Note: Describe reports, documents, or published articles written by you or prepared under your direction. Be sure to describe any special significance attached to a particular item.
Concurrent Away-from-Job Experience and Accomplishments
Note: Describe your "extracurricular" activities during this period. Include social activities, church groups, and dub memberships, along with any offices held and accomplishments of particular note.
Repeat all items under "Career History" for every past employer. If you were in the military service, treat every major assignment as a separate company. If your military service was limited to one type of duty (e.g., infantry), consider military service as one company.
Special Qualifications
Note: List special qualifications such as licensed pilot, CPA, registered professional engineer, foreign languages.
The resume preparation form is lengthy and detailed. It should take you several hours to complete even a sketchy outline. Remember, you have allotted several days to preparation of a superior resume in your job campaign plan. Take advantage of this built-in time. You can profitably use every hour.
The resume preparation form, if properly completed, will insure that all important information needed for your campaign is recalled, documented, and kept together in an organized fashion for immediate use. It will focus your thinking on experiences and accomplishments, both in your career and outside of work, that support your job position objectives. It will increase your self-confidence immeasurably, as you see before you the unique experiences and accomplishments that you alone can offer to a PE. Finally, it will save you a considerable amount of time during your campaign.
The Importance of Special, Short, and Outside of Work Assignments
You will find places on the resume preparation form for information about special and short assignments in your career and special experience outside of your career. Such information is frequently overlooked; but it can be vital to your campaign. For example, Douglas M. was an accountant for a small company that manufactured adhesives for the building industry. For about a year, in addition to his normal duties, he represented his department on the company's product evaluation committee. During this period he participated in the evaluation of 32 potential new products. This work, which occupied less than 20 percent of his time during that year and only 4 percent of his total time with the company, was the deciding factor in getting him a position as finance officer with a firm that researched and developed proprietary products for licensing.
Tim O. spent years working as a human factors engineer with a large aerospace company but was faced with a certain layoff. The three months he spent working on ejection seat requirements got him a job as project engineer in charge of the development of a new ejection seat. Special, short, and outside-of-work assignments can be the deciding factor in getting you an interview and getting you a job. Don't overlook them.
Now That You Have a Superior Resume, Don't Send It to Anyone
Your resume will change considerably as your campaign progresses. You will think of new items to add, other accomplishments to emphasize, some statements to delete. You will find this happening right up to the last day of your campaign. How, then, do you handle the hundreds of resumes that must be distributed? Simple-don't. That is, don't send out resumes by hundreds or thousands. In fact, don't send a resume out at all. Instead, send out extracts from your resume tailored to the particular market for your talents. These extracts can be reproduced in large quantities. You will learn exactly how to do this. Sending out extracts rather than resumes will save you time and money. It will increase your efficiency and effectiveness in getting interviews because you can slant the extracts toward particular job situations much more easily than you can slant the resume itself. You will also avoid "knockout factors".
If this is true, when if ever do you send a resume to a PE during your job campaign? There are two situations. The first is when a PE insists on seeing a resume before inviting you for an interview. This may occur when there is travel connected with the interview or when a hiring executive wants to see you but is not fully convinced. In both cases, you should find out everything you can about the potential position before preparing your resume. The situation is analogous to having hooked a fish that hasn't yet swallowed the bait: you could lose him. You will find details on how to gather intelligence about a job later on. The second situation is after the interview. Using the techniques I describe, you now know a great deal about the job; if you have done your job right, you know far more than any of your competitors. You are now in a position to write an outstanding resume. This is the resume that will help to get you the job.
So begin to develop a superior resume by completing the resume preparation form. Filling out the form is one of the most difficult tasks associated with job hunting. But it is well worth your best efforts and will play a major role in the success of your campaign. Remember, this task will not be completed until the very end of your campaign; you will continually update, polish, and reword your resume as you recall additional facts and as your campaign unfolds.
