daily's Incredible Companies page to see snapshots of companies hiring. Work It Daily also highlights job opportunities on a daily basis on TikTok.
This post was originally published at an earlier date.
The answer is: you don't have to know. And you don't have to be Superman to deliver a job-winning answer to this question.
Here are three surefire ways to answer the "What makes you unique?" interview question that will impress your interviewer.
How NOT To Answer This Challenging Question
To come up with a great answer to this interview question, first you need to know how not to answer. The hiring manager absolutely does not want to know that you play in a band on the weekends, you can solve a Rubik's Cube in 30 seconds, or that you have a pet rat.
When interviewers ask, "What makes you unique?" the real question is: Why should I hire you? Or, why should I choose you over the other people I'm interviewing? That's what you should answer.
A personal answer may be interesting, but it won't help to convince them to hire you. All of your job interview answers should focus on telling them what they need to know in order to say, "You're hired!"
Think about what makes you valuable to have in this role and why it's valuable. Those are the qualities you want to draw attention to, and now is the time to brag about them. Ultimately, employers want to know how you will save or make the company money. Prove your value, prove you have a track record of saving or making companies money by being successful in past positions, and they'll absolutely want to hire you.
Here are couple of great ways to answer the uniqueness question based on things employers really care about—your background, your experiences, and your personality or soft skills (that pertain to the job.)
Explaining Your Career Background
Here's a sample answer of what you might say when responding to this question:
"My background is a little different from others in the field, which gives me a unique perspective that has allowed me to see solutions that are creative and resourceful. For example, I came up with X solution [tell what it was] to solve Y problem, and it worked out beautifully. [Use evidence in the form of numbers, dollars, or percentages that really highlight the success of your solution.]"
Sharing Your Previous Experiences
Here's an example of what you might say when responding to this question:
"I believe that my education in X [name your degree or classes here] combined with my work experience in Y give me an especially great advantage when approaching [a typical or critical problem this job addresses]. I draw on both to solve everyday issues and special challenges. For example, in [name a situation], I took [name the action you took] and got [name the results you got—again, in the form of numbers, dollars, or percentages if you can]."
Selling Your Skills Sets/Personality
If the job description or things the interviewer has said so far let you know that soft skills like communication or organization are important for the job, you can say something like:
"I believe I have exceptional organizational skills. In my last job, I created a new system for task assignments that streamlined our productivity and improved it by 20%."
This little bit at the end—"by 20%"—transforms what would be a good answer ("I streamlined our productivity") to a standout answer. It grabs attention and tells them exactly how much you mattered. Remember: in the job search, it's all about quantifying your work experience, on your resume and in your job interviews.
Overall Strategy In Your Career
If you have any experience or skills that would make you valuable in the role, now is the time to mention it. Worry less about "uniqueness" and focus on value. Add impressiveness to your answer and make them remember you by incorporating proof of how what you have is valuable, and describe it in terms of numbers, dollars, or percentages.
Next time you have a big job interview, try using these tips to answer what makes you unique. That second phone call could be coming faster than you think!
Looking for a job? We can help!
Check out our FREE resources page and Live Events Calendar.
Or, join our career growth club today and get access to one-on-one career coaching, resume and cover letter reviews, online tutorials, and unlimited networking opportunities—all in your back pocket!
If you want FREE career advice in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily Dose!
Struggling to find the right job?
Check out Work It Daily's Incredible Companies page to see snapshots of companies hiring. Work It Daily also highlights job opportunities on a daily basis on TikTok.
This post was originally published at an earlier date.
- 3 Simple Ways To Connect With Your Interviewer - Work It Daily ›
- 6 Ways To Be Interesting During Your Interview - Work It Daily ›
- 5 Things Every Employer Wants To Hear In An Interview - Work It Daily | Where Careers Go To Grow ›
- 3 Tips For Being Memorable During A Job Interview - Work It Daily ›
Many professionals have a LinkedIn profile but never update it, or fail to use it properly.
If you want to make the best use of your LinkedIn profile and open the door to new job opportunities, this is what you need to do to get noticed.
Use Keywords In Your Profile
When a recruiter searches for candidates, it often means using keywords like a job title, the name of an employer, or common terms and skill sets used in the field. If your profile does not appear with any of these keywords, it's not going to show up in search results.
Make sure your profile is updated with the proper keywords, including them in your sub-header (the headline right below your name), summary, description of work experiences, and under specialties. If you want to be thorough on keywords, also look at job postings you're applying to for common terms and phrases. It'll help build up your profile's searchability.
Make New Connections
The more relevant connections you have, the greater the likelihood your profile will show up. For instance, if your profile is connected to five other contacts the recruiter is also connected to, it makes your profile more favorable than someone with no related connections.
In addition, making new connections is just a good networking strategy. For example, if you're trying to land a job at a particular company, one of the best ways is to get a referral from someone in your network. Even if you don't have a direct connection with someone working at that company, there's a good chance that one of your connections does and could help make an introduction.
The larger your LinkedIn network is, the more options you have for your job search and overall professional development.
Obtain Recommendations
A LinkedIn profile with recommendations informs recruiters that you are active in the workforce and have the support of others that can vouch for your skills and talent. It also encourages recruiters to want to click on your profile to read further into your experience, skills, and talents.
It's not exactly the same thing as asking for professional references, but it gives recruiters some initial insight.
Have A Voice
When you stay active on LinkedIn, your profile will get in front of more contacts. Think about sharing relevant articles with your contacts, joining group discussions—particularly industry and job-specific ones recruiters comb through—commenting on shared content, and so on.
LinkedIn is also a great place to build your personal brand by creating your own content. Think about your professional experience and skill sets and use your LinkedIn profile to establish your authority around some of these experiences and skills.
The more interaction, the greater visibility your profile will have. Whether you come to rely on LinkedIn as another means to job search or not, the fact is recruiters are going to refer to it either way. It's a resource recruiters have come to rely on to not only make contact with potential candidates but also screen candidates. Make sure your profile is properly completed!
Are you struggling with your LinkedIn strategy (or job search in general)? Work It Daily can help!
By joining our career growth club, you'll get access to one-on-one career coaching, resume and cover letter reviews, online tutorials, and unlimited networking opportunities—all in your back pocket!
Check out our FREE resources page and Live Events Calendar.
Need help finding the right job?
Check out Work It Daily's Incredible Companies page to see snapshots of companies hiring. Work It Daily also highlights job opportunities on a daily basis on TikTok.
This post was originally published at an earlier date.
- 5 Ways To Get Noticed On LinkedIn - Work It Daily ›
- 3 Ways To Age-Proof Your Resume & LinkedIn Profile - Work It Daily ›
- 5 Ways To Improve Your Job Search Results - Work It Daily ›
- How To Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out To Recruiters - Work ... ›
A recent FlexJobs article has identified the top 10 red flags of a potentially toxic hybrid workplace. Here are the three biggest red flags we think you should keep an eye out for as you navigate remote and hybrid workplaces in your career moving forward.
1. There Isn't A Plan To Create A Functioning Hybrid Workforce Within The Company
The transition to a hybrid work model cannot be done overnight. It will take time and a lot of planning to effectively shift to a hybrid workplace, and companies need to realize this before they announce any major changes to how they do business.
A sign of a potentially toxic hybrid workplace is when a company has no real plan to create a functioning hybrid workforce. They are, essentially, just winging it. They made the announcement that employees can either work remotely or in the office, but there are no policies or procedures in place, and possibly no guidance available to workers. So, are they really committed to this change? Did leadership actually think this through? Have they considered how it will affect every single employee at the company?
If a company wants to effectively shift to a hybrid work model, they need to have a plan in place. Otherwise, the hybrid work environment could become toxic, impacting your job and career as a whole.
2. No Senior Leaders Work Remotely
Another red flag of a potentially toxic hybrid workplace is when no senior leaders work remotely. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but when you start wondering how you might be able to move up the corporate ladder in this type of work environment, it may become clear that there actually isn't a way for you to do that as a remote or hybrid employee.
If a company lacks remote or hybrid management, that could indicate you won't have long-term success at the company unless you're physically working in the office 100% of the time. Also, consider how much celebration, praise, and rewards remote and hybrid workers receive in comparison to in-person employees. If there is a big disparity there in favor of in-person employees, that's another indication of a potentially toxic hybrid workplace.
Your employer should always make it clear to you what your career path is within the organization. Although it is ultimately your responsibility as an employee, professional, and business-of-one to prove your value to the company and grow your career, if your employer isn't invested in your career and valuing you as an employee, that is a major red flag of a toxic workplace, hybrid or not.
3. Your Manager Doesn't Have A Solid Communication Plan For Remote Team Members
Communication is incredibly important in the workplace. It's even more important for remote and hybrid employees who aren't physically present in the office and lose that face-to-face communication with team members and other co-workers.
The final red flag of a potentially toxic hybrid workplace we think you should watch out for is if your manager doesn't have a solid communication plan for remote and hybrid team members. What digital communication tools will you be using? What are the communication policies and procedures? How much communication needs to happen in order to be an efficient and productive hybrid team?
A problem that could arise from not having a communication plan in place is remote and hybrid employees not being able to access information that's essential to their job and critical to their success as employees. If managers don't plan ahead with this concern in mind, the hybrid workforce could fall apart. It's already difficult communicating as a remote or hybrid employee, so your manager needs to have a solid communication plan in place, or else your work environment could become toxic.
With many companies shifting to remote or hybrid workplaces after the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a handful of red flags professionals should keep an eye out for in order to avoid a toxic work environment.
A potentially toxic hybrid workplace will typically exhibit the three red flags above. But it's important to remember that the transition to a hybrid work model is bumpy for many companies. Patience and communication are key for both employers and employees during this major shift. A change like this might be uncomfortable at first, but the future of work depends on it.
Dealing with a toxic workplace? We can help!
Check out our FREE resources page and Live Events Calendar.
Or, join our career growth club today and get access to one-on-one career coaching, resume and cover letter reviews, online tutorials, and unlimited networking opportunities—all in your back pocket!
If you want FREE career advice in your inbox, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily Dose!
Struggling to find the right job?
Check out Work It Daily's Incredible Companies page to see snapshots of companies hiring. Work It Daily also highlights job opportunities on a daily basis on TikTok.
- 14 Best Tips For Working From Home - Work It Daily ›
- Work-Life Balance: 3 Things Remote Workers Expect Today - Work It ... ›
- 4 Ways To Prepare For A Remote Work Salary Adjustment - Work It ... ›
- 3 Ways To Land Your Remote Dream Job - Work It Daily ›
