Don’t write lengthy skill headings in your resume. Limit them to no more than three words each. Other wise they become too difficult to read in the employer’s typical initial eight-second scan.
| Business Management | Office Management |
| Accounting | Operations |
| Accounts Payable | Order Fulfillment |
| Accounts Receivable | Organizational Development |
| Administration | Personnel |
| Advertising | Presentation Coaching |
| Benefits | Presentations |
| Budget Management | Product Development |
| Business Development | Production |
| Client Relations | Project Management |
| Community Relations | Promotions |
| Conflict Resolution | Public Relations |
| Consulting | Purchasing |
| Copy Writing | Quality Assurance |
| Corporate Giving | Re-engineering |
| Customer Service | Recruitment |
| Executive Management | Retail Management |
| Financial Management | Sales Human Resources |
| Shipping | Insurance |
| Speech Writing | International Relations |
| Strategic Planning | Inventory Control |
| Supervision | Inventory Management |
| Training | Investor Relations |
| Vendor Relations | Leadership Writing |
| Legal | Education |
| Management Consulting | Administration |
| Marketing | Admissions Evaluation |
| Media Relations | Classroom Management |
| Mediation | Committee Leadership |
| Meeting Planning | Counseling |
| Negotiations | Curriculum Development |
Bonus Check
A thesaurus is a great tool for coming up with just the right word. One of my favorite sources is The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale (Warner Books). There are also some excellent thesaurus software applications that you can buy for your computer.
Job-Hunt Hint
Visit your industry’s Web sites to learn what skill sets are sought after in your field.
Bonus Check
College career centers are happy to help alumni with their job searches. Call or visit yours to get help in defining the skills required for the type of work you seek.
Career Casualty
All caps are hard to read when used in skill headings that have long words. If a heading contains two words, and one of those words has more than eight letters, use upper and lowercase letters so that it’s easy to grasp at a glance.
Getting Down to Business
Are you ready to declare the two or three skill headings for your functional resume? Great! Here’s a worksheet to help you out.
Functional Skill Headings Worksheet1.
- My Job Objective :
__________________________________________________ - The two (maybe three) skills required to perform my Job Objective:___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
Having stated your skill headings, you’re ready to move on to creating dynamite achievement statements for each heading.
Dynamite Achievements
Nab the employer’s interest right with away an achievement-oriented resume. By writing about your experience in terms of achievements, not job descriptions, you’ll convey three things:
- You have the experience and skills to do the job.
- You’re good at this work and at using these skills.
- You like your work. (You must! There’s pride in your statements.)
Charles wrote: Managed public relations for a 1.5 million celebration sponsored by the Bay Area’s largest employer and attended by some 50,000 people.
Always make it simple for an employer to understand how you fit into her organization. If necessary, translate your experience into terminology that she will identify with easily.
Keep It Relevant
Your achievements consist of several ingredients, some of which may have nothing to do with what you will offer your next employer. Make an impression that you’re a good fit by presenting only the aspects of your achievements that relate to your job objective. For example, Henry was an excellent event planner who wanted to use his organizational skills in a new field: graphic layout for a daily newspaper. He knew he could not assume the employer would conclude that Henry was capable of laying out newspaper copy just because he knew how to plan events, so Henry took extra care to draw the parallels between the two occupations.
Instead of writing: Produced social and business events for up to 2,000 people, managing budgets, catering, entertainment, and logistics. Henry wrote: Maintained a perfect record of on-time delivery of at least 20 projects a month, involving time, budget, and space constraints.As a horticulturist, Patty realized that the part of her job she liked the most was answering clients’ questions. When she wrote her resume for a job as a travel agent, she emphasized her customer service skills and downplayed her scientific expertise. Instead of writing: Provided scientific information on thousands of plant species as the lead horticulturist of the country’s most prestigious botanical garden. Patty wrote: Assisted customers in selecting from more than 2,000 options by patiently answering questions and educating them about costs and benefits.
In order to have effective achievement statements, refer to the aspects of your experiences that paint the picture of your job objective, and therefore have meaning to your prospective employer.
First Things First
Prioritize your statements, so the achievement most relevant to your job goal is first. For example, as a former office manager, 75 percent of Andrea’s time was spent processing administrative paperwork, and less than 25 percent of her time was spent on training and supervision. However, she wanted to get a job as a corporate trainer. So she prioritized her achievement statements to stress the training experience, even though it was not her primary responsibility.
Career Casualty
Obey the seventh Resume Commandment: Thou shalt not lie. You can be creative, as long as you’re honest.
Job-Hunt Hint
Select from your past only those parts of an achievement that describe you at your next job.
Career Casualty
Don’t go on and on with details that aren’t relevant to your job objective. Space is limited on your resume and the employer’s clock is ticking the whole time she’s reading it.
Bonus Check
After you’ve listed your achievement statements, prioritize them within each section so that the most relevant and most impressive achievement appears first.
The following order reflects the amount of time Andrea spent on each achievement:
- Supervised administration of firm’s largest litigation department with more than 300 cases per week.
- Led office to achieve “#1 Team” award by motivating staff to take a customer service approach to all internal and external interactions.
- Trained 13 employees on new automated accounting system, providing classroom sessions, individual coaching, and written instructions.
This order reflects which achievements are most important to Andrea’s job goal:
- Trained 13 employees on new automated accounting system, providing classroom sessions, individual coaching, and written instructions.
- Led office to achieve “#1 Team” award by motivating staff to take a customer service approach to all internal and external interactions.
- Supervised administration of firm’s largest litigation department with more than 300 cases per week. The order in which you list your achievements should indicate what tasks you like best and which ones you wish most to perform on your next job.
Bonus Check
When listing items within an achievement statement, prioritize those items so that the most relevant one comes first. When listing them in a column, list them either according to relevance or alphabetically.
