I finished last month’s message by explaining you the difference between accomplishment and achievement. Here it is again:

An achievement is a goal that you have reached.

An accomplishment is a job or project that you have completed successfully.

The best resumes I see present a list of bullet points showing examples of what the candidate has done, accomplished or achieved. But just one or two lines with the job responsibility. Thank you, perfect, don’t stop, do it again. This is exactly what the model resume is meant to be, a show case of what you were able to do with your job description.

We also call it “deliverables” and it defines why you are considered extremely successful in your job. It’s the real stories of your career and about great on-the-job performance. And what it is not: personal attributes like skills, experience, education or traits.

Let me show some real great examples that I have received recently. They are from real people and it made their resumes stand out. I have on purpose changed names and places to avoid revealing any identity.

• Successfully implemented the new supply chain system within the planned six months. Delivery reliability improved from 60% to be 86% and the cycle time was dramatically reduced from 44 days to be 35 days.
• Reduced costs from suppliers pertaining to scrap and rework due to non conforming parts from THB 3. 6 million to only 2.0 million and charged all the costs back to the suppliers.
• Conducted vendor performance development process at suppliers’ sites as to improve the cycle time. Resulted in a cost saving of 96,000 USD in 2010.
• Designed and implemented a banc-assurance business model with one of Asia’s largest banks. Included product designs, product sales training to all bank staff, incentive campaigns for bank staff and visiting all branches to drive revenue. Outcome was a revenue increase of 47% in 12 months.
• Staff engagement survey with 91% response rate vs. target of 65%.
• Execution of three downsizing projects with a total of 490 employees being released and without any labour conflict.
• Project leader in implementing a complete ERP system, starting with three months’ preparation and followed by six months implementation which concluded in a smooth migration from the old accounting and production planning system.
• Successful grew professional staff, both expatriate and local staff, from 4 to 27 over a two year period and likewise the operating revenue from$4 million to $2 million in performed or backlog orders during an 18 months period.

You get the idea? It’s all about creating an excitement and presenting proofs of what you have accomplished or achieved in your various jobs. Remember, your resume has only one purpose:

To Get You An Interview.

You need to draw attention to the right things on your resume. Your educational background is secondary to us unless you are a new graduate who recently left university. I said secondary. To executive search firms the most important part of your resume is the Professional Background, Working Experience or any word combination of the two. That’s what must make up 80% of your two page resume.

Here’s the thing. A Master Degree in Finance won’t help you much if you don’t have the work experience from the right industry, the right brand name companies, and the number of years that will make it likely that you have had exposure to what the client requires. But give me a senior executive with 20 years on the job, with the right industry and 15 years of real life experience with impressive achievements, and I already see a queue of clients lining up outside my door. Even the highest education is a diploma. Mr. Trump called them street-smart or book-smart.

Now don’t give up on education because it’s what got you started on the right foot. And of course many real technical industries do require some good theoretical background and where such theory will give you access to the right jobs. But my point is, as years have passed it’s your work accomplishments which will make you a hero. Or a zero.

Your well thought out career plan will give you the profile that makes you attractive to an employer and a lot of headhunters. I often think of my own youth, so many years ago that you don’t want to know. When I graduated we had no laptops, no iPhone and BlackBerry, not even a fax, no electronic calculators, fast moving consumer goods were called retail, airlines couldn’t fly non-stop from Bangkok to Europe. We had no Microsoft Office and Google was our local library with real books on real bookshelves. So whatever I learned in school then will certainly not be knowledge worth the paper is written on in today’s business.

Coming back to how you structure the first three lines of you Professional Background. These lines must include your title, the name of your employer, the period of your employment and a one-liner about the industry of your employer. But not necessarily in that order.

If your title is relevant for the job you are interested in, that needs to come first. But if your employer is a brand name in its industry and the name itself will lift you above the rest, or most, that needs to come first. Generally speaking the period should never come first but rather at the end of the first or second line. You don’t want to draw attention to 1 or 2 years and be seen as a job hopper. On the other hand, be careful with anything over 7-8 years as many will conclude you have stopped growing, that you are no longer ambitious, no longer good enough to be promoted or accepted by other companies you have no doubt tried to get into it. Dead wood which no longer contribute to the organisation. There are of course always exceptions to everything, in this context, it would be the high-flyer who moves to bigger jobs and more responsibility within the same organization every 3 years.

Executive search firms, recruitment companies and agencies, HR departments, all want to put you in a box where they can keep you until such time when you many be needed. These boxes could be an industry or a function. You need to help the assistant who is reading your resume and who is desperately trying to find out if Group 4 Securicor (in this example your current employer) is in security or securities. Unless you work for Thai International or Coca Cola you must have a one-liner below your employer’s name that will direct the recruiter to your right holding area.

Now if you end up in securities and not in security, you can imagine what will happen with your resume. Or rather not happen. Obviously, you are lost in the big black hole and never to be seen again, when HR or the recruiter is trying to find candidates for their security client.

Assuming you have now chosen the perfect sequence for the name of your employer, your title, the employment period and the one-liner about industry, we can move on the next part of the professional background.

It’s perfectly ok to have a line or two about your overall responsibility, as it is or was. But don’t waste ten bullet points with that. What we really want to know is what you did with your responsibility. Save the bullet points for a list of accomplishments and achievements. Be as specific as you can and show numbers, percentages, periods and similar expressions that will quantify your achievements and accomplishments.

An achievement is a goal that has been reached. An accomplishment is a job or project that has been completed.

May I finally wish all readers, candidates and clients a Happy New Year, here’s to your success in 2011.

There is only one purpose of a Resume: to get you an interview with a prospective employer. You need to present your skills and experience in the best possible way and then stress why you fit the job. You need to impress the reader, whether the HR department or a recruitment company, so do not keep the best to last.

The full story is available here, read it now.

1. Personal Details

• Your name should always head the Resume in a Header.
• Include your address, home and mobile phone numbers – also an email address.
• Don’t include a summary of personal characteristics in this Header.

2. Employment History

• List the past employment details in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first, always giving the most space to your most recent or current position. Names of past employers with a very short description of the type of business the companies are in, together with dates of appointments (months and years only) and a brief outline of responsibilities are essential.
• Always include your specific contributions to each job, listing related responsibilities and achievements with each entry, rather than under a separate headline later in the Resume.

3. Education

• Employers like to see details of your educational qualifications, from University to degrees and professional qualifications (include the major subject but not every thing studied).
• List only hobbies or personal interests that are directly related to the position – two or three lines will do – notice the world related !

4. References

• Avoid the phrase “References available on request”, since this is self-evident and only takes space on your Resume which could be used more effectively.

5. Covering letter

• Forget about the standard opening of “I have seen your ad”. Use the power impact technique to immediately catch the attention of the reader. Right after Dear Sir, write 4-5 lines with a Career Summary that includes the essential reason why you fit the job.

6. Style

• Your entire Resume should not exceed two pages in length.
• Check that both your Resume and cover letter are completely free of errors. Proof read both documents thoroughly – and get a friend to proof read them as well.

7. General Advice

• Keep an on-going file of your achievements, no matter how insignificant they may appear now. One day you may need it for the Resume.
• Before the interview re-read the resume a couple of times as the interviewer will have done exactly that. You must know what is in it.

Read the full article with a lot more details, tips and advice. Get that phone call! Continue to read.

Having a great resume is the single most important part of your job search. If you can’t get the interview, you will never get the job. The simple and logic purpose of a resume? Yes, to get an invitation to come for an interview.  

You may be in another job already but want to consider a career move should the right position at the right company become available. Or you may not be working at the moment, what we call in-between-jobs. In whatever case, you will need to present yourself in writing to a potential employer.

You will hear some people use the word CV rather than resume when describing the document used when applying for jobs. CV is an abbreviation of the Latin word curriculum vitae and means course of life.

In some parts of the world a CV is generally recognized as a special format of the resume for academic or scientific candidates. Others define a CV as a detailed, lengthy and structured listing of education, publications, projects, awards and work history, a document which could easily run up to 10 or 20 pages.

For the purpose of introducing yourself to a prospective employer, it will be nothing else but suicide to send more than 1 – 2 or maximum 3 pages. You get the idea? That is why we call it resume and not CV. Resume is a French word meaning summary.

I want to let you in on a little secret. Your resume will be read in about 20 seconds. That is all you get to sell yourself before ending up in the Yes or No pile.

You will of course like to do everything you can to end up in the Yes pile by making the recruiter’s job easier, right? The recruiter could be the Human Resources Manager in the company, or it could be a consultant in a recruitment company who is engaged by a client to assist with a search for staff. Who ever it is, that is the person you must impress.

Do not keep the best for last. Start your resume with a short paragraph, a Career Summary, say 3-5 lines, in which you introduce the highlights of your career, the most desirable skills and experiences you bring to the job. And please, please do not write Resume or CV on the top of the paper. We all know what it is when we see it. A resume is a resume is a resume.

There is one important thing to keep in mind at all times when you are preparing your sales letter i.e. your resume: it is called KISS, meaning Keep It Short and Simple.

Remember that the resume only has one function: to get you an interview.  It is not the story of your life and it is not the place to comment on what you think about the Prime Minister, the current business climate in the country or how much you admire the company you want to work for.

The resume only has one function: to get you an interview. It is not the place to tell the story of your life, and it is not the place to comment on what you think about the investment climate in Thailand. How much you admire the company you are writing to is not going to help you, so use the space for something that tells the employer how you can add value to their business. Here are some important points that you should not include in your resume.

It is not necessary to include names and addresses of any referees. Reference-taking takes place only at the time where the employer has decided to offer you employment. At this time you should if requested be prepared to provide names, not your family or friends but people who have worked with you. Remember to brief those referees carefully about who may call them and what the potential job is about.

Recruiters, that’s the HR department or the consultant from Executive Recruitment companies, love to know the reasons for leaving jobs. You should be ready to answer these questions – but not in your resume, only when asked during the interview. Simply leave out any information about why you left a job.

Any type of business has their own jargon, their own short words which people in the business know well. However, it might not be the line manager who will be taking a first look at all the resumes and applications, but rather the HR department or the recruitment company, you should avoid abbreviations.

If you have a degree, a bachelor, a masters or any degree relevant for the job you are applying, this should obviously be included under the headline Education. But do not enclose copies of your diplomas and certificates. Instead bring the copies along for the interview in the case the recruiter would like to check your educational credentials.

Any employer will like to see and learn about your most recent jobs and achievements, what relevance it has to the vacant position. First of all, your current or most recent job must be the first on the list under Work Experience. As number two on the list, your second most recent job and the list goes on like that. If you wish to include a work experience older than 10 years, just list the company name and your function.

You should not use Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint for your resume; go for the standard and acceptable Microsoft Word document. Do not use a file name such as resume.doc or the employer’s company name. Use your own first and last name as the file name when you save the document on your pc.