BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

MNJ275
SESSION 14
Building Careers and Writing Résumés
 OBJECTIVES

1 List eight key steps to finding the ideal opportunity in today’s job market.
2 Explain the process of planning your résumé, including how to choose
the best résumé organization.
3 Describe the tasks involved in writing your résumé and list the sections to
consider including in your résumé.
4 Characterize the completing step for résumés, including the six most
common formats in which you can produce a résumé.
 Finding the Ideal Opportunity in Today’s Job Market
(guidelines)
This section offers a general job-search strategy with advice that applies to just
about any career path you might want to pursue. As you craft your personal
strategy, keep these three guidelines in mind:

• Get organized. Your job search could last many months and involve multiple
contacts with dozens of companies. You need to keep all the details straight to
ensure that you don’t miss opportunities or make mistakes such as losing
someone’s email address or forgetting an appointment.
• Start now and stick to it. Even if you are a year or more away from graduation,
now is not too early to get started with some of the essential research and
planning tasks. If you wait until the last minute, you will miss opportunities and
you won’t be as prepared as other candidates.
• Look for stepping-stone opportunities. Particularly in today’s tough job market,
you might not find the opportunity you’re looking for right away. You might
need to take a job that doesn’t meet your expectations while you keep looking
to get on the right track.
 Eight key steps to finding the ideal
opportunity in today’s job market.
1. Writing the Story of You
Do you like the path you’re on, or is it time for a change? Are you focused on
a particular field, or do you need some time to explore? You might find it
helpful to think about the “story of you”: the things you are passionate
about, your skills, your ability to help an organization reach its goals, the path
you’ve been on so far, and the path you want to follow in the future.
• Think in terms of an image or a theme you’d like to project. Are you
academically gifted? An effective leader? A well-rounded professional with
wide-ranging talents? A creative problem solver? A technical guru? Writing
your story is a valuable planning exercise that helps you think about where
you want to go and how to present yourself to target employers.
2. Learning to Think Like an Employer

When you know your side of the hiring equation a little better, switch
sides and look at it from an employer’s perspective. To begin with,
recognize that companies take risks with every hiring decision the risk
that the person hired won’t meet expectations and the risk that a
better candidate has slipped through their fingers.
Many companies judge the success of their recruiting efforts by quality
of hire, a measure of how closely new employees meet the company’s
needs. Given this perspective, what steps can you take to present
yourself as the low-risk, high-reward choice?
3. Researching Industries and Companies of Interest
• Learning more about professions, industries, and individual
companies is a vital step in your job search. It also impresses
employers, particularly when you go beyond the easily
available sources such as a company’s own website.
• “Detailed research, including talking to our customers, is so
rare it will almost guarantee you get hired,” explains the
recruiting manager at Alcon Laboratories.
4. Translating Your General Potential into a Specific Solution for Each
Employer
An important aspect of the employer’s quality-of-hire challenge is trying
to determine how well a candidate’s attributes and experience will
translate into the demands of a specific position.
As a job candidate, customizing your résumé to each job opening is an
important step in showing employers that you will be a good fit.
From your initial contact all the way through the interviewing process, in
fact, you will have opportunities to impress recruiters by explaining how
your general potential translates to the specific needs of the position.
5. Taking the Initiative to Find Opportunities
When it comes to finding the right opportunities for you, the easiest ways
are not always the most productive ways. To maximize your chances, take
the initiative and go find opportunities. Identify the companies you want to
work for and focus your efforts on them.
Get in touch with their human resources departments (or individual
managers, if possible), describe what you can offer the company, and ask to
be considered if any opportunities come up.
Reach out to company representatives on social networks. Your message
might appear right when a company is busy looking for someone but hasn’t
yet advertised the opening to the outside world.
6. Building Your Network
Networking is the process of making informal connections with mutually
beneficial business contacts. Networking is more essential than ever,
because the vast majority of job openings are never advertised to the
general public.
To avoid the time and expense of sifting through thousands of
applications and the risk of hiring complete strangers, most companies
prefer to ask their employees for recommendations first.
The more people who know you, the better chance you have of being
recommended for one of these hidden job openings.
7. Seeking Career Counseling
• Your college’s career center probably offers a wide variety of services,
including individual counseling, job fairs, on-campus interviews, and job
listings. Counselors can advise on career planning and provide workshops
on job search techniques, résumé preparation, job readiness training,
interview techniques, self-marketing, and more. You can also find career
planning advice online.
8. Avoiding Mistakes
• While you’re making all these positive moves to show employers you will
be a quality hire, take care to avoid the simple blunders that can torpedo
a job search, such as not catching mistakes in your résumé, misspelling
the name of a manager you’re writing to, showing up late for an
interview, tweeting something unprofessional.
 Planning Your Résumé
• Developing a résumé is one of those projects that really benefits from
multiple planning, writing, and completing sessions spread out over several
days or weeks. You are trying to summarize a complex subject (yourself!)
and present a compelling story to strangers in a brief document. Follow the
three-step writing process.
Analyzing Your Purpose and Audience
Planning an effective résumé starts with understanding its true function as a
brief, persuasive business message intended to stimulate an employer’s
interest in meeting you and learning more about you. In other words, the
purpose of a résumé is not to get you a job but rather to get you an
interview.
 • Gathering Pertinent Information
If you haven’t been building an employment portfolio thus far, you may need to do
some research on yourself at this point. Gather all the pertinent personal history you
can think of, including all the specific dates, duties, and accomplish- ments from any
previous jobs you’ve held. Compile all your educational accomplishments, including
formal degrees, training certificates, professional and technical certifications, academic
awards, and scholarships.
• Organizing Your Résumé Around Your Strengths
Although there are a number of ways to organize a résumé, most are some variation of
chronological, functional, or a combination of the two. The right choice depends on
your background and your goals.
• Addressing Areas of Concern
Many people have gaps in their careers or other issues that could be a concern for
employers. Here are some common issues and suggestions for handling them in a
résumé: ■ Frequent job changes. ■ Gaps in work history. ■ Inexperience. ■
Overqualification. ■ Long-term employment with one company. ■ Job termination for
cause. ■ Criminal record.
• Writing Your Résumé
With the necessary information and a good plan in hand, you’re ready to
begin writing. If you feel uncomfortable writing about yourself, you’re
not alone.
Many people, even accomplished writers, can find it difficult to write
their own résumés. If you get stuck, imagine you are somebody else,
writing a résumé for this person called you.
By “being your own client” in this sense, you might find the words and
idea flow more easily. You can also find a classmate or friend who is
writing a résumé and swap projects for a while. Working on each other’s
résumés might speed up the process for both of you.
• Keeping Your Résumé Honest
Estimates vary, but one comprehensive study uncovered lies about work history in
more than 40 percent of the résumés tested. Applicants with integrity know they
don’t need to stoop to lying. If you are tempted to stretch the truth, bear in mind
that professional recruiters have seen all sorts of fraud by job applicants, and
frustrated employers are working aggressively to uncover the truth.
Adapting Your Résumé to Your Audience
The importance of adapting your résumé to your target readers’ needs and
interests cannot be overstated. In a competitive job market, the more you look like
a good fit a quality hire the better your chances of securing interviews.
Composing Your Résumé
Write your résumé using a simple and direct style. Use short, crisp phrases instead
of whole sentences and focus on what your reader needs to know. Avoid using the
word I, which can sound both self-involved and repetitious by the time you outline
all your skills and accomplishments.
Completing your resume
Completing your résumé involves revising it for optimum quality,
producing it in the various forms and media you’ll need, and
proofreading it for any errors before distributing it or publishing it
online.
Revising Your Résumé
Ask professional recruiters to list the most common mistakes they see
on résumés, and you’ll hear the same things over and over again. Take
care to avoid these flaws: Too long or too wordy, Too short or sketchy,
Difficult to read, Poorly written, Displaying weak understanding of the
business world in general or of a particular industry or company.
• Producing Your Résumé
No matter how many media and formats you eventually choose for
producing your résumé, a clean, professional-looking design is a must.
Depending on the companies you apply to, you might want to produce your
résumé in as many as six formats (all are explained in the following
sections):
• Printed traditional résumé
• Printed scannable résumé
• Electronic plain-text file
• Microsoft Word file
• Online résumé, also called a multimedia résumé or social media résumé
• PDF file
• Proofreading Your Résumé
• Employers view your résumé as a concrete example of your attention to
quality and detail. Your résumé doesn’t need to be good or pretty good it
needs to be perfect.
• Distributing Your Résumé
• How you distribute your résumé depends on the number of employers you
target and their preferences for receiving résumés. Employers usually list their
requirements on their websites, so verify this information and follow it
carefully. Beyond that, here are some general distribution tips:
■ Mailing printed résumés. ■ Emailing your résumé.
■ Submitting your résumé to an employer’s website.
■ Posting your résumé on job websites.
Exercise 14 :
1. PREPARE YOUR OWN RESUME (CV)
2. Describe the tasks involved in writing your résumé, and list the sections to
consider including in your résumé.
3. Explain the process of planning your résumé, including how to choose the best
résumé organization.
END OF SLIDE
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