COMS 3302-14-Putnam
Building Careers and Writing Resumés
Chapter 14
Building Your Career with Communication Skills:
Understanding Today’s Dynamic Workplace
Some realities that will impact your career in the years ahead:
1. Stability in careers is going the way of the dinosaur. Consequently workers have to make themselves versatile, flexible, and acquire skills that make them invaluable.
2. Lifetime employment is a rarity as well.
3. Growth in small business—more now than ever in the past and likely continued growth in this area
4. Increase in independent contractors—like small businesses, this area is a growth field
5. Changing view of job-hopping—never good to job-hop a lot but the view is such it is largely inevitable, especially early on in your career.
The Job Search: Where to look
Research indicates that most professional positions are found via (1) networking (page 508-09). The second most common way is via some type of (2) professional placement agency. Be aware, however, that some of them will charge you for the service and their interest may not be the same as your interests. The least effective way to find a career position is through the (3) newspaper classified ads. Nothing wrong with the jobs per se, but these are often responded to by thousands of people and odds of landing a position is reduced.
What Employers look for in Job Applicants (new hires)
Companies will not tell you this upfront, but you can be sure they are sizing you up on these two factors during an employment interview:
1. Are you low maintenance? Can you make decisions on your own? Operate without a lot of supervision? In short, will you make your manager’s life easy or will you make it a living hell? Guess which one companies are looking for?
2. Do you have the kind of personality (a pleasant one) that will blend in well with the current employee population? No one wants to work at a place where you detest the corporate culture or those you work around. And no one wants to hire someone whose personality clearly does not fit the company’s image or that of the average employee.
Preparing your Resumé
1. Goal is to get you the interview; not the job.
2. It is the best representation you can make of yourself on a piece of paper (or in electronic format) Honesty is an absolute, but don’t be stupid honest.
3. The one document that cannot afford to have any grammatical or typographical errors in it
4. Fact: Your resume will not be read for a long periods of time; they are often scanned and maybe in less than a minute
5. Fact: Your goal is to put information on your resume that will enhance your image while showing the employer you have the potential to be part of their company’s solution.
6. Fact: Organize your resume on your strengths. Specifically, focus on responsibilities learned, organization skills, leadership examples, how to set priorities, meeting deadlines, etc. These are the types of things that an employer will be interested in.
7. No personal information to be included (age, race, religion, etc.)
8. Put on white or other pastel colored paper; draw attention but for the right reasons
9. End the resume with the category: References: Available Upon Request. Don’t list the references on the document but have them available. This serves as a indicator that the resume is done—the end.
10. Never less than one full page in length and never more than two pages long.
11. See reference example we talk about in class
Styles of Resumes:
· Chronological Resume—most common for most college students (page 513-14). Employers are used to seeing this; it highlights the growth of your career progression; and it highlights continuity and career stability.
· Functional Resume—a “skills” resume; emphasizes your skills and capabilities. This is a good choice of resume if you want to show employers what you can do for them without having to list previous jobs and can de-emphasize the fact if you lack a continuous career progression or have been unemployed for awhile. It has the potential in some readers’ minds that the candidate is hiding something with this style, so use it with caution.
· The Combination Resume—as the name suggests, it draws on the best assets of the first two styles. But it tends to be rather lengthy (not a good idea for resumes) and often appears to be rather repetitious (also not good for resumes)