Résumé as Marketing Device
When advising students on résumé development, the conversation must often be more of a marketing discussion than one on how students can summarize themselves. What are some of the best strategies that you have found to teach this distinction and encourage the necessary skills for students to market themselves successfully?
As a graphic design instructor, students in the program are very familiar with marketing. Still most have never written a good professional resume. We begin by having them do a self evaluation which includes them listing personality traits, professional skills, soft skills and skills that an employer would be looking for. They then develop a 30 second elevator speech which is used an introduction of themselves at their portfolio review as well as an objective on their resumes.
We are also a career school so most of our students have never worked in their fields of study. But as a career school they get a lot of hands-on experience in their labs as well as during their externships. I have them put together a list of qualifications that they bring to the table when they finish their programs. Some students understand that right away and do a great list of skills and others I have to jump-start a bit but in the end they all have a list of skills and qualifications that are most important to the hiring managers.
Hi Cathy,
Excellent method. Do you use a standard questionnaire or some sort of other data collection instrument that standardizes the process? Make sure you download all the PDF files in the course - including a list of questions to elicit data for designing a resume. You may find some to add to what you already do. Enjoy the course!
Robert Starks Jr.
We are a vocational school that caters exclusively to one profession so all students are career changers or just preparing to enter the job market in their first job.
Before we meet formally, I ask that they put together a list of their career experiences with highlights of each. We use this as a starting point to parse out important attributes/qualities/talents that will specifically address areas in their new career field.
With younger students who don't have a lot of job experience, this can be a bit challenging so we dig a little further into their backgrounds to come up with other information that would be pertinent to the focus of the targeted opportunity.
Before a student meets with me for resume writing, I give them a homework assignment. They are to write down a list of duties from other jobs they have held in the past.
Then, We go over them together at the meeting & I ask them to identify how those skills parlay to the Massage Therapy position they seek.
This has been very helpful because it helps them think outside the box, as many are career changers.
Hi Margaret,
That's an excellent way to frame your question to get students to sell benefits vs. responsibilities. Are your students able to easily identify the benefits or "value added" from their work or do you find they struggle with identifying the value-added contribution to the business/department/team?
Robert Starks Jr.
I advise my students when stating a skill to then list what the outcome was. Specifically, what positive result was then made because of the action they took in a particular position.
Hi Kristine,
What is it that you do to help your less experienced students understand how to convey their non-industry experience, or, transferable skills?
Robert Starks Jr.
Some of our students are career changers but we also have many first career students. I find assisting the younger, less experienced students the most challenging as they may never have created a resume in the past. Although many of them may have had retail postions or positions at a fast food restaurant, they have difficulty believing any work experience is important to include on a resume for if nothing else their experience of interacting with customers and coworkers is important experience.
Hi Vanessa,
You are very welcome!
Robert Starks Jr.
Thank you so much for the information!
Hi Vanessa,
My observation was that faculty were often giving contradictory (and outdated) advice and guidance to students. Additionally, faculty were not current on the importance of a professional online presence. Thus, I specifically requested to have 30 minutes of time to address the faculty during an in-service. My DOE was very open to this and was actually appreciative that I proactively wanted to train them on current career marketing trends.
My presentation goal was to get the faculty to understand that recruiting practices have changed; thus, job search and career marketing has also dramatically changed so that they could understand why it was critical for us to teach students new skills and approaches. In a nutshell, my presentation shocked them - they were surprised how little they knew about current trends and the implications for their students. The result was complete buy-in, a sense of urgency to allow us to teach students, increased invitations to classrooms for workshops and presentations, and requests for more training at future in-services. Topics that I often found to be of particular interest for faculty were Applicant Tracking Systems and the impact on resume design, recruiting strategies such as social recruiting (Jobvite and Bullhorn have great data on new trends), mobile recruiting, and Search Engine resume sourcing and the implications for job seeker marketing strategies. I ended up doing 4 different presentations to faculty. It improved our relationship because they saw our department as the experts and it helped us accomplish our goals with students as we also improved their advocacy to use our department's services but we also gained an increased willingness to collaborate on all initiatives.
Some excellent tools I used that I found got my point across quickly in an engaging way that fascinated faculty were the following videos:
Twitter Job Hustle: http://vimeo.com/25812909
Google Please Hire.me: http://googlepleasehire.me/
QR Code Resume: http://vimeo.com/21228618
Although this is an older presentation I created, it still rings true and may also help you learn more and possibly use with students: http://www.slideshare.net/robertstarksjr/job-search-30-9216989
Robert Starks Jr.
May I ask what types of in-services you gave to your instructors? While we've had a good relationship with our Job Orientation instructors in the past, I would like to have ways to connect with our faculty as a whole to get them invested in the process of how our students will find a job once they graduate.
Hi Vanessa,
Thank you for sharing your experience! This is a great "case-study" for others who may want to implement similar strategies. My own experience is very similar to the process you described. In my experience, faculty were a bit more territorial and had lots of resistance with exception of a few. I partnered with the DOE and requested to conduct training for our faculty at in-services. I still remember the first time I delivered a training - light bulbs came on and they had the "aha" moment and saw that what we conveyed to them (which is what we wanted to train our students on) was of high value and was an urgent need. They were all on board and our office started getting invited to go to classrooms because faculty were so excited about what we were teaching. This lead to a formalized process of identifying specific courses throughout each program where Career Services would conduct workshops/presentations on specific career topics. I found that educating our faculty helped get enthusiastic buy-in but it helped build advocacy for Career Services and made our instructors better - they appreciated learning and wanted to pass what they learned along to their students.
It's valuable to hear these stories - thank you for sharing!
Robert Starks Jr.
I've been in my position for 2 years and in those two years, I've only had 1 instructor who didn't really coordinate fully with Career Services. She didn't undermine Career Services' expertise to her students, she just didn't participate completely in the partnership.
The way we began to have some input in the classroom was by coordinating with the instructors to go in and speak on different topics such as resumes, dress, interview skills, and even how to properly complete an application.
Once we started to do that, the instructors began to partner with our department more. We were also very lucky that the instructors told the students they should listen to our advice because it was our job to know this information and we knew what we were doing.
Over the last 6 months or so, we have actually begun teaching the Job Orientation classes because there was a need and two people in our department were willing to step up and take on the challenge and had the teaching credentials to do so.
But even before, we had a strong say in the information being given to students over the last several years because of our activities in the classroom.
One other thing, if one is getting push back, try to involve someone higher in the school. With the instructor who wasn't as fully engaged as we liked, I eventually had to take it to the Director of Education. I know that's an uncomfortable thing to do, but it was essential in order to make sure our students were getting the information they needed (and to make sure Career Services was getting something as reasonable as a good resume).
Once we let the D.O.E. and Campus Administrator know that things weren't being done was well as we would like, there was a meeting called and, through good communication, things were put on the right path.
It can be frustrating to get the ball rolling, but it can be done.
Hi Vanessa,
Have you found your instructors regard Career Services as the experts on career marketing? Has there ever been any push-back? Can you describe your journey in developing your close relationship with instructors and how you are able to guide the information being taught in the classroom for others who may not have as good of a relationship with their instructors or who may see resistance to their advice/guidance?
Thank you for sharing!
Robert Starks Jr.
We do try to teach our students that a resume is their marketing tool.
We also try to show them how past experience can be translated into transferable skills. We offer several different business and medical programs and we often have students who are coming out of one industry (such as retail) into a business or medical field.
I show them how many of the same skills they may have used in retail customer service can translate into their chosen field (such as time management, multi-tasking, handling stressful situations, etc.)
It helps that our Career Services department has a strong partnership with the instructors who teach our Job Orientation classes (this is the class that teaches about resumes, interviewing skills, cover letters, etc.) This allows us to help update and guide the information being taught in the classroom.
Hi Chasminh,
Thank you for sharing your process. To clarify, have you found that going through this process, students begin to understand that resume development is truly part of a marketing strategy or do you you have students who already understand this prior to engaging in the process? I'm sure you may have both - what has been your experience?
Robert Starks Jr.
The best strategies I have found include having a meeting with the student to identify career goals, review qualification and experience, and create a list of specific positions and employers that the student will be applying for.
After we have identified these details, we can begin to develop their "resume marketing" approach. By recognizing the employer audience who will be reviewing the resume, we can begin to incorporate professional details of the student as it relates to what the position calls for. Typically, we will create a combination style resume and tailor the format (using primary and secondary headings) to highlight those qualities/experiences that would excite an employer.
