Resume Writer Matthew Greene

A Management Resume Needs
to Market Your "Selling Points"

by

*Matthew Greene, M.Phil.

Every management resume should be carefully designed, constructed, and written to showcase your best "selling points" — up front and throughout your resume.  These will include your strongest management skills and accomplishments in order to "sell" your value to recruiters and employers.

A good management resume is much more than a plain or "basic" resume.  It is a tool you need to develop for the strategic marketing of two things — what you have to offer and the likely benefits of hiring you.

Resume writing has changed a lot.  A few years ago, you were advised to use "action words"; today it is to emphasize "keywords" for easy scanning by a reader or OCR machine.  Moreover, for maximum effectiveness, your resume should target the employer's specific needs and "sell" you up front — from Line One onwards. This will impress recruiters and continue to sell you during the interview as well as later to a selection committee.

In any resume for a manager or executive, selling yourself starts in your Job Objective!  A well-written Job Objective is crucial because it is the attention-getting and marketing "head" of your resume.  First, it tells the reader what position you are seeking.  Second, it starts to offer the benefits of hiring you such as your most qualifying work experience and/or track record of accomplishment and/or valuable skills — a few selected items that will impress, back up and support your application.  [Modern Job Objectives can be 3-7 lines in length and are marketing-oriented.  They should include strategic sales "hooks" such as one or two or even three bulleted accomplishments.  These will "sell" you immediately!]

The next section in a management resume is a bulleted Summary or Qualifications Statement or Profile that presents your job-related education, your most impressive or related job experience, your track record of success or promotions, the names of major employers, your most impressive accomplishment(s), and your strongest skills and strengths. Such items should support your job objective. (If possible, bulleted items should address requirements that are stated in job advertisements.)

Since you are a manager or executive, you should also list your areas of experience or expertise in two or three columns so that the reader will quickly see that you can offer "Leadership" or "Project Management" or "Operations Management" or "Strategic Planning" or "Solutions Selling" or "Team-building" or "Negotiating Skills".

Thus, in only 10-15 lines, your resume will make you LOOK like the management candidate they are eager to interview and hire.

"Where's the Beef?" and Other Resume Questions

Is your resume still on one page? As a rule, managers and executives cannot do themselves justice on one page! Take a long, hard look at your own resume and ask yourself the question: "Where's the beef?" Is your resume like a hamburger where the "beef" (your "sell") is hidden? Reverse your job search telescope and look at your resume in the way a supercritical employer or recruiter is sure to do. Can you see why they should hire you?

Thousands of self-written resumes omit or mess up the Job Objective and/or bulleted Summary. This is a fatal mistake. Why? Because these resume sections have a crucial function in a winning resume. Their role is similar to attention-getting, Point-of-Sale promotional materials in a store that motivate shoppers to check out and buy a product.

Does your Work Experience section consist of 5-7 solid, gray paragraphs with run-on lines? Do keywords or impressive numbers or phrases "jump out" at the reader? Are the names of your major customers or clients highlighted? Do your accomplishments lie buried in the text where they'll be overlooked or do they stand out? Such mistakes will cost you dearly. Frankly, the "mashed potato" look does not sell!

Are you using 20-30 decorative, black "bullets" or arrows to make your resume look more interesting or to give it "eye appeal"? Please don't do this! They will be ignored.

Important keywords should always be bolded, underlined or italicized to draw the reader's attention to them. They should "jump" off the page. If the reader is searching for buzz words or phrases such as "cost reduction" or "turnaround" or "start-up experience" or "process improvement" or "strategic or tactical selling" or "selling to C-level executives" or "creative marketing" or "business strategy" or "business process re-engineering" or "customer-centric", these should be highlighted.

Above all, your resume should be easily scannable in 30 seconds or less. What the reader wants to see must "jump out" at him or her. For this reason I don't care for ASCII formats where the document is formatted in plain Notepad instead of MS Word. Sending an on-line resume will destroy the valuable attention-getters and highlighters in a resume.

Finally, laser printing on first-class resume paper is essential for creating that all-important first impression. (KINKO's # 2 resume paper is ideal. It is 24lb linen and the color is off-white. Use their laser printers to prepare master copies of your documents.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: The awful reality is that highly qualified management candidates often fail to land interviews. Many of these were probably beaten by a less-qualified candidate with the best resume! That is how the hiring system works. Don't fight it!

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Modified: 01/27/2006