Column: PART I: Job-Hunting Basics

Been caught in big cutbacks? Just know that it is time to look for another job? Job-hunting takes work, time, and smarts. This is the first in a series of tips on job-hunting designed to help you find the position you want and an opportunity to succeed.

Step 1: Figure out what you really want to do.

Your skills and interests change, the job market changes. This is the time to see whether your job needs have also changed. Often people who have been laid off simply update their old resume with their recent job and rush to find the exact same job. Others are not sure what they want, but they need a job, so they put out a resume that is not focused. Both types are likely to be less than fully happy with the new job once they get started.

So how do you figure out what you really want to do?

• Take a good look at your experiences. Pay particular attention to those that made you feel you achieved something and that you enjoyed doing. These tell you what your strengths are. Success comes from using your strengths.
• Ask the people who know you well for ideas and suggestions. Ask them what they think are your strengths and what types of work they think you would fit into. Remember to ask people outside your circle of friends from previous workplaces. Teachers, relatives, and people from other groups you are active in can all add to this picture.
• Look at career information guides. Lots of these and plenty of other job-hunting help is at the original and still most comprehensive guide on the web: http://www.rileyguide.com/.
• There are fairly generic personal style and work preference tests available on the web; see http://www.2h.com/Tests/personality.phtml. There are tests on interests (such as the Strong-Campbell Vocational Interests) and on personal style (such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) that can help. These are often given by local colleges and adult education programs. A shorter test, very similar to the Myers-Briggs, is on the web at http://www.keirsey.com. There are also good books in this area, such as Type Talk at Work by Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen.
• Look at job listings of all sorts and pick out those that appeal to you and analyze why.

Step 2: Figure out where you want to do your work.

Years ago, I interviewed at a major consulting company's NYC offices. I walked through an endless floor of taupe and steel-decorated rooms that were all exactly alike—except the size of some of the offices and furniture was related to position level. Long before I got into the interviews, I knew I would not succeed in this environment no matter how good I was at the work.

You need to think about your needs and desires in terms of your work. Perhaps you want to work in a very small firm or a very large one, maybe at a non-profit dealing with some issue close to your heart. Or you want to contribute to the country through public service. Think about who you are and what makes you happy and energetic.

Start painting your ideal job with your values—and yes, this means you have to think about them first. Consider making a list and then sorting them in order of importance. You could start with ideas like autonomy, wealth, integrity, respect, family, balance, health, personal growth, recognition . . . whatever is important to you.

Then get to the practical aspects your values may raise in the job hunt.

For example:

• Is a good salary the most important thing to you at this point, and are you willing to work very long hours or travel extensively to get it?
• Do you need some flexibility in your hours or the ability to telecommute at least some of the time to meet other commitments in your life?
• Do you want a place where you can learn a lot of things or one where you will go into great depth in your defined area?
• Do you want the comfort of procedures or the chaos common in new organizations?
• How far are you willing to commute?
• How important is it that the place involve some social life—or keep out of yours?

Think of what matters to you and include all those values in your job hunt.

Step 3: Yes, finally you can start writing your resume!

Remember a resume is an ADVERTISEMENT.
It is not your biography. It does not have to include everything about you—just that which relates to the work you are seeking.

Start your resume with the basics. Surprisingly, people do forget these! You need your name and contact information right up front. Name, address, phone numbers, and email are the most common. Whenever possible, use a phone number with voicemail. If you do not want to be contacted at work, give only your home or cell phone numbers. More and more companies use email to respond to job-seekers, so put in an email address that you can get such email on. Think about using one specifically for the job hunt or at least use one that sounds professional. Cutesy names, braggadocio, and nasty names hurt your chances. When 'topstud' , 'blondbabe', 'aryanguy', 'sassy' and such handles show up, both hiring managers and Human Resources folk wonder about the business sense of the person—and are more likely to pass on you even if your resume is terrific. The same thing is true for the message on your voicemail while you are looking for a job!

Keep your resume simple: use a major word processing program to do it. Every organization has the ability to read these easily. Those organizations that use resume-tracking software to manage resumes automatically will also get your resume this way. Skip the fancy fonts and the multi-color or highly designed layouts. These slow down the process and may get you ignored/delayed because no one there takes the time to pull up the right program to read them or to translate them into something the resume system can read.

Keep your resume to one or two pages, depending on how experienced you are. Be ruthless in omitting everything that is not directly relevant to your goal! Skip personal information unless it really is related. So, you can put in your sports activities if you are applying for a job with a sports-related organization, but otherwise no. Too often personal information is more likely to raise issues and questions than to help you. I have seen too many hiring managers whose reaction to outside activities was to wonder if the person was really work-oriented, for example. Most importantly, unless you have so little education and work experience that you need to fill up a page, you can use the space for more useful items.

So what goes in your resume?
Those items that showcase your experience, education, and achievements that are related to the type of position you are seeking.

On a chronological resume (these are still the most common type), list your title, the organization name, dates you were there. You could add a location. It is helpful if you give a one-line summary of the organization for each place you have worked, such as "a private, $35M systems consulting company." If your title is unusual, use a generic one. When I was with GE, one of my titles was 10 words long; it became Employee Relations Manager on my resume. If you have a very senior title but in a small organization, you may also wish to move to something more generic. That Vice Presidency may really equate to a manager or team lead anywhere else, but the VP title left on your resume may also mean some hiring managers will skip over you when they see it.

Skip the job descriptions and give us the meat of what you actually did and how you achieved your goals. Be factual and give any quantitative data you can. Put in action verbs: designed, developed, wrote, analyzed, administered, organized, and such. Write in the first person. Give more information about more recent work and less to that which is older or unrelated. If you are changing focus, pull out the relevant skills so the hiring manager can easily make the connection.

If you have relevant skills or experiences from non-paid work such as community organizations, volunteer efforts, or professional associations, include them.

A list of the significant technologies you can use effectively is always helpful. Just remember to spell them correctly! I wear pearls; I don't hire people who know 'pearl'.

Your major education and any relevant training should be included. High school data and a laundry list of every seminar you ever attended should not.

If you are active in relevant professional associations or have published articles or spoken to such groups, include that. Again, a laundry list of organizations you belong to does not help you.

You may want to write an objective to start your resume or you may wish to write a summary of your professional self. Pick one or the other or neither, but not both. If you do include either an objective or summary, keep it short and crisp. Dump all the cliches: everyone wants to work in a place that values personal growth, offers opportunity, blah blah blah.

If you have more than one job in mind, write one resume tailored to each objective. No one who is hiring is interested in mind-reading or in helping you figure out what you want to do.

In all the 'should' and 'should-not' ideas above, remember the resume is your best advertisement. If you do not put your best effort into a well-focused, well-written document that makes the hiring folks want to contact you, you have wasted your time.

Now run it through a spell checker (at least—better if you can get a competent person to proofread your resume) and you are on to the next step.

Step 4: Give your resume to several folks and ask them to review it.

Tell each person to be your personal critic to ensure it is clearly written, that it captures your abilities, that it supports what you want to do.

Most of us are too close to our work and our resumes. We know what we mean to say, and it is hard for us to realize that someone else may not understand what we mean. So don't be defensive and do explore the ideas you get back.

Then, take the best of the suggestions and make the needed changes.

Create a master copy with plenty of white space to make it easy to read. Add a version suitable for electronic mailing both in the email text and as an attachment. Also save one in a format suitable for cutting and pasting into online resume forms.

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