Resume Help!

[itsjulie]

I have decided to get back in the "corporate world" and have been looking for a "real job" for the past month or so - with no luck!

I know resume styles change and not sure if I need to revamp my resume or what...any suggestions?

Professional Summary
A dedicated, deadline oriented and trustworthy professional with ten years of diverse experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Areas of expertise include budget management, customer relations and discreet handling of confidential information. Acknowledged for superior teamwork with legal, purchasing, accounting and all levels of management and field personnel. Known for being flexible, having strong analytical ability and an effective problem solver.

Professional Experience

Sales Operations Analyst April, 2004 – December, 2004
·Promotion with same responsibilities

Coordinator Bids & Contracts June, 2000 – April, 2004
·Accepted permanent position in June, 2000
·Promoted to work directly with Deputy Head of Scientific Relations department as well as Director of Scientific Affairs
·Responsible to create / maintain all contractual obligations which include consulting / project agreements and confidentiality agreements for five departments
·Effectively improved the contract approval process from a 2 - 3 month process to a 3 week process
·Combine the needs of the project manager and consultants/vendors needs into a contract
·Analyze and forecast five different departments annual budget totaling $26,000,000
·Successfully fell within .5% of the 2003 final annual budget
·Assist field personnel with problem solving and successfully stay within their individual annual budget
·Advisor for four Administrative Assistants with budget / process issues
·Act as liaison between each Scientific Relations department with Law & Patents, Purchasing, Accounting, as well as Consultants and Vendors
·Entails meeting extensive dead lines
·Handle a high volume of confidential information
·Active member of the First Aid Team
·Active member of the Junior Board

[Rock Steady]

Originally Posted by itsjulie

I have decided to get back in the "corporate world" and have been looking for a "real job" for the past month or so - with no luck!

That looks good. It seems you should prepend a "Job Objective" or "Employment Objective" section perhaps tailored for specific job openings.

Job Objective: Seeking a position as a _ with responsibilities including _.

Also, maybe a list of skills. I don't know about your area, but it is often important for an engineering position.

Professional Skills: Excel, SAP, Oracle Financials, Asteroids, ...

[seakdivers]

You need to look at the places you are sending your resume to. Consider the age and experience of the people that will be looking at it.

My dad, and many of the older business owners in this state (Alaska, so don't worry yourself) don't want to look at a resume that isn't hand written.

Seriously.

We got a resume a few years back that made us laugh - the guy had actually printed a picture of himself smiling and waving, and had used it like a watermark for the backdrop of his resume.

Didn't hire him, but it's still one we remember!

[Rock Steady]

Originally Posted by seakdivers

You need to look at the places you are sending your resume to. Consider the age and experience of the people that will be looking at it.

My dad, and many of the older business owners in this state (Alaska, so don't worry yourself) don't want to look at a resume that isn't hand written.

Seriously.

We got a resume a few years back that made us laugh - the guy had actually printed a picture of himself smiling and waving, and had used it like a watermark for the backdrop of his resume.

Didn't hire him, but it's still one we remember!

You can't be serious. I am 50 yo and I NEVER saw a hand written resume. Most 21st Century companies expect to be able to OCR the resume and categorize it.

A photo is definitely a no-no. Of thousands of resumes I reviewed, only saw one with a corner photo. Didn't look funny as the one you described, but the experience wasn't relevant enough, photo or not.

The funniest thing in a resume I remember is:

Hobbies: President of the Toronto Celine Dion Fan Club

[xoxoxoBruce]

A dedicated, deadline oriented and trustworthy professional with ten years of diverse experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Areas of expertise include budget management, customer relations and discreet handling of confidential information. Acknowledged for superior teamwork with legal, purchasing, accounting and all levels of management and field personnel. Known for being flexible, having strong analytical ability and an effective problem solver.

Oh sure, that's easy when you work for a DRUG company.

[wolf]

From what I've seen, the "Job Objective" or "Employment Objective" is most often being left off the resume itself, but becomes part of the tailored cover letter that accompanies it. (Makes it a lot easier to mass produce your resumes)

Don't forget Education, Community/Volunteer Service, Speciality Training and Certifications, etc.

[Scopulus Argentarius]

Originally Posted by itsjulie

I have decided to get back in the "corporate world" and have been looking for a "real job" for the past month or so - with no luck!

Impressions... blech...

This resume tells me nothing of what you can do and have done; each line freakishly competes against itself in a buzzword pissing contest (with the next line). Your past accomplishments are real (aren't they?), but, I can't tell from all this vague stuff you're slinging around.

Julie you can do *much* better... (after all, aren't you posting on the Cellar?)...



First things first... before you compose your resume.... do the following

1. Find out where are you applying (don't answer this here..just figure it out)...'where' can be an industry or a company or whatever... You need to know all you can about the target's business, customers, etc.. how they express themselves...industry accomplishments .. The more concrete and specific, the better..

List these and details out where you can view them later....



2. What are they looking for in an employee? (i.e. values as well as responsibilities) Who is looking? (if known...) What is important to that person as well as the organization? The more concrete and specific, the better..

Also list these out where you may review....



3. What training/experience/accomplishments do you have that can solve their problems?

This is the tricky part. Keep in mind that training, formal schooling or experience doing a similar job, establishes competency (i.e. that you can do the job). Specific accomplishments in concrete language illiustrate a gain in profit, efficiency, savings, etc establish excellence (or value-add if I might buzzword on that).

List these and keep this list handy....


4. Target .....and write..

With the above in mind, target your resume to the specific opportunity. (after a while, you'll learn how to do this quickly ). Lead on with what established your competence and follow on with those items that "add value" to the position. Your goal is to include yourself in the likely candidates group while making yourself look different and better than the others in the same group. Also construct a cover letter that highlights (but does not repeat infor on the resume)

It would be a good idea to not include an objective (never helps..often recognized as filler), not include a picture (allows someone to discriminate against you -even if they're biased against hotties), not include a reference to your age (same as last one - but do include anything that implies maturity and character)


5. Print it out - use high quality printing and if you use color, use conservative dark muted colors. Use high-quality paper that differs from most paper. Do this even if you will ultimately send it electronically.


6. Review it and revise.... Wait a couple of hours (psycological distance) ... or have a friend examine it (brutally mark up that nice paper with red ink)

7. Prep it all and lay it out before sending it off. Find and fix any minor mistake.


There is much more...but I'm tired..

Julie, I hope you do well and get that well paying job quickly.


Take Care..


SA

[Clodfobble]

This may seem like a silly question, but I've seen it before: is your resume formatted the way you have it here in the actual resume itself, or did you just drop the formatting to paste it into the Cellar?

I have watched several people have their resumes immediately tossed in the trash because the formatting was just plain text, hard on the eyes. There's no excuse for that with the number of Resume formatting wizards out there. In Word, several options are available under New Office Document --> Other Documents tab.

The trick is you want to be able to skim it and visually pull out the most important parts. It also helps to get rid of less important parts. For example, "Entails meeting extensive dead lines" is pretty useless--especially because a deadline cannot be extensive. They can be frequent, critical, or tight, but the very implication of a deadline is it does not stretch over an extended period of time. And "Combine the needs of the project manager and consultants/vendors needs into a contract" could just be shortened to "contract drafting," as could several others. In theory your potential employers know what is involved in contract drafting and don't need it spelled out for them. On the other hand, "Effectively improved (shortened) the (average) contract approval process from (2-3 months to 3 weeks.) a 2 - 3 month process to a 3 week process" is good because it is something above and beyond the normal business duties. However, this is tossed in with the job responsibilities. I'd have two bulleted lists, one of job responsibilities and one of special accomplishments, and keep it to about four points each.

[itsjulie]

You guys have some great ideas! Thank You! Now, I just need the time to put some of those to the test...just got home from my statistics course and my eyes are glazed!

[Rock Steady]

There are a lot of great suggestions from everyone. It is important to add structure for readers to visually skim, but then drill down for more details when they want. One advertising maxim is "long copy sells". And one career book said this applies to resumes as long as they are structured for skimming.

"Omit needless words" says Strunk and White in support of some posters suggestions. One editor said to me once, look for things that are overstated and tone them down, and look for things that are understated and play them up.

I disagree with some specific suggestions although I agree with most of what was said by everyone.

Over 10 years ago I agreed with a mass produced resume and a custom cover letter. I now believe that cover letters are tossed before the hiring manager sees them. The HR depts are overloaded and often handle things sloppily. I now edit a custom resume for each job that I apply. My cover letters are minimalistic.

Organize your bullet items into responsiblities, accomplishments, skills. But, don't limit them to any number (eg, 4). List as many things in each list as you can.

Repeat information liberally. Use words and phrases in your skills list, then repeat them in your specific job accomplishments. I am dead serious. I am a Search Engineer that implemented a resume analysis software system used by a firm with Fortune 1000 client companies. Other popular systems use similar techniques as I used. Your resume will score better if you repeat industry buzzwords.

Also, a sales guy once told me that for someone to remember something you have to tell them the same thing three times. So, as it is for linguistic software, repeating yourself in different places helps the human reader to figure out what's important in the text.

These days I always bring several copies of Word formatted resume printed on nice paper with me to job interviews. Many HR people take your nice resume and send it in plain text via email to hiring managers and interviewers. People have been thankful to me for giving them something reasonable to read instead of the sloppy email printout they bring to the interview.

Break a leg, girlfriend.