Coaching: Polish your résumé and highlight your credential

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Transcript: Polish your résumé and highlight your credential

You’ve heard all the statistics: with high unemployment rates, the competition you will face in today’s job market is the most intense it has been in the recent past. Recruiters receive hundreds of résumés each week, and spend only seconds reading each one. As a former search firm recruiter, I am often asked “How long do you take to screen a résumé and what do you look for when reading one?” There is the first incorrect assumption: Résumés are not read by most recruiters. They are scanned the way most of us scan websites, looking for information such as specific keywords and phrases and assessing the visual feel to decide if we should click through. If we don’t like what we see, we move on. That process takes most of us as little as 15 seconds. You do not get a second chance to create a strong, robust first impression. Ensuring the résumé reader quickly sees the most important aspects of your background and why you are qualified for the job is paramount. This topic guides you in creating that winning résumé.

The Cornell University Human Resources, Labor and Industrial Relations, Engineering School, Graduate Business, and Hospitality certificates are very desirable credentials that, when listed on your résumé, can help you be found by hiring managers seeking an Ivy League-trained employee.

Capturing the hiring manager's interest in you as a candidate is key to having a recruiter contact you for an interview. One of the keys to obtaining that interview, or being considered for a promotion, is to create a digitally searchable résumé that highlights key words and core skills for the job, including your Cornell certificate.

A contemporary résumé is typically not the piece of paper on which your résumé is normally printed. Nowadays, the first time your résumé is being seen by a hiring manager is in an electronic format (such as email) or an online format (one of your social media profiles). Social media profiles and emailed résumé attachments are today’s contemporary résumés—and often what is first viewed by a recruiter who decides to call you in for an interview.

Let me give you a behind the scenes understanding of what the résumé sorting process looks like from the recruiter’s side. When doing the initial scan of résumés to determine which candidates I would call, I always looked for the following:

First is what job are you applying for. If it was left up to me to decide what position the candidate was applying for because I couldn’t tell what job the candidate was pursuing, I often just put the résumé in the ‘no’ pile and moved on to the next candidate who spelled it out for me. You run the risk of having a recruiter wrongly assume which role you are pursuing if you do not clearly state your intentions. Or worse, they may realize what job you are applying for, but think you are a poor communicator in doing so in an unclear manner by not making it clear. I will show you in this section of the course how to make it clear what job you are seeking.

Next, I wanted to know where you work. Knowing your current employment gave me context for the targeted job title. The Director of Marketing at the local doctor’s office and the Director of Marketing at a Fortune 500 company are two different jobs, despite having the same title. I will show you where to make your employers’ names easy to read and identify when we talk about the basic résumé.

The third thing I looked for was how long you were employed at your various positions. I need to know the chronological order of your employment. Period. Functional résumés and any format that disguised the dates did the exact opposite of what job seekers intended in using these formats—and it annoyed recruiters since they had to work to find the dates and put things in context. If you were a Director of Marketing 15 years ago versus a Director of Marketing today—those are two different jobs even though they share the same title. If you had the job for 10 months versus 10 years, that tells a recruiter two different stories. A recruiter must have time frames for your résumé to have meaning. When we work on your basic résumé, I will provide you with a template that shows how to lay out this information.

The numbers mattered to me. I may not have taken the time in this initial screen to read every stat and detail, but I wanted to see numbers on a résumé upon first scan. When I scan a résumé and see no numbers present in the content, it automatically makes me wonder if this person is achievement driven. Companies do not want to hire task masters—they want achievers. Numerical measurement does not have to only refer to money; use any relevant metrics, such as percentages and volume, to give the subliminal impression that you are an achiever and you can express yourself comfortably in that manner.

I looked at your education background. Knowing where you went to school also helps recruiters put things in context. This is not to assume recruiters always want to see that you went to a top tier school. If you attended a local regional school and went on to a Fortune 100 management job, that tells a great story. If you went to a prominent school and are engaged in a start-up initiative, that tells an intriguing story. All the pieces, of which education is one, contribute a valuable piece to your story. Your pursuit of continuing education at the management level is a great testament to your desire to build your skills and position yourself for advancement. I will show you how to highlight your Cornell University credential to make it stand out for recruiters.

And, finally, I was swayed by the look and feel of the résumé itself. When a recruiter reads your résumé, are they thinking, “What was the person thinking with this format?” Is the layout dated, poorly formatted, visually unappealing and simply hard to read or understand? If a recruiter does not notice anything about your formatting, then you are at least not doing damage to your presentation. Ideally, you want someone to think, “This person gets it” when they click open your résumé. You have less than 5 seconds for that first impression and only one shot to get it right.

We are going to talk about all of these issues in this section of the course. We will start with how to write a basic résumé that you then customize for specific job listings. We’ll look at cover letters, talk about digital file uploads and, most importantly, look at how to make your Cornell credential work for you in helping you land an interview.

After completing this topic, you should be able to:

Explain what your eCornell credential means
Design a résumé that gets your foot in the door both digitally and on paper
Know how to target your job search audience
Write a professional résumé that highlights your credentials and the skills you have learned