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Fearless RÉSUMÉS

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Contents

Chapter One

"One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world—making the most of one's best." —Harry Emerson Fosdick

Writing a résumé can really be scary! After all, unless all you have to do is fill out an application to get an interview, writing a résumé is just about the only way you have to get your foot in the door.

• Up until now, many doors may have been closed to you. You may not even have had the chance to go to an interview yet. You may be getting some interviews, but not the ones you really want. You may love your résumé or hate your résumé or not even have one, but those doors seem to be shut tighter and tighter. Not for long.

The guide you're holding is not a book about proper grammar or about making your résumé look "fancy" and expensive. Yes, those things may be nice, but we're going to take it just one step further.

A Strategic Approach to Writing Résumés

Fearless Résumés presents you with a tested and unbeatable strategy, proven time after time, to get people just like you the job offers you're dreaming of and working so hard to get.

Having personally tested the Fearless Résumés strategy on more than 15,000 clients since 1989, I'm here to take their successes and pass these job- seeking secrets on to you. You'll find this strategy for writing a résumé as simple, powerful, and effective as it was for those job seekers.

• I didn't say it would be easy, but I will tell you that writing your résumé will be far simpler than you ever imagined it could be.

Why?

Because I've boiled down what makes a résumé work to a few straightforward but extremely potent ideas that anyone, whether a student, at entry level, or an executive, can use.

In the few hours you spend reading this book and doing the concrete and practical exercises it contains, you're going to create a résumé that pries open those closely guarded doors and knocks them right down, allowing you to see and talk to the people you need to know in order to get the job or career that you've been striving so vigorously for.

A Brand New Approach to Résumé Writing

If you're at the bookstore, leafing through the many books on résumés that are for sale, you'll quickly see that Fearless Résumés is different from the others.

This is not just an ordinary résumé book, with hundreds of résumés for you to choose from and "customize" for yourself. In fact, this book takes an utterly brand new and tested approach to the often terrible task of crafting that all-important treatment.

As I said before, Fearless Résumés is going to teach you a carefully planned strategy, based upon what employers are really looking for, that will carry you through your job search, your interview, and finally to the offers you've been waiting for.

• It doesn't matter if writing a résumé or talking about yourself in an interview has been difficult or frustrating before.

You're going to learn a new and totally natural way to penetrate the employer's emotions, persuade his intelligence, and present yourself at your best. In the chapters that follow, you'll discover the secret of how employers, in fact, treat and look at your document.

You'll know the commonsense truth about what really motivates them, and it will make all the difference in what you say to them and how you say it in your Fearless Résumé.

In fact, it's been proven time and time again that using the secret you're about to learn will make employers pick up and pointedly concentrate on reading your Fearless Résumé at a moment's glance, while your competitors' résumés are swirling in the paper shredder.

I know you may have struggled with ordinary résumé writing before, and I know just how demoralizing and frustrating that can be. I know, too, that you may have spent hours and even days editing the résumé that you already have, but that just isn't delivering what you need or expect. You may feel puzzled about what to do and worried about whether you'll ever get the interviews or the job offers you want.

• You're not alone anymore in the task of creating this very important document that will influence the future of your work and your life. Together, you and I are going to wage an all-out war as an unstoppable team, and we're going to win!

How Can This Book Help You?

If you already have a résumé and you're getting lots of interviews with it, you may not need to read this book. Save your money and buy a few Starbucks coffees with it or take your best friend to lunch.

On the other hand, if your résumé is producing interviews for you, but you're having trouble in your interviews supporting what your résumé says about you, your résumé is probably not a good fit for you in the real world.

If that's the case, put a hold on that mocha chocolate nonfat extra foamy latte and invest in this book. You'll be very glad that you did.

• So, you may be worried that you really don't have a good existing résumé at all. You may also have a fear of writing your very first résumé or of crafting the document after being out of the job market for a while or changing your focus to a whole new industry.

You're going to learn how to tackle those problems and many more, but there may be a score of other worries you have about your résumé. Most people do. Let's look at some of them that will be answered for you as you progress through the pages of your new guide.

Did you find your own story in any of these questions? Well, if so, welcome! You're in the right place. If not, maybe you're reading this book for some other reason, and I'm glad you're here. We're about to go on a great adventure together.

This book, as I said, is not just a compilation of many different kinds of résumés. It is written with you, your concerns, and your career and livelihood in mind. It's not a book about the perfect model résumé. There is no such thing, and even career counselors still disagree about the best length, content, and format for a résumé. In fact, anyone who tells you that she'll write the perfect résumé for you or teach you how to write the perfect résumé is kidding herself.

• I can't promise you a flawless résumé. What I can promise is that you will start getting interviews.

What Can You Expect from This Book?

In the second chapter, "What Do Employers Really Want?" you're going to learn secrets about what really motivates employers when they pick up your résumé. By "tuning in" to both their conscious and their unconscious desires, you'll find out why it's important for you to "hook" your reader instantly and get him to take a look at the rest of your résumé.

In Chapter 3, you'll learn how to glue your employer to the page in less than seven seconds by using multiple hooks (words that emotionally attract employers).

I'll give plenty of examples of power propositions that have worked for real people, from those at entry level to managers to executives, in a wide range of positions and industries. Then, in Chapter 4, I'll walk you through the simple steps of drafting your own power proposition, something that is guaranteed to make you feel proud and unstoppable.

Your power proposition is going to be near the very top of your résumé (so that it will be the first thing seen by the reader). What about the rest of your résumé? It's important, too. Once you have the reader "hooked," you want to continue to rivet her attention on the rest of your skills, accomplishments, education, and work history.

The material in Chapters 5 and 6—identifying your skills, building a skills arsenal, and crafting what I call Q statements— will form the building blocks that make your résumé totally on target, irresistible to your reader, and absolutely unique.

Chapter 7 will show you how to organize these essential elements of your presentation into "blocks" of information; the contact block, the objective block, the summary block, the employment history block, the education and training block, and some optional blocks that will make it easy for the employer to see specific skills, awards, or achievements that make you right for the job.

In Chapter 8, I'll deliver the final ten tips that will eliminate most of the errors that people tend to make on résumés.

• Finally, in Chapter 9, using the building blocks you've mastered in the first eight chapters, it will be your time to turn out your first Fearless Résumé! Some sample résumés are given in Chapter 10.

For now, I have faith in you and the absolute conviction that you will triumph in your job search. You've got me on your side, so let's start right now.

Chapter Two

"The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it."

—Stanley Kubrick

Do you know that it takes only three to seven seconds for a reader to determine whether your résumé goes in the "yes" pile or gets deleted or thrown in a paper shredder? Well, it's true.

Over 17 years as a career coach in almost constant contact with employers, recruiters, human resources representatives, and, of course, job seekers gives me an inside view of what really goes on when you submit your résumé to a company or small business.

What's Going On Behind the Scenes?

It has been estimated that when a job is advertised in a major metropolitan newspaper and on a few key Internet job sites, a human resources staffer or hiring manager may have as many as 350 résumés crowding his inbox or the corner of his desk on a daily basis. Do you think that such a person reads every one of those résumés from start to finish? The answer, you may be surprised to find out, is no.

It takes a very special résumé to grab your reader's attention and keep her reading all the way through when she may have already seen and thrown away 200 résumés before getting to yours. That's just the kind of résumé you're going to have by the end of this book.

How, then, do we know how to write that special résumé? Did we learn it in school? Probably not. Did our parents show us how to do it? Maybe, but has the result worked for you? Have you ever read a book or seen a career counselor who could really tell you that magic formula that you could repeat, again and again, to achieve the same favorable results? If not, why not?

The fact is that too many people and the majority of books about résumés focus on the résumé itself rather than turning their target to deep down inside the emotions and the mind of the reader.

If you're going to get an interview by sending someone your résumé when they are almost 349 competitors a day up against you, you're going to need to know more than just how to write something neat and clean that lists your job history on it; you need inside, tested, and proven particulars about how to make that employer pick your résumé.

• The inside of the hiring process and the interior of employers' emotions are exactly those untapped, "secret" solutions to the problems of getting the interviews that I'm going to share with you right now.

To grab your reader in the first few seconds, to get her to read the whole page or two and then get her to take action, we're going to use the power of what I've named résumé psychology.

What Is Résumé Psychology?

Résumé psychology is the study and practice of using words in a prescribed document (your résumé) to get a reader to

1. Feel something

2. Think something

3. Do something

To express this chain of events as succinctly as possible, you can imagine the events taking place in this order and in a manner such as this:

Phase 1 (three to seven seconds): The reader will first feel, consciously or unconsciously, that you are going to help him.

Phase 2 (one to five minutes): He will then think that you are going to make money (or its equivalent) for his company.

Phase 3: Finally, he will be compelled to do something about it—that is, to discuss your résumé with his boss or just pick up the phone himself and call you.

Phase 1 must work if you are to get to Phase 2. Phase 3 cannot happen unless Phase 2 is complete. Therefore, your first task is to win the employer's emotions and get her to feel that you are on her side—that you are going to help her in some way.

Logic or Emotions?

One would hope that résumé readers would base their decisions on logic or rationality, carefully weighing the qualifications written on your résumé against the requirements of the position that you're applying for. We may imagine that this is true, but that is not how the human brain works. An initial reaction is always emotional.

• Once I show you how to influence the person's feelings (emotions), thinking (cognitions), and actions (behavior), you can bet that your phone will start ringing as expectant employers want to meet you.

Winning the Reader's Favor

To accomplish this, we're going take a peek inside the employer's brain before you even set pen to paper to craft your document. By mastering what the employer actually sees in the first seven seconds of laying eyes on your page and how it affects the emotional part of his brain, you're going to learn how to keep him reading down the page while other people's résumés are whirling in the paper shredder.

• Together, in this chapter, we're going to answer the question you may already be asking yourself: "What do employers really want, anyway?"

In Fearless Résumés, you're going to quickly learn what we now know about how human beings read and process information. We're going to use these powerful pieces of what psychology tells us about human perception to your advantage.

We're going to harness résumé psychology to put you on the fast track to winning an interview and getting a new job, and it all begins in a fraction of a second. Am I saying that someone's mind can make a snap decision about my résumé immediately? Yes!

Résumé psychology says that your résumé will be judged 80 percent on what the reader sees in the first few lines and about 20 percent on what appears in the rest of the résumé.

In fact, every single reader knows within just a few seconds whether you are likely to help her meet her needs or are likely to threaten her efforts.

The "Seven-Second" Zone

Psychologists say that we "know" in a split second (about 1/16 second, to be exact) whether anything that comes into our environment is going to help or threaten our instinct to survive.

This split-second test of whether something is good for us or bad for us is a top task of our brains and nervous systems because it governs our very survival. Say that it takes only 1/16 second (what psychologists call a "slice") for us to tell this. Whether it's an object, a car, a person, climate change, or even a piece of paper like your résumé, it will be evaluated by your brain at lightning speed.

Compared to 1/16 second, seven full seconds seems like an eon! Yet, that's all you have to snare the survival instinct of your reader and get her to salivate over the contents of your offering. If you miss that chance, you may never be able to recover it.

During this critical "seven-second zone," the brain is bombarded with impulses whose only purpose is to determine one thing: is this (object, person, situation) going to pose danger to me or help me?

You know yourself that a feeling of friendship, affection, intense dislike, or even "falling in love" can happen the moment you lay eyes on someone or something.

We're going to capitalize on those powerful feelings in the next chapter with something that I call a power proposition. Your power proposition, which the reader will see in that crucial seven-second zone, will rivet her to your résumé.

• With only the words in one powerful paragraph (about four to seven sentences), you will infuse the reader's nerve cells with energy and curiosity. In brief, you make the employer "fall in love" with you!

So just how are you going to strike up a "romance" with the employer that has the potential of blossoming into a long-term love affair (your new job)? Well, as with most romances and even great friendships, it's essential, as we've said, to make a good first impression.

On paper, you don't have your smile, your face, or the sparkle in your eye to let someone know that you're friendly and attractive. You don't even have the friendly, provocative, or interesting tone of voice to offer that you might have if you met someone face-to-face or on the telephone.

On your résumé, all you've got that can evoke positive feelings in the reader is the written word, and it's those words—especially the first few sentences that the reader encounters—that are going to make all the difference.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Fearless RÉSUMÉSby MARKY STEIN Copyright © 2009 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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