Job Seeker Mysteries Revealed: What You Can Learn From the Pink Slip Tour – Part 1

The Pink Slip Tour sponsored by Virgin Mobile was a six-city extravaganza that reached thousands of Job Seekers and Recruiters this summer, I hope you got to be a part of it. However, if the tour didn’t hit your hometown (or at least not yet!), I’d like to give you a backstage pass to learn from what I personally saw on the PST.

Over the next few weeks, I want to take you on a journey and expose many myths, mistakes, and mis-steps that Job Seekers across America are making, perhaps you are making the same errors right now which may be holding you back from landing your next job. If so, listen, learn and reload you tactics for the future!

By far, the biggest mistake I came across on the Pink Slip Tour, as well as from other job search events and workshops in the last year, involves the use of the resume.

Your resume has one (and only one)  purpose; it should create curiosity.  That’s it – nothing more!

Now, let me be upfront with you and say that I am not a certified resume writer and I do not offer resume writing as one of my services. However, I have definite opinions on what makes a successful resume and I would like to share them with you.

Why should you listen to these ideas if I’m not a so-called “expert”?

First, I am a hiring manager and have been for over 20 years. I have seen thousands of resumes and hired hundreds of people. Like art, I may not know what is perfect, but I know what I like and what gets my attention.

Second, a few years ago, I decided to “reinvent” myself and I spent almost $8,000 to learn more about me, to repackage my experiences in order to change industries, and to get a mack-daddy resume – in four versions and customizable by industry, mind you!

These two situations should at least grant me an “adjunct professor” status when it comes to judging a good resume.

Your resume should not be your work-life history. As a busy hiring manager, I don’t care about every position you have ever had, every award you have ever won, or every semester of education you have completed.

When you try to cram a lifetime of achievements onto a page or two, what happens is what I call the “encyclopedia effect”.

I know that inside an encyclopedia there are millions of interesting facts, thousands of charts and graphs, and hundreds of descriptive photos. However, I don’t sit down with one of those books and start reading cover to cover, hoping to find something interesting along the way. What I need is information, so I go straight to the chapter I need and get the info I desire.

Your resume should communicate your skills and abilities, not just list the job titles you have had.

Next week, we’ll spend more time on the “tombstone resume”.

Furthermore, it should tell me something about you as a person – your dreams, hopes, passions, and what makes you tick. It should make a few bold statements about you and then back up those statements with examples. The list of positions that generated these examples should be small and at the bottom of the page.

Yes, I said “page” – not two or three or four pages – just one page! Limit yourself to only one page – remember, you want to get my attention, not tell me your life’s story.

Often, I read cover letters and resumes while I’m at lunch on my BlackBerry. Hundreds of recruiters have told me that they do the same thing – even at home after work. Seeing a resume on a mobile phone screen means the info is in a very small space – you must write and organize your resume so that your story jumps off this tiny screen. No hiring manager is going to scroll through page after page on their BlackBerry looking for the reason to call you.

Also, having too much info on your resume can cost you an interview.

If you have told me too much about you, I may believe that I already know you or someone of your “type”. If you are too similar to folks already in the delete pile, then to save time, that’s where your resume will go – you lose.

The flip side is that if I’m reading your resume and I say “Wow! This sounds like a really unique person – I have to meet them!” – you win.

The resume will not get you the job – but it could very easily cost you an interview.

This tool is only used to get my attention and to sell three or four of your best attributes. Anything more runs the risks of it either not being read fully or being lumped together with other nondescript candidates.

So take out your resume right now. Better yet, email it to yourself and read it on a mobile device. If you are bored or confused by what you are reading in just 15-20 seconds, it’s time for a resume overhaul. Find three or four great stories about yourself and use that one page to make me or any other hiring manager curious about seeing more from you.

As the great P.T. Barnum said, “always leave them wanting more!”

To learn more me or my life-changing program visit BradRaney.com or ImproveYourVowels.com today.

You can learn more about your resume, interviewing tips, cover letters, visualizing your future, and more in my fast-selling book “Improve Your VOWELS, Improve Your Career! The A,E,I,O,U’s of Finding Your Perfect Job!”

Click here to order “Improve Your Vowels, Improve Your Career!: The A, E, I, O, U’s of Finding Your Perfect Job!” — Available Now!

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