Resume strategies for experienced candidates
While experience can be a boon for job applicants, candidates who have been in the workforce for a while may find that potential employers view the applicants as overqualified for the positions at hand. Chris recently wrote the following:
“I am 55 years old with 20 years of management experience in the food and landscape industries. I have a degree in landscape design and building. I have applied for numerous positions suited to my qualifications, skills and experience, but the majority of the time, I get zero responses. When I have received a reply, I have been told I am overqualified. Would it be more effective to format my resume differently to get more interviews?”
Chris, your resume opens with an objective statement that you are seeking a challenging position with a company that offers an opportunity for growth. Following this statement is a summary that reveals you are an experienced manager. Next are seven bullet points that present your areas of management experience. Then you relate your technical skills, followed by an exploration of 12 years of professional experience and your associate degree. Let me show you what you got right and where you went wrong.
NIX OBJECTIVE
Opening your resume with an objective statement is an unnecessary waste of the most valuable real estate on the page. Does your objective statement tell the employer what you can do for the company? No. It says what you want — something that does not need to be communicated at this stage in the game. Remove the statement, and move the qualifications summary to the top.
TAILOR TO POSITION
Based on the feedback you received, you should make sure the summary aligns with the requirements for the positions you are seeking.
Perhaps the summary throws people off because of the language “experienced manager with multiple years of leadership, technical support and training in the customer service field.” Your potential employers may read “multiple years” as more than the three to five or five to seven years they want.
Review the types of positions you are seeking, and see how much experience most of them require, building your summary to present a competitive set of qualifications. Positioning your candidacy at the right level will prevent responses that you are overqualified.
OPTIMIZE EXPERIENCE
Your professional-experience section needs a lot of attention. You described 12 years of professional experience in only 170 words. You should not be able to present that much experience with such few words. Furthermore, only two of your 12 bullet points are accomplishments, and both are buried in the middle or at the end of their respective employer’s section.
In addition, you described a position you held for 18 months with the statement “same as above.” This tells prospective employers you did not contribute any value to this employer and lacked the enthusiasm or interest to try to explain this job differently than your most recent position. While I’m sure this is not what you were thinking, it is what your prospective employer will assume, and if you show a lack of interest in developing your resume, employers will show a lack of interest in reviewing it.
Lastly, you presented the first four positions without details about what you did in each role. This makes me question if the positions should even appear on your resume.
I urge you to review each position you held and define not only your responsibilities, but your accomplishments. You should present a blend of each, being sure to highlight accomplishments more prominently as a way to predict the value you can contribute to your next employer.
Let’s look at one of your achievements: “Reported and worked with the president of the company and increased revenue from $90,000 to $142,000.” The result of your work is presented, but the actions you took to achieve that result are not.
Explore your accomplishments differently, showing the result and some steps you took to get there. For example, write something like, “Catapulted revenue 57 percent in 12 months by capturing a key commercial account, cultivating relationships with existing clients and leading a team in providing exceptional customer service and support.”
With a few tweaks, your resume has potential.
— Samantha Nolan is an advanced personal-branding strategist and career expert and is the founder and CEO of Nolan Branding. Do you have a resume, career or job-search question for Dear Sam? Reach Samantha at dearsam@nolanbranding.com. For more information about Nolan Branding’s services, visit www.nolanbranding.com, or call 888-9-MY-BRAND or 614-570-3442.