How To: Write a Kick-Ass Resume [Part 2] ? Position Descriptions ...

When I?m applying for a job, I want to show the employer:

• My experience and qualifications align with the needs of the position
• I have a deep and thorough understanding of what they?re looking for
• How I?ll help them increase profit or decrease cost.

How do I do that? By doing a close reading of the position description and following a quick exercise to break out the exact keywords and key phrases the employer is using to describe the problems they?re facing.

My theory is employers only hire a new employee when the lack of an employee has become such a pain, they?re on the floor screaming in pain.

Employees cost money. If you don?t need that employee, why would you give that money to someone to sit around and play minesweeper all day?

Employers hire when they?re experiencing pain. Ergo, you can identify exactly what pain the employer is experiencing through the position description.

Today we?re going to continue our talk about writing a kick-ass resume. Specifically, we?re going to:

• Walk through the process I use to review position descriptions
• Breakdown the exact steps I go through to identify the pain points a company is screaming in the position description
• Show how I analyze position descriptions to pull out the company?s needs and identify the specific keywords and key phrases I should be highlighting in my resume and cover letter

Here?s the position description we?ll be working off of: Merchandising Manager ? Honolulu Cookie Company (PDF Version)

My Process for Reviewing a Position Description

My first step is to read through the position description and look for any red flags. Is it an unpaid position? Commission only? Does the company seem like one I?d like to work for? Is there anything that makes me stop and think ?Maybe this isn?t the right choice???

If the position passes that test, I ?ll print out a copy of the position description to closely read through and mark up.

You can do this entirely on your computer, but I like the feeling of underlining the description and making notes in the margin.

Next, I?ll read through the job description summary and underline and and all keywords relating to:

The two main drivers for a company to hire a new employee are ?We need someone to help lower costs? and ?We need someone to rase revenue.? It doesn?t matter what your position is, if you?re going to be successful at it, you?re going to be focusing on one of the two. If you?re going to snag an interview with an employer, you?re going to show that:

• You understand how the specifics of the position description relate to increasing revenue or decreasing cost
• You understand how his business makes money. You have a few ideas on how to reduce cost.
• Your past experience is relevant to the position you?re applying to and you either increased revenue or decreased cost at every single one of your previous jobs.

Position Description Summary

When we read through the summary, we want to identify any keywords or key phrases that relate to helping the company make more money (sales, profitability, products, inventory, etc) or lower costs (working with other departments, inventory, etc.) Let?s tackle this summary together:

As Merchandising Manager you play a key role within the organization, as profitability can be affected by how successfully you undertake your work. You will oversee product development from inception to launch. You will work closely with Marketing, Retail, Corporate/Wholesale, and Production to control inventory, maximize sales and margin. Enthusiasm and attention to detail are the crucial to your success.

We?re in luck, this summary is full of these keywords and key phrases. I?ve bolded the words and phrases I highlighted in my annotated copy.

As Merchandising Manager you play a key role within the organization, as profitability can be affected by how successfully you undertake your work. You will oversee product development from inception to launch. You will work closely with Marketing, Retail, Corporate/Wholesale, and Production to control inventory, maximize sales and margin. Enthusiasm and attention to detail are the crucial to your success. You can see my annotated copy here:

This position is very focused on profitability. Check out the keywords we can see in the summary: ?Profitability?, ?product development?, ?control inventory?, ?maximize sales and margin.? Each of these words and phrases is something we want to highlight in our cover letter and our resume.

In my annotated copy, you can see I connected some of the underlined topics to larger ideas and next steps: ?Resume Example?, ?Show in Cover Letter?, and noted that ?oversee? is a keyword that I?ll want to use when writing the resume and cover letter.

Duties & Responsibilities

I tackle duties and responsibilities in two separate ways. First, I read through my printout of the position description. I underline all keywords that pop out to me. I make note note of any positions I feel that I want to highlight in the resume and cover letter.

Now, let?s steps through this position description and highlight / underline all the words and phrases that relate to cost and revenue, project management, or specific skills that are called out for the job.

Once we do that, we can start to see the different ?buckets? that the duties and responsibilities fall into. Looking at this resume, it looks like they fall into four main buckets:

1. Project & Product Management
2. Business Analytics
3. Sales Channel Management
4. Marketing / Promotion Cross-Department Communication

These buckets are just groupings of the different duties on the resume. I find that thinking about them in ?chunks? or buckets? makes it easier to decide what type of experience to highlight on the resume or cover letter. When writing my resume and cover letter, I?ll make sure each position (resume), experience (resume), and paragraph (cover letter) relates to at least one of these buckets. If I can, I?ll reuse the exact phrase and wording they used.

I copy the duties and responsibilities from the position description into a word editor (Word, Pages, Google Docs, etc). I break the duties and responsibilities apart so each individual sentence is on its own line.

I add the buckets to the top of the page.

I start sorting the different duty and responsibility sentences into the buckets. If a duty or responsibility seems to belong in two separate buckets, I?ll copy it and put it into both buckets.

Now that we have a summary of the different areas of responsibility that relate to the position (the buckets and their contents), we have an idea of the topics we should highlight in the resume and cover letter.

Skills

The last section in this position description is ?Skills.? We?ll approach it in the same way we approached ?Duties and Responsibilities.? On the paper copy of this position description, review the skills section. Underline / highlight any keywords that stand out. Make note any qualifications or experience that comes to mind that you want to highlight.

Once we?ve underlined this section, we?re going to add it to a new page in the document we started. The key phrases we can find in this section are highly relevant: they?re the specific skills the employer is looking for and key phrases we can reuse in our resume / cover letter / email / etc. Reusing these key phrases shows that we

• (a) understand the employer?s needs and also
• (b) understand the specific language they use to communicate those needs

We?ll talk more about how we take this position description and turn it into a full resume on Thursday and Friday.

In Conclusion

Okay, that?s the system I use to:

• Review position descriptions
• Identify the pain points a company is screaming in the position description
• Analyze position descriptions to pull out the company?s needs and identify the specific keywords and key phrases I should be highlighting in my resume and cover letter

Tomorrow (Thursday), I?ll share my resume template, explain the ?1-2-3? process I use to expand experience and buzzwords into rich resume content, and show you how to take the information we pulled out of a position description and use it in a resume.

p.s., if you?re considering a career change or know someone who is searching for a job, I offer career development consulting services: career brainstorming, resume & cover letter editing, negotiation coaching, and more. If you?d like to learn more, send me an email at kai@kaisdavis.com and we can set up a free consultation call.

Source: http://kaisdavis.com/how-to-write-a-kick-ass-resume-part-2-position-descriptions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-to-write-a-kick-ass-resume-part-2-position-descriptions

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