Career Transition Trials and Triumphs, v.4 - George's Lesson in Effective Résumé Writing

When George came to us for job search assistance, he was already a few weeks into his search.  He was looking for a Sales Coordinator position having spent the last 5 years in a call centre environment for a large sporting goods company as well as having several part-time retail sales roles while he was in high school and college.

George felt he had the personality, the skills set and the experience to easily transition to a new, similar role.  However, when we met him, he was quite down on himself and feeling depressed since he could not seem to get any response to the résumés he had been sending out.

Sales is a broad field that spans across many different sectors and there are often a multitude of opportunities for sales representatives of varying levels.  George had seen and enthusiastically applied to over one hundred job postings without getting a single call back.  He could not understand what was wrong and slowly started losing confidence and motivation, berating himself personally.

Because sales is such a broad field, and because there are many sales representatives in the market, standing above the competition can be challenging.  In contrast, someone who works in a narrower field, neuroscience for example, has a smaller market to target and, even though there are less Neuroscientists out there, they don’t have nearly the problem of getting their résumés into the right hands and read thoroughly.  It is simply a matter of volume, or lack thereof.

When we looked at the résumé that George was using in his applications, we could see straight away what his problem was.

The focus of his résumé was his name. It was present in big, bold colourful letters.  In fact, the entire résumé was formatted very nicely and was appealing to the eye.  However, it was very difficult to decipher what George could offer as an employee.  Only when we spent several minutes reading the small print of his document could we see that he had extensive sales experience and in fact, had been the recipient of multiple awards in his previous job. 

George was very proud of his résumé as he designed it and wrote it himself.  He loved it and thought it was a good reflection of his personality, and his skills set.  In fact, he was quite defensive at the start when we wanted to change it.  The problem of course, was that although he loved the résumé as it was, he wasn’t going to be the third-party, over-worked and-overly stressed stranger charged with the task of sifting through the pile of résumés received for one sales coordinator posting. 

George may have been the perfect candidate for the advertised position, but his résumé never made the short pile and was never read because he didn’t make it easy for the hiring manager or HR representative to understand the contributions that he could bring to the table.

Once we confirmed the level of the role he wanted and the industries he wanted to work within, we could then re-write and re-format his résumé to bring his skills, level and experience to the forefront.  Ensuring that they were focused and understood within seconds of one looking at his document – not minutes!

Once George’s résumé started making the short pile, the calls for interviews started coming in and it is a stark reminder that résumé writing is more than just a presentation of your career history, it is truly an effort in ‘marketing’.