Career Confidential: How many careers in one resume?

Posted by on Friday, June 19, 2009 128Leave a Commenthttp%3A%2F%2Fjobs.dailycamera.com%2Fboulder-jobs-employment-news%2Fboulder-career-confidential%2Fcareer-confidential-how-many-careers-in-one-resume%2FCareer+Confidential%3A+How+many+careers+in+one+resume%3F2009-06-19+15%3A44%3A39liz_ryanhttp%3A%2F%2Fjobs.dailycamera.com%2F%3Fp%3D128

Dear Liz,

I have a broad background in a range of fields and industries. The hardest part of my job search is describing this deep and broad background in a two-page resume.

I’ve done sales, marketing, operations and customer support management. I want to let employers know my range of experience, because they may have needs that cut across my areas of experience. My problem is getting across the breadth of my experience in my resume. Have any suggestions for me?

Thanks, Bruce

Dear Bruce,

I sympathize, and I see yours as a job-search direction issue more than a case of needing to cram many Bruces into one resume. It would be challenging indeed to squash 20 years of experience in four different functional areas (and multiple industries) onto a two-page resume.

Before we get to your resume, though, we need to narrow your search direction. Since we’re pursuing actual, concrete jobs that employers are trying to fill (even when we approach employers who haven’t posted jobs, we’re still addressing specific business problems) we’ve got to put a point on the arrow of your job search. We have to pick an initial job-search direction, and create a resume that conveys to a prospective employer why you’re a contender for a job in that realm.

The Ginsu Knife job-search approach doesn’t work. The more we use our resume to proclaim “I can do Sales! I can do Operations! Look at all the stuff I can do!” the less effective any one of our specific pitches is likely to be.

Let’s say your initial job-search direction is customer service management. In your Customer Service Management resume, we’ll pull in lots of your other experiences, but the central theme of the resume will be “Meet Bruce, an awesome customer service manager.” Without abandoning your experience in other functions, we’ll use your precious two pages of resume real estate to make it clear that you’re an ace customer service manager and someone who should be on the short list when interviews are scheduled.

You can have a resume for sales opportunities, and others for operations or marketing jobs. Lots of experienced job-seekers have two or three job-search ‘prongs’ going at one time. Each resume is slightly different and tailored for its ‘prong.’ Because we only get one LinkedIn profile, we need to cover all the Bruce bases in one shot, but we’re still going to ‘point’ the profile toward your principal job-search prong.

When we write a resume or a LinkedIn profile, we need to make choices. Deciding what to leave out can be the hardest part of the job. Renaissance men and women are great people to have on any team, but they don’t typically get hired via a Jack-or-Jill of All Trades approach.

Rather, they narrow the focus; zero in on the business pain they suspect an employer is facing (whether they’re responding to a posted job ad, or making outreach to an organization directly); and use the one-million-plus words of our amazing language to make the “I can solve your pain” message abundantly clear.

Best, Liz

P.S. Bruce, we zero in on job-search direction and “prongs” in our job-search coaching groups. Write to me for details. Thanks!

Liz Ryan is the CEO of Ask Liz Ryan, a Boulder human-resources and career-development consulting firm. She can be reached at abpklj@r.postjobfree.com.

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