Whether you like it or not, and no one does, the fact remains that the suspicion of job-jumping hangs over the man who has moved more than five times during his first ten years of employment. And the belief exists, especially among younger employers that any man who has not found his niche by the age of (30) is never going to find it. In the first instance, there are just enough job-jumpers to provide some foundation for the suspicion, and in the second instance, there are just enough men over (30) so regimented in their thinking that any change, even for the better, is intolerable. Such being the case, the conditions exist and must be faced.
Thus the purpose of the Directed Resume is not to list your experiences like so many groceries, but to direct them at the job you are after, as though you had dedicated your professional life to preparing yourself for this ultimate position. No repetition of experiences, but an accumulation of them, all adding up to a potential of enormous value to your next employer.
Some Pointers
- Describe the position you want-your objective- but do so in terms of your ability to function well in it. In these changing times, that job might have been made obsolete overnight, but your abilities are not subject to obsolescence. In both the Functional and Directed Resumes you are stressing your values, and something of value is what an employer wants, and can use.
- If you are young and eager, but relatively in-experienced businesswise, stress youth and ambition, and build up your achievements in related functions. If you are rich in age and experience, select those experiences that can be directed at the job you want, and leave your age out of it, or drop it in casually as a support for your mature judgment.
- Don't hesitate to conjure up the "ideal" or "dream" job. Simply because you have never heard of such a position doesn't mean that it might not be the answer to a harassed executive's prayer. Many a job's requirements have been altered to take advantage of an applicant's superior values.
- Don't ever believe that an employer really knows what he wants, much though that belief has been foisted about. He may think he knows, as he may think he knows his wife will like perfume for an anniversary present, but you can be sure that if he is offered something more attractive while in a buying mood, he'll take it. What he buys is more influenced by what he can get than what he thinks he wants.
- Never overlook the assets of military experience. Though few executives like to admit it, they are now aware of the fact that men with military experience often execute orders better than those without it. To this can be added the sneaky suspicion, "How come you dodged military service, or weren't fit for it?" (Those who for a variety of legitimate reasons were never privileged to serve, please note, and prepare forthright answers to an unavoidable question.)
But in relating your military achievements to the job you. are after, select only those that can be directly applied, and then describe them in civilians. Capturing a machine gun nest occupied by 20 North Koreans is certainly an heroic achievement, but if the job you are after is in textile design, the mention of such heroism could condemn you as a swashbuckling adventurer who would never do in making designs of colored threads. And if you were in command of large numbers of men, don't use that fact to snow an employer who may head up a small but select group. He may think you are too big for the job.
- In presenting your achievements or business back-ground, select those facts which support most strongly your bid for the job you are after. When you stated your objective, and backed it with a few lines describing your abilities-what we call a "frame of reference paragraph" -you were saying in effect, "This is how I would like you to think about me." If you stated that your objective was office manager, for instance, you are asking him to think of you as a manager. If you don't substantiate, or "flesh out," this skeleton outline with real or related experience, you have seriously weakened your case.
- If you have had several jobs, examine them to see if their contributions to your experience can be summarized in a single paragraph. "Sales work with department store, grocery, filling station and all-night restaurant," is a far stronger way of presenting yourself as a salesman than would be a listing of four separate jobs.
Look at it this way: The listing of four "little jobs" creates in your prospective employer the psychological impression that you are a "little job" man; the grouping of them in a single paragraph creates the impression that you have accumulated an interesting, and hence valuable, series of experiences. Many an employer was himself a clerk, counterman or grease monkey, and can appreciate your use of "sales work" as a related description of the job. That in itself is a demonstration of good salesmanship.
- Remember that a "little job" is a matter of degree. No job is small to the man who is proud of it, and no job is big to the man who wants something bigger, Apply Point 7 to your resum6, no matter how high the goal you are shooting at.
- Humanize your prospective employer. It is true that a favorable decision from him can have a .profound effect on your future, but that doesn't make him a demigod. While you are working over your own resume, you might pause to wonder how many he sweated over before he got to where he is. Unless you are moving into a business handed down from father to son, you are directing your resume at a success-minded man like yourself who is apt to forget where he came from. Such being the case, you might pause to wonder, also, about what you'll think of a resume like yours when you succeed your prospective employer in his present post. That puts you in the position of selling yourself on your own future, and if you're sold, you have complied with the first rule of salesmanship-"The best salesman is a satisfied customer."
