Getting the first interview becomes less a game of chance with a strong resume.



Ah, the resume. Almost everyone hates making a resume or updating a resume. One of the hardest things to do yourself is to present yourself to recruiters in the best light. For the same reasons that it’s hard to write or talk about yourself in any context, the resume presents some unique challenges for anyone. Presenting your personality, your work history, and your x-factor on paper takes work. But stand out from the crowd you must if you want to make it to that first interview and beyond.

On the face of it, writing and laying out a good resume doesn’t sound hard. But it is. In many ways, it’s easier to have someone write your resume for you. But in the event you want to DIY, here are some things to keep in mind:

You need to tell your story

This means putting your history into a context that will make you feel like a good fit with the organizations with which you’re applying. Story goes not just for the words on the page, but also the way that information is presented. Use strong, active language, present yourself as a solution to problems and a problem solver.

Layout and design matters

You want to highlight certain areas of interest, and make sure these highlights stand out for a recruiter. Some resumes will be designed with a sidebar of highlights, like achievements, hard and soft skills, and education. Don’t be afraid of using color on your resume but be mindful that your resume might be printed off in black and white, so stay away from gradients and colors that are too soft. Designing in black and white is always classic. Pay attention to fonts and use a hierarchy of sizes to indicate to the reader what things are most significant by how you treat your headlines, sub headlines, and body copy.

Introduce yourself, what you like, love, and what’s important to you

You will be part of a whole team, so you want to give your future employer a clear sense of who you are as an individual. Many people are going to be competitive with you on the level of work experience. What sets you apart on your resume is how unique you seem when compared to other candidates.

Make your work history active and results oriented

You can go beyond simply listing your job duties for any position by making it achievement driven. In doing what you did in a certain role, how did you achieve (or exceed) your goals? What was the benefit you created by your actions? How did you help your last company achieve its goals? If you’re in sales, this will be largely sales oriented. If you are an engineer, this will be related to your subject matter expertise. But also think about what you did that had cross-departmental value. If you can show that you think strategically and holistically, you will be seen to have more skill than if you are just performing a narrow function. Think about the big picture.

Use testimonials

If you have three solid, snappy testimonials, it’s a good idea to include these in your resume. Ideally, these are diverse, from superiors, co-workers, and community leaders. If you have three of a kind, that’s fine too. Make sure they are short, speak about your skills, and speak to your character. A few short testimonials from people who love what you do and how you do it is a good way to orient a recruiter to how you work and how you’re seen. These same people can double as your references or not. Pick and choose based on what makes strategic sense for you.

It’s always a crap shoot when it comes to getting your resume to the top of the pile and on to the first interview. But you can improve your career chances by paying a little more attention to your resume. Your resume needs to speak for you, so give it a good voice, a good face, and dress it to do the work for you. Paying attention to the quality of your resume is a foundational first step you can take to getting that next great job.

Do you need advice on reaching your life and career goals? Reach out to our coaching team at beprofound@profoundtalent.com

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No one achieves their potential without help from others.

In the forward to his book Tools of Titans, the author Tim Ferriss quotes Arnold Schwarzenegger: “I am not a self-made man. Every time I give a speech at a business conference, or speak to college students, or do a Reddit AMA, someone says it.

“Governor/Governator/Arnold/Arnie/Schwarzie/
Schnitzel (depending on where I am), as a self-made man, what’s your blueprint for success? They’re always shocked when I thank them for the compliment but say, ‘I am not a self-made man. I got a lot of help.’

“It is true that I grew up in Austria without plumbing. It is true that I moved to America alone with just a gym bag. And it is true that I worked as a bricklayer and invested in real estate to become a millionaire before I ever swung the sword in Conan the Barbarian.

“But it is not true that I am self-made. Like everyone, to get to where I am, I stood on the shoulders of giants. My life was built on a foundation of parents, coaches, and teachers; of kind souls who lent couches or gym back rooms where I could sleep; of mentors who shared wisdom and advice; of idols who motivated me from the pages of magazines (and, as my life grew, from personal interaction).”

One of the big mistakes we can make in our careers and our lives is believing in the myth of the self-made man. As Ferriss says, there is no one on the planet who hasn’t benefited from, or gotten to where they are, without the help of some sort of coach, leadership, mentorship, and outright financial support. If we forget the fact that we are always riding on the shoulders of the giants in our lives, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Riding on the shoulders of giants is also about gathering and gaining knowledge from outside of our circle of family, friends, and other immediate influencers. It also goes for ideas and great books, learning from those who have come before us who said things that have never been said before or so well. This is why educating yourself is a great goal: always learning from the visionaries and world-changers to improve the quality of our thinking and the outcomes of those thoughts.

Ferriss goes on to quote Schwarzenegger: “Whether it’s a morning routine, or a philosophy or training tip, or just motivation to get through your day, there isn’t a person on this planet who doesn’t benefit from a little outside help. I’ve always treated the world as my classroom, soaking up lessons and stories to fuel my path forward. I hope you do the same. The worst thing you can ever do is think that you know enough. Never stop learning. Ever.”

Ferriss claims he is no expert himself, he is only the scribe and the guide, working with the materials he’s been given by others to achieve something greater than he could ever achieve on his own.

The concept of standing on the shoulders of giants has been traced to the 12th century, attributed to Bernard of Chartres. Its most familiar expression in English is by Isaac Newton in 1675: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

Once again, the past teaches us a lot about how to look at the world today, how to see further, and how to stride into the future with confidence and meaning behind everything we do.

Do you need help reaching your life and career goals? Reach out to our coaching team at beprofound@profoundtalent.com

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Look to nature and you’ll see a life lesson in the mighty bee.

According to many, there is no reason a bee should be able to fly. Jack Fraser, Master’s Physics, University of Oxford says, “according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.”

But the laws of nature are funny things, and the animal kingdom comes in every shape and form. It turns out that it’s a misconception that the bee isn’t made to fly. It’s just built differently than a bird. So how is it that a bee can fly? Is there a lesson we can take from the bee that shows us how we can also fly, even against seemingly impossible odds?

The Naked Scientists website says, “bumblebees are the tanker trucks of the insect world, evolved to carry huge loads of pollen back to their hive. To figure out exactly how their wings move to propel them through the air, back in 2009 Oxford University scientists put bumblebees in a wind tunnel with some smoke and high-speed cameras. And although the bees clearly do fly, they do it in an unusual way- unlike most flying animals their left and right wings flap independently and the airflow around them never joins up to help them slip through the air more easily. It’s described best as a ‘brute force’ approach to flying, rather than the elegant soaring of a bird or the streamlined flight of a fly.”

So, the bumblebee goes against the grain and is built to be a marvel of aerodynamics and has made people reconsider what flight really means.

The authors go on to say, “So – although they may do it in an unorthodox manner, the flight of the bumblebee doesn’t defy physics. In fact, this myth is often used as a way of being disparaging about science – implying that if something doesn’t fit into our current models or we don’t know how it happens then science is somehow at fault or that there a mystical forces at work. Of course, as this story shows, when something appears to defy the laws of physics, it’s because we haven’t found the right way of studying it.”

Isn’t that also true of careers, life and people? If we aren’t built a certain way, aren’t understood a certain way, then we aren’t relevant, we don’t fit the mold of expectation. We are told what we desire is impossible, that we aren’t made for it, and that while we might want all the wealth possible in our lives, spiritual, emotional, mental, if we accept the rule of others, like accepting the so-called known rules of physics, we will constantly be up against artificial limitations.

What the bee shows us is that there is no limit to flight. That what makes flight possible, in the case of the bee, is a special set of skills and techniques that allow it to gather and spread pollen that makes the world what it is. Without the cunning design of the bee, it could not hover and fly from flower to flower with the same conservation of energy. It has adapted to communicate with others just the same as them, given the same impossible task of pollinating the world with such little wings and a fat body. But it does. And there’s the lesson. You, too, can fly, against the wind, against all odds known to man, to do the special work that they do. The bee is unique in the insect world for all that it gives to mankind and the world at large. Without the bee, we wouldn’t have everything else.

So, just remember the bee when you’re feeling like maybe your wings are too small, they have been clipped, and you’ve been told that you can’t do what you want to do and know you can do. Don’t give up. Just get busy being the best impossible bee you can be.

Do you need help getting your career flying again? Connect with our hiring and recruiting specialists at beprofound@profoundtalent.com

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Use experienced professional recruiters to get your best team on the field.

I’ve never been a major league baseball manager. I’ve never put a major sporting team on the field. So, I wouldn’t really know a good player from a great player when it comes to baseball, or football, or hockey, or any sport. All I would be left with is looking at player stats, and as any coach I’ve ever known or talked to says, stats only tell part of the picture. There are dimensions to people beyond pure athleticism that makes some individuals great and others only good or mediocre. And if you follow sports at all, you will see first draft phenoms flame out in their first season, forever shopped around, and traded and even sent to the minor leagues.

So what good are so-called superstar picks?

The one thing I do know a lot about is recruiting talent for your business. I learned a long time ago a lesson given to me by my major league baseball manager friend who said, you can pick the great ones on paper, but until they have to play in real time you still don’t know who you’re dealing with. It’s great to see the pedigree on paper, but until they hit the field and play an entire season, you really don’t know much about the player at all.

In executive recruiting for over 20 years, and seeing all of the ins and outs of the game, I can say that executive recruiting is a lot like fielding the right baseball team. You have specialists, like first basemen and pitchers, you have your utility guys, and you also have your stars. And sometimes those stars come out of left field from people you don’t expect.

There are real life fantasies that happen this way, where the washed up player with bad knees, or the unsung rookie who barely made the team, becomes the hero of the season. Our culture likes this kind of story, of the underdog who beats all the odds to be the hero of the day. This does also sometimes happen in executive recruiting, too. Someone who looks great on paper might, eventually, not be the player you’d assumed or hoped for, and you see shining lights in the second squad or the second line. You always need to hire for past performance and track record. But in executive recruiting, like in the major leagues, you need to hire for attitude, for leadership qualities, and the kinds of personality traits that can make heroes of others and build a team. There is nothing worse than spending your time looking for a star, only to realize that the unicorn you’re after, likely doesn’t and never did exist. What you want, instead, are leaders, team players, a person who will get what needs to be done because it needs to be done, regardless of their job title.

I have met many job seekers who could have filled an executive role easily and nicely, but who get passed over because the firm looking for talent is searching for that big star to save them. This is the wrong way to recruit. The better way is to look for people who add to the entire team, who can bring out the best in others, and who lead by their example. Words are cheap. Resumes are cheap. Letters of recommendation are cheap. All that really matters is what they can bring to the team on game day, every day, consistently delivering excellence and helping you build an ever better team, guided by team values, by character, and by a willingness to drive for the win.

I think it was the great boxer George Foreman who once said the difference between an amateur and a professional is that while sometimes the amateur can rise to the challenge, put in a great performance, and win a big fight, the professional can do that every day, day in and day out, with a smile on his or her face. Clearly you need to find the best professionals in the recruiting ranks, the ones who can put in the same great performances for your business every day, smoothly, competently, humbly, and inspiring others with the abilities to motivate, overcome challenges, and instill a sense of calming confidence and assurance across your teams.

That’s when you know you have a winner.

If you need help recruiting the best, contact us at beprofound@profoundtalent.com

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