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This video is part of our professional development series focused on career paths, networking, resume and cover letter, interviewing, and performing in the organization. This series compliments our business and law lecture series.
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Jason Mance Gordon
The Business Professor
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0:00
As far as how the things are organized, generally you want it to be a one page format
0:07
This may not be the case anymore when you're applying to a smaller company that is going
0:13
to review your entire resume and you think it's beneficial to have all that information
0:17
on there. That's great but in the scenario where you're applying to a larger corporate employer where
0:25
they see tons of resumes and they have to sort through. Generally they need to see all the relevant information that is going to catch their attention
0:34
and allow them to make a decision whether they're going to call you in for an interview
0:39
or not within one page. So again, look at the format there and you can see you have to cut down to get it in
0:47
these guidelines. The margins are relatively small .5 generally all the way around is sufficient that it doesn't
0:53
get cut off in the printer. As you see it's going to go in reverse chronological order
1:01
Under the education section, one other thing, only put your higher education post high school
1:08
education because if you have any college education they assume that you either have
1:12
a GED or you've graduated from high school. With that assumption just put higher education and then again like I say format wise focus
1:22
on the more relevant skills. Here's the important part of the resume and here's where it takes all the work
1:30
It's the job bullets. Here's the way I want to break this down for you
1:37
Average resumes and poor resumes put job bullets that describe the undertakings or the skills
1:45
acquired in a given position. A really good resume takes it to the next level
1:52
It goes much further. Here's what I mean by that. We've talked about in other videos that a business degree is training and how to marshal resources
2:04
You're going to deliver some value proposition to a customer client or in-user and in return
2:09
you're going to receive the amount and type of value desired. Amount may be in the form of money type
2:16
Sometimes it's not money that you want to receive back from the customer client or end user, sometimes it's impact or sometimes it's a notoriety or something like that that you
2:24
can monetize. I think in terms of a non-profit you can get more grants if you have more impact or more
2:31
users etc. So anyway marshaling the resources through the system like that is going to be the role of the business manager regardless of your concentration
2:44
With that being said, you want to demonstrate your business acumen with these bullets
2:51
That you recognize the value proposition of the business you were involved in generally
2:58
And that you recognize the value proposition that you, in whatever position you're in, brought to that business
3:05
Now, I don't care if you're the CEO or you're the groundskeeper
3:10
In any business, everyone plays a role. Everyone has their individual value proposition
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And so to understand that is empowering. It shows the business acumen you have
3:25
It shows that you understand what it takes or what is relevant or necessary for the business
3:31
itself to be a success. Now what do I mean by that
3:39
The business itself, it's delivery of value proposition. Think about what it has to do well, every aspect of the value chain that it has to do
3:49
well in order to perform, to meet its performance objectives. If it's a product business, it may have to have a certain volume of sales, maintain a
4:01
certain profit margin, have certain turnover ratios for inventory, etc
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For service business, it might be total number of clients, total build hours, total new customer acquisition
4:22
Think about it operationally and the mixture of operations and accounting and the stuff
4:26
that the metrics that you keep track of for the business. Revenue, gross margin, turnover, inventory, asset value, new customers, total customer
4:35
served, etc. All of these are relevant metrics for the business that if you understand these well enough
4:44
you understand what it takes for that business to be successful. You recognize value
4:51
Within one or two bullets between each job, you will start out by demonstrating that you
4:58
understand this about the business. This is the total revenue. This is total sales
5:03
This is margin. This is turnover. This is everything associated with the business of value that demonstrates the nature of the
5:12
business and again demonstrates that your business acumen that you understand this about the business Let me give you an example of why this is relevant
5:24
Anyone who watches my video series knows that I research and write on entrepreneurship and
5:29
the law. In reading and studying entrepreneurship, lots of the Silicon Valley firms, once you
5:36
get to a late stage of investment. Lots of times the entrepreneur steps aside and the investors seek to hire a professional
5:46
manager and a new CEO to continue growing the business. Many of these new CEOs are not technologists, they're not programmers, they're not the
6:00
people who generally start these types of companies. Lots of times they come from Wall Street or other money management firms
6:10
So you ask yourself what does a money manager or financial yst of sorts know about running
6:16
a technology company. Well, they probably don't know much about the technology
6:19
They can hire someone or have a chief technology officer to explain that portion
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But what they understand is value. They've done enough ysis of companies that they understand the metrics and the value
6:33
drivers that's going to allow the company to grow and scale and meet its growth projections
6:39
That's why it's important to bring a person like this in. Their business acumen is extensive
6:47
With that in mind, this business acumen needs to be demonstrated somewhere
6:53
In the resume, if you demonstrate that level of knowledge about the business itself and
6:58
what drives value, it's hard to ignore. It catches attention. You're going to do it through identifying the metrics associated with each of these variables
7:09
Every aspect of the bullets below your job, your actual job, the bullets below should
7:17
have a dollar sign, a number or a percentage change associated with it
7:22
In some cases when you're dealing with specific sets of rules, regulations, compliance or
7:28
something like that, it's not going to be a number. It's going to be you simply cite that hey, you've enforced compliance with regulation
7:36
Z or securities regulations exemptions, whatever you work with that
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With that in mind, that's what you're trying to show. After those first couple of bullets where you're showing that you're just trying to
7:53
present your business acumen and that you showing that you understand the company itself Have a bullet or two where you take those tasks that were your part of the value proposition
8:05
your role within the company, again whether you were the groundskeeper or the CEO, what
8:09
you did, your specific skills. Now instead of just listing those activities that you undertook, use your business acumen again
8:20
Quantify them. Put a number, a dollar sign, and a percentage change sign beside every one of them
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That demonstrates that you understand the extent to, in your specific position, what were the value driving variables that you were in charge of
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And those numbers, dollar signs, and percentage change show that you understand what you were tracking and how it fit into the overall scheme of the business's value proposition
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Now collectively, that presents your business knowledge extremely well. When someone reads, when a potential employer reads a resume like that, they are, it's hard
9:04
to ignore. They're impressed by what you've demonstrated just on this paper
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You automatically reek of competence. It's very inviting to invite you now for an interview
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Here's another subtle point to remember. Certain types of jobs, there will be so many applicants that a human being does not sort
9:32
through the applications, through the resumes. Rather, it's run through a human resources machine that matches for keywords
9:40
If you believe that situation to be true, make certain that you take the desired and
9:49
preferred skills from the job description and use that language in forming your bullets
9:58
Make certain in some way, shape, fashion or form you use those key words and translate
10:03
them into the bullets in your resume. That will get you past the machine
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That will make certain that you at least meet that cut and hopefully your resume will be
10:15
reviewed by a human being and they can see it and then make the correct decision that
10:23
you're a brilliant individual and they should bring you in for an interview to see if you're
10:30
the right person fit for the job
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