The current economy has taken its toll. Over the past 3 years, I have spent more time between consulting assignments than on them. This is partly due to my proclivity toward highly specialized short-term assignments. The segment of the market in which I work has, in the past, been relatively recession-proof. That has not been the case this time around. Still, consulting work is out there; and I have been passed over for several assignments that I believed were uniquely suited to my particular skill set. This got me thinking that it might be time to re-evaluate my technical résumé.
The format of my résumé is unique, and is the product of more than twenty years of experimentation. Résumé writing guides for this market don’t exist, yet traditional formats don’t work well. As with many long-time contract consultants, the length of my résumé is well beyond the standard 2-page guideline that non-consultants are so familiar with. In fact, I struggle to keep it at 5 pages. The five-page length is my own self-imposed limit. I simply don’t believe that I can reduce it any further without losing important content. Yet, at this length, I don’t believe that a traditional-format résumé would be effective. It would simply provide too much information that was irrelevant to any given reader. For this reason, my first page is written as an executive overview; highlighting my experience, skills, and training, while presenting a healthy list of buzzwords in an organized fashion. Although it has undergone minor changes, this basic layout has been extremely effective for me for a number of years. I am not prone to change it on a whim. The wording of the content, on the other hand, has been relatively fluid.
A couple of years ago, a potential client suggested that my résumé seemed rather weak in a skill that I thought was adequately represented; I didn’t get his work. Upon close inspection, I found that while the skill was, in fact, prominent throughout the document; it was entirely absent from the introductory summary, which comprises about 25% of the first page. This prompted me to do a quick re-write of that summary. Soon thereafter, I started an assignment that focused on an entirely different area. Life was good.
Fast-forward to present. Since the end of my last assignment, I have been particularly struck by the lack of activity in my market. In times past, I am accustomed to receiving about 4 – 5 contacts per day, by telephone or email. This time around, 3 – 4 calls per week have been more typical. Furthermore, the calls I have been getting have been less relevant to my skill set than has been typical in the past. Everybody knows that times are tough, and so we just keep hoping that things will get better soon. Maybe that’s not the best course of action.
About three weeks ago, I decided that I had to be proactive. It was time to re-visit my résumé once again. Of course, I do update my résumé at the end of every assignment. I add to the history, add any new buzzwords, and generally spend an hour or so looking over the history to condense and re-phrase things that may have changed in their significance to my market. This time, I decided to do a much more extensive review.
As I began to read, the first issue I found was the summary. During the previously described update, I had emphasized the missing skill. Upon this review, I found that the summary now seemed to understate virtually every other skill I possess. It lacked any sort of balance. I suddenly realized that, although it had been two years since my last update of this section; I had actually been hired for my last engagement on the basis of the previous edition of my résumé. Despite the time it had been in place, this summary had never shown a positive result; it had been ineffective.
As I continued reading, I was embarrassed to find misspellings and typo’s that should never have been; duplicated words, redundant statements, and grammatical foul ups. I could not believe the number of errors that had been injected over the past few years and missed in subsequent reviews. How could I have missed these? Clearly, my résumé suffered from my own neglect.
As soon as I finished my updates, I immediately circulated the résumé as widely as possible. I also called several of the agency recruiters I work with regularly, and discussed the updates with them. Why? Because recruiters don’t have time to read every résumé they receive. They might have checked the dates on the job history and assumed that any changes were minor; and therefore not updated their database. I wanted to impress upon them the significance of the changes that had been made. I also wanted to make sure that after months of lackluster response, they hadn’t lost faith in me as a viable candidate.
When all is said and done, I spent more than nine hours reviewing and re-writing my résumé; which I had previously believed to be in excellent shape. I crafted and re-crafted my summary. I painstakingly examined every word and phrase, and made sure that every important skill was represented appropriately. I also spent several hours on the phone with my contacts explaining the reasons for the changes. Was it overkill?
In the first week after releasing the new edition of my résumé, the number of calls and emails I received nearly tripled. Furthermore, the contacts I received were much more closely matched to my skill set. By the second week, I had received more than a half-dozen new client submittals, three interviews, two solid offers, and a shiny new assignment.
Interestingly, two of the interviewers explicitly complimented the format of my résumé. This was the first time in several years that I can recall having received such comments, yet the format hasn’t changed. I believe that what actually impressed them was the clarity and accessibilty of the information. The results I achieved have convinced me that I should be doing a thorough review of my résumé at least once per year.
The economy is the worst that it has been in four generations. It is too easy to use that as an excuse to sit back and wait for thing to get better. Instead, let it motivate you to develop your job skills; your professional image; and your self-marketing. This is one kind of investment that pay off in any economy.
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