Resume Help for the Unemployed

Mounting a job search when you’re unemployed may leave you feeling like you can’t compete with your gainfully employed peers. This just isn’t true. Transform your resume from holding you back to propelling your success.       

Assess the Gap

“The best way to address an employment gap depends on how long you’ve been out of work,” says Teena Rose, director of resume-writing firm ExpertResumes.com. Unemployed for a year or less? Then your best strategy may be to say nothing. “Shorter time frames of up to a year or so aren’t absolute necessities to explain on a resume,” says Rose, noting that she advises her clients with less than 12 months of unemployment to resist the temptation to overexpound. “Hiring managers understand job candidates will have date gaps from time to time, especially when factoring in the jobs lost during this recent recession,” she says.

Longer employment gaps can be trickier, and this is where your resume could use some well-crafted words to show how you’ve filled that gap. Here’s how to write a resume to show you’ve been productive while between jobs.

Emphasize How, Not Why

“Hiring managers are more interested in knowing how you used your time away from the workforce as opposed to why you were unemployed,” says Anne-Marie Ditta, president of First Impression Career Services, a Mount Vernon, New York-based career-planning firm. Instead of focusing on the layoff, company closure, job termination, caregiver responsibilities or other circumstances that led to unemployment, Ditta recommends you spotlight how this time off allowed you to acquire new skills, deepen existing industry knowledge or cultivate your contacts.

Get Busy During Your Unemployment

If you can’t think of a single resume-worthy activity or pursuit to show how you’ve used your time off, then you need to get busy. “I coach my clients that unemployment is not vacation time,” says Kathy Sweeney, president of resume-writing firm The Write Resume. “If they haven’t been involved in some sort of activity, I implore them to investigate options to gain further experience.”

Many activities can provide compelling resume content. For example, volunteering; tutoring; coaching sports; learning a new computer program; studying a foreign language; or pursuing temporary, freelance or contract work can show current experience on the resume.

For example, a stay-at-home parent can highlight her accomplishments as a volunteer like this: “Won board approval to establish a community parent/child playgroup at the town hall. Led grassroots group to raise $47,500 annually and opened new revenue stream for county.”

Sweeney tells her clients “that experience is experience, regardless of whether it is paid or volunteer. If a client is enrolled in school, for example, I will make that a full-time job on the resume. I’ll include information on the certificate or degree program as well as any quantifiable results, such as grades or instructor praise.”

Ditta emphasizes the importance of showcasing what you accomplished during your unemployment, just as you would for paid employment. “‘Devoted four years to managing a large estate and complex/difficult medical decisions while caring for terminally ill parent’ will be better-received by an employer than ‘took time off to care for a sick relative,’” she says.

Avoid These Resume Mistakes

• Never Exaggerate Dates on Your Resume to Extend the Duration of Your Last Job: “Stretching dates to cover a gap is lying on a resume, and that is never a good option,” Ditta warns.
   
• Don’t Feel Forced to Use a Traditional Resume Format: A purely chronological resume may not be the best option for those who have been unemployed for a number of years. Instead, explore the advantages of a combination resume, Rose suggests. This type of resume allows you to emphasize key skills while downplaying employment gaps.
   
• Don’t Sell Yourself Short: “The most common mistake I see unemployed professionals make on their resumes is minimizing their contributions,” Ditta says. “I’ve worked with clients who have raised significant amounts of money for nonprofit organizations, for example, but when asked about this, they reply that they were only a volunteer. The fact is that they achieved it, and therefore, they should take credit for it.”

Remain Proactive

“When it comes to covering resume gaps created by unemployment, it’s best to be proactive rather than reactive,” Rose says. By focusing on what you’ve achieved during this challenging period, you will demonstrate to employers your can-do attitude, resourcefulness and ability to drive successful results.

Five New Skills Job Seekers Need

Five New Skills Job Seekers Need

Job seekers have had the same list of critical skills to brush up on or acquire for decades -- things like careful follow-up, attention to grammar and punctuation, and great listening abilities. But today's overcrowded job market and the ever-shrinking attention spans of hiring managers are creating brand-new job search requirements.

Here are five new must-have skills for job seekers today:

Pain Spotting

It used to be that you could apply to a job and parrot the requirements listed in the job ad. But simply saying, "You want organizational and communication skills? I've got 'em!" won't cut it anymore. Every job seeker says the exact same thing in his cover letter. These days, you've got to do more. You've got to figure out -- by reading the job ad and researching the employer -- what sort of business pain lurks behind the job opening.

What are your choices? There's growth-related pain, and there's consolidation-related pain. There's pain associated with customers fleeing, with competitors outsourcing the work and cutting costs, and with a shortage of talent in an industry. When you know or can guess at the pain behind the job ad, you have something of substance to say to a hiring manager. Until then, you're just another banana in a very crowded bunch.

Storytelling

"I have a strong work ethic and get along with all kinds of people" is about as compelling as "I had cereal for breakfast" -- but, worse, it's not even believable. Anyone can claim these characteristics, and nearly everyone does. To get a hiring manager's attention, tell a brief and powerful story that demonstrates what you get done when you work: "When our big Q4 product release was delayed a month, I put together an outbound-calling campaign that kept our accounts from bailing and got us $450,000 in pre-orders" will let a hiring manager know some of the good things that happen when you showed up, saw and conquered.

Using a Human Voice

The old "results-oriented professional with a bottom-line orientation" style of resume is as out of date as high-fructose corn syrup. A human voice in your resume and your other outreach to employers will separate you from the boilerplate-spouting legions of typical job seekers. Replace tired corporate-speak like "Met or exceeded expectations" with a concrete, visual bullet point like "I sold our sales VP on a matrix territory structure that boosted sales 14 percent." Don't be afraid of the word "I" in your resume, or of using vernacular. Real people -- such as your next boss -- use slang every day.

Showing Relevance

The typical job seeker has a one-size-fits-all resume that gets pressed into service whether the open position is for a purchasing coordinator, a marketing assistant or a human resources analyst. That's no good. Your background won't be relevant to the hiring manager unless you highlight the accomplishments from each past job that have the most in common with the role you're pursuing. For a purchasing job, spell out your negotiating milestones. For the marketing role, tell the reader how you created or maintained a database and about your writing and creative skills. For the HR opportunity, describe the times when you untangled thorny human problems. Rewrite your resume as often as necessary to make sure your most relevant stories come to the fore.

Knowing Your Value

No one will pay you more than you think you're worth, so know your value before you begin an active job search. Monster’s Salary Wizard is a great salary research tool to start with. Know what you're worth so you don't get lowballed in the hiring process. If you and an employer have wildly different ideas about what your background is worth, keep looking. Even in a tough economy -- maybe even because of if -- your ability to solve expensive employer problems is worth a lot more than peanuts. Arm yourself with information, and then get out there and tell your story.

The ’3Gs’: Mindset Over Skill Set Critical to Landing a Job, Harvard’s Stoltz Says

After years of consistently high unemployment in this country, the job situation is finally start to look up and the hope is this positive trend will continue. (See: The Employment Report: The Private Sector is in Good Health)

Conventional wisdom says employers are looking for employees who have the perfect skill set for the job at hand. However, new research conducted with the help of the world's top employers and scholars overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

In the new book, Put Your Mindset to Work: The One Asset You Really Need to Win and Keep the Job You Love, Harvard lecturer and PhD Paul Stoltz and co-author James Reed reveal that employers are most interested in candidates who have a certain mindset — regardless of skill set.

Actually, a resounding 96 percent of employers say they would prefer to "hire, promote, pay and retain" people with a particular mindset over a desired skill set. And 98 percent of employers thought it more likely that a person with the right mindset could easily develop the right skill set if they had to, rather than the other way around.

Stoltz sat down with The Daily Ticker's Aaron Task to "define and quantify" what mindset means to employers. He calls his findings the "3G Mindset". It consists of the top three qualities that employers consider most important: global, good and grit.

As Paul explains to Aaron, here's what each "G" means :

Global: This is the big picture perspective. It is your ability to lift your eyes out of the weeds, look at the world and understand the ripple effect of your actions.

Good: This is the sensitivity to people and awareness of and the inkling to do good for others around you.

Grit: This is the intestinal fortitude, that uncommon tenacity, intensity, resilience in everything that you do.

Not only do nearly all employers want to hire people with a winning 3G mindset, they would trade 7.2 "normal" employees for just one person with the perfect winning mindset, says Stoltz.

So how do you demonstrate that you have these to employers?

Simply take one of these 3Gs and put into action in a way that creates a compelling result, whether it is in a cover letter, resume or during the interview. Here are two examples Stoltz gives:

• Example (good and grit): I fought through several layers of bureaucracy for two years to get a new wellness program implemented in our company.
• Example (good and global): I volunteered to mentor new hires before and after work hours and cut first-90-day turnover by 72 percent.

You're likely wondering by now about how this all translates into salary -- especially if employers consider one winning mindset 7 times more valuable than a "normal" employee. Stoltz says people with 3G mindsets not only tend to make more money, but they become simply invaluable to employers, which is critical if the time comes for layoffs.

If you'd like to measure your 3G mindset for free, click here.