Resume Perfection

If you are a marketing or communications professional who wants a perfect resume, then treat the resume as any other marketing or communications deliverable.  A good product marketing brochure never lists every feature and specification that can be crammed into two pages.  Why would you do the same thing with a resume?

For example, Arm & Hammer baking soda is a great fire extinguisher / refrigerator odor controller / tooth paste / baking enhancer / stomach relief / deodorant / water softener / stain remover / disinfectant / antiseptic / fungicide / and sand blast medium!  Baking soda can do all those things, but the marketers wisely narrow their marketing focus to just one thing: odor controller.  It is the one positioning that Arm & Hammer owns with credibility that generates continued sales!

Jack B Nimble

Imagine you have been hired by Nimble Corp to support the launch of a new product called "Jack B Nimble".  Jack B Nimble is a humanoid professional product which happens to have the exact same capability, talent, skills, knowledge, experience, reputation, personality, style and temperament as YOU.  It has the same needs, wants, and desires and has the same requirements for upkeep and maintenance.  In all respects, this Jack B Nimble product is exactly, precisely like YOU.  Your job is to market it.

Your Business Plan

First develop the marketing plan.  Of course the marketing plan should derive from the Nimble Corp business plan so you can assure that your marketing plan supports it. Right?  After all, how can anyone market something if you do not know the bigger picture?  In the case of the company (translate, "your family") that offers the Jack B Nimble, why is it in business?  What is the purpose of the company?  Its mission?  Its vision?  Its values?  Its overall goals and objectives?

A clear understanding of this fundamental information is vital before you start any marketing effort.   What is your family here to do?  What are you trying to accomplish?  What are your goals, limits and allowances for compensation, travel, stress, power, control, uncertainty, location, security, comfort, schedule, etc.  There must be a consensus among the leadership team.  Put the plan in writing.  Get signoff!  It is unprofessional for a candidate to discuss with the spouse or partner serious issues like relocation or compensation only AFTER a job offer is made.

Your Marketing Plan

OK.  So you have a documented business plan for the company (family)...  Now you have to market this Jack B Nimble product (you).  The manufacturing team reminds you that there is only one of the product to market.  You ask a lot questions, have a lot of discussions and reach clear conclusions on the most important elements of any marketing campaign.  You need to consider position, price, place, and promotion just like any marketing campaign.  For the moment, though, we are focused on the deliverable called "resume".

Position Your "Product"

Positioning is the most important element to tackle.  Given the entire range of things Jack B Nimble can do, given all its features and benefits, what is the best positioning that supports the business plan?  Some people are positioned as able to do anything -- marketing, public relations, events, strategy, tactics, advertising, collateral, budgets, team development, market analysis, social media, websites, direct marketing, etc.  They try to be everything to everybody and end up being nothing to nobody.  Even if a product has many uses and possible market positions, any good marketer knows to choose the best one and run with it.

Remember, it is better to be extremely interesting to a FEW people than moderately interesting to a LOT of people.  I have a friend who "retired" from a big oil company and he was offering himself as a communications consultant.  He was positioning himself as an experienced professional who could do anything, and he was getting no work.  I asked him what was the one thing he did best, and enjoyed the most, and he replied that he had done 18 mergers in his career, he loved the communications challenge and he had the process well defined.  I suggested he throw out all his existing marketing materials and position himself as THE merger communications expert.  His "target market" went from a few hundred companies to a few dozen, but he has been working every day since.  That was 7 years ago!

Focus Your Resume

Walk down the cereal aisle in the supermarket and pick any box off the shelf.  At a glance you can see the target market and what their key message for that market.  Notice that every cereal box is designed to get you to read the BACK of the box.  Whatever the message, the details are on the back.  Why?  To read the back of the box, you have to reach out and take it off the shelf.  Supermarket researchers know that if you take a box off the shelf to read it, you are more likely to actually put it in your cart, take it home and taste it.  Your loyalty to that product will live or die on your taste EXPERIENCE, but at least they got you to taste it!

A resume is like a cereal box.  The purpose of the resume is NOT to get you a job.  The purpose of a resume is to get you an interview!  Once they meet you, their opinion of you will live or die on their experience of you!

Moreover, the cereal box does not tout what the cereal company wants, it touts what it offers!  Does your resume tout what you are seeking in a career?  Who cares?!  Who cares that you are seeking a "director-level employee relations position in a progressive manufacturing company that leverages people skills and experience in industrial plant environments"?  Have you ever seen a cereal box that says, "Buy these corn flakes because Kellogg's wants to leverage its history as a maker of  bland food for sanitarium residents and grace the breakfast tables of many more healthy Americans?"  No!

In the same vein, your resume for "Jack B Nimble" should outline what the product offers.  Not everything it offers, but the best, most effective, useful thing it offers.  List all the employment in reverse order (a "chronological" resume), and for each job add a couple bullet points that show objective results that support the key message or positioning.  Many recruiters refer to this as a "targeted" resume because the idea is to "target" a specific job listing.  My point is that your resume should not be "targeted" at a specific job listing; instead your resume (and your marketing effort) should be "targeted" at the specific job that you enjoy most and best leverages your natural talents, skills, knowledge and experience.  (By the way, I do not advocate functional resumes at all; I find them difficult to decipher and come across as intended to hide a shortcoming or career issue.  I'm just sayin'...)

Some "before" and "after" examples of targeted and focused resumes are at https://brookwoods.com/uncategorized/resume-perfection-examples/

Checklist

So, here is the checklist for a perfect resume:

1. Get clear on what your family's goals and values are and how your career fits in.
2. Of all the things you can do, decide on the best honest positioning for you that meets a very narrow market need.
3. From your inventory of talents, skills, knowledge and experiences, list out everything that supports or proves your positioning. Screen out everything that does not.
4. Create a resume as you would any marketing deliverable, with a clear message tailored to a specific target audience and supported by relevant data.