Experience University Podcast

S4E9: Master Your Resume

March 30, 2021 Extraordinary Events Season 4 Episode 9
Experience University Podcast
S4E9: Master Your Resume
Show Notes Transcript

Do you want to know how to take your resume to the next level? This podcast episode was inspired by my many current and past students who have recently reached out to have me review their resume.  This episode discusses my best tips & tricks when it comes to resume building, what you should NOT have on your resume, as well as specific keywords you can add to your resume to help you get noticed by future employers! 

If you want to come to our April 1st event, Level Up Your Event Game, send an email to theeventsinitiative@gmail.com and I will send you your own coupon code with money off of the event at registration! 

If you are interested in learning more about Level Up Your Event Game, please visit our website at levelupyoureventgame.com

DR. K: Hello, hello, everybody! Happy Tuesday or whatever day you are listening to this podcast. It is just such a great day to have a great day. I am just laughing so much. I'll tell you why here in a second. But I am always so bubbly and optimistic I really truly am. I always like to think that everybody is giving their best effort and doing their best in the world and in life. And I convey that. And sometimes when I can tell people are just a little bit down or a little bit unsure. Or maybe the moods just a little bit more mellow, then I like to infuse energy and positivity into a situation. Now I run two Friday webinars, I run one weekly that's related to meetings and events and this podcast, and then I run another webinar. That's a moderated panel interview. I run that every other week. And that is related to placemaking and rural tourism and Heritage Area tourism and all the fun marketing and storytelling things. 

 And I would say that rural tourism group is a little bit more on the mellow side, we have a lot of economic developers, we have a lot of Convention and Visitors bureaus and a lot of tourism professionals. And just a lot of huge advocates and community champions that log into that call typically have between 30 and 50 people, we record it and replay it. And I have been nominated the official moderator. I do work on this with a panel of people I'm part of a Marketing Committee for this organization. And I do this. And they said, well, Kristen, you're the best moderator because you're so peppy and upbeat. And I have two people that are part of the organization that log in every other week. And they point out all the time that I say I love this, I love this. I love that. That's so awesome. That's so great. And now I catch myself when I do that. So now at the beginning of every single podcast, I'm just going to burst into laughter because I catch myself doing that. 

And what I told the individual who was telling me this is there's a difference between being fake and being sincere. I truly love what I do. And I love the opportunities that I have. And I love the things that these people are saying these community champions and advocates, the stories that they tell, and the love and impact that they have for their communities. I do just love it. And so I say I love it a lot. And people are like, Kristen, you have a lot of things. Yes, Yes, I do. I love a lot of things. And I love this podcast. And I love every single one of you listening to the podcast today. Normally, on the podcast, I try to choose subjects that have a widespread impact for a lot of people. And therefore I've really kind of stayed away from some of the students' specific subjects. We do talk a lot about different career opportunities, which is relevant to everyone in the industry, a lot of people that transition between different aspects of the industry or didn't know that there was something that was a part of our industry, that is a different career option. And several things have happened in the past couple weeks that have led me to say I need to do a resume session. I have definitely been one of the go to resume people, I would say at all the universities that I've worked at, I used to hire and fire in the industry. I've literally seen 10s of 1000s of applications that have come across my desk that I had to make decisions for. I still see tons and tons and tons of applications. I hire teaching assistants, I hire interns, I do a lot of interviews, but then I'm also a huge person in the industry in terms of involvement. 

So I'm on a lot of boards. We do a lot of applications. We also do a lot of grant applications and funding applications that you have to have a resume or CV. I just see a lot of resumes. And because of my current position, I also try to talk to all of my fellow industry partners about different trends or updates in the industry as well. Because resumes do change and there are certain things that have changed but there's a lot of things that have not changed. It's so you can hear my voice getting louder. I'm super, super passionate about this. And there's just so many resumes out there that are horrible. They were so bad, and they're not truly reflective of the people that they represent. So that has led me to thinking about this topic. It is the end of the semester. 

 So I have a lot of people who are coming to me, Dr. Kay, can you look at my resume? Can you help me with my resume? I helped a couple students last week and a couple of weeks prior, and they were just like, wow, I have no idea how you made the fact that I stood in line at Disney and pointed people whether they were going to fast pass or not going to Fast Pass sound so good. And it's not that I lie or exaggerate. It's just sometimes it's terminology. Instead of saying I stood in the middle of line and pointed people to where they needed to go, you can easily call that effective queue management, which is like its own separate aspect, especially if you are in this world of dealing with large lines and large crowds. Effective crowd management. If you say you did an entire internship that is nothing but name tags and lanyards. Then there's credentialing management credentialing techniques that you can talk about. And sometimes it's just having the right terminology for that.  

Some other interesting things have happened. So how to actually recently, a wide variety of former students from the University of Nevada from K state from U and L. And just people that I've known in the industry that were never my student that have reached out to me saying they wanted to switch into a different aspect, they were no longer happy at their current position, they wanted to switch positions, and they asked me to look at their resumes. And what's interesting to me about that, is oftentimes, these former students or industry professionals haven't updated their resume in a really, really long time. And that's not good. It's really good, it's really important to update your resume. Often, it's one of those things that I do every single year, it's kind of like any annual exam, or a health check, or anything, I always try to do those things right on my birthday, I have a couple of days or a week right around my birthday, or I tried to do all my annual things, because then I'm not forgetting it or thinking about the last time that I did it. 

And I'm quite passionate about resumes. And I wanted to give you guys some tips and tricks of things that I look for in resumes, things that I always tear apart. No matter whether you're a student or an industry professional, I hope that you learn some great things from the tips that I'm about to share. The first thing that I want to share is a little bit more specific to current students. And that is that I do not put the education at the top of my resume ever. Now, it's not to say that you shouldn't be proud of your education, you should definitely absolutely be proud of your education. But the thing that's going to make you stand out is really your experience. Now I always tell people, I say the experience is what helps get you in the door. And then your education is what helps you move up quicker.

And I still stand behind that to this day, if you are getting a job in the hospitality industry, in the event industry, in the service industries, where people want to know that you can have a conversation and think on your feet and really have some of these real world experiences, then your current experiences are so much more valuable right now, to show first on your paper, the average recruiter might only look at your resume for three seconds. And when that happens, they start at the top and they scan the left hand side down to the bottom. And then they typically read the bolded things or the first line of each spot. That's if they even get your resume through all of the pre screening software that's out there. And we'll talk about that here in a minute too. But you really want to make sure that the things that stand out are on the left hand side and the top line of each one. So common things that I see, I see current students who put education at the top, just move it to the bottom, it's still there. It's still super relevant. It's still super important. And there's a lot of people within the university who would tell you put it at the top. 

Well, of course, they're part of the university. They're proud of the fact that you're a student of that program at that university. They want you to highlight it, but a lot of resumes are industry specific and in our specific industry. We do want to put that education at the bottom of your page. It's still there. Still prominent, just move down, move your experience up. That is awesome. The second thing that I often tell students is, there seems to be, I don't know if it's like a recall in your mind. But when you're listing out your jobs, it seems that the automatic thing you put first is the company. And so a lot of people have the company first, which they bold. And then underneath the company, maybe it italicize, maybe it's not, maybe it's also bolded, they put their position. So I tell people all the time, I'm like, people don't care where you worked, they care what you did there, they want to see that you held this marketing position, or this front desk position, or this housekeeping position. They don't care if you were at a Marriott or Hilton, or at the boutique hotel down the street, they want to see what experience you have. 

So that's a very common thing, I'm often switching on resumes to saying, hey, put your actual position above the company name. Because if I'm a recruiter, and I'm only scanning, and I'm only giving your resume three seconds, on the first glance, because I have 1000s of resumes to look through, especially post COVID, where resumes have gone through the roof, as people are looking for new jobs, you want to make sure you're really highlighting your experience, it's your resume, highlight the things that you did. The third thing that I would say, I'm most often switching is just really those bullet points. I think that this is most often best done through just objective conversation and asking other people, if you are just sitting there googling, like common bullet points to put for front desk associates, or if you're looking up on Google, what the front desk associates do, or if you're looking at your job description, and copying and pasting, that doesn't tell your story. 

 So oftentimes, when I sit down with students, and I have their resume, I say, ignore your resume, ignore your job, just tell me what you did. And then oftentimes, my follow up questions include what was like the one thing that you learned the most from, or what was your hardest memory, or what was the thing that you're most proud of that sticks out in your brain. And normally, those highs and lows are key moments that you want to point out in terms of it's a key moment, because you're really proud of a situation that you handled. And since you're passionate about it, and it's the first thing that came to your mind, it's going to stand out in an interview as well. But then also, those low points are normally really key things for what you've learned from that situation. And therefore you can put that as a bullet point of something that you've learned, if you had a situation where you broke down, and you're in the fetal position, and you're crying, you've probably learned a lot from that situation. And the thing that you learned something you want to point out on your resume, also really, really great passion for an interview. I like to start out with these bullet points, because I'm in events, and I'm a little OCD, I do like to have equal bullet points for each job. 

Now, that's not like a hard and fast rule, you can definitely have five bullet points for one and two bullet points for another. I just think subconsciously, as somebody who reads a lot of resumes, that when you put more bullet points on certain positions and less than others, I tend to not view them as equal representations of your history. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes that's not a good thing. If you're putting five bullet points under an internship experience, but to under a full time job. Then naturally, as a recruiter, I'm sitting there saying, Well, most of your experiences as an intern were I know your handheld, or maybe you were just answering the phone. And I tend to downplay some of your real world experience when you were not an intern because you only had two bullet points. 

 So I like to just keep things a little bit equal subconsciously. And again, that's not a hard and fast rule. That's just something that I look for. When I'm looking at those bullet points underneath your job descriptions. I'm also in that first bullet point, because remember, three seconds, you're kind of looking at the actual resume, then I'm like, Ooh, that sounds interesting. I'm gonna look into that a little further. And then typically, I'll read the first bullet point, you want to have some kind of wow story there. You want to have your biggest, strongest, most quantitative bullet point as your first bullet point. So a lot of mine consisted of numbers, so I had the fastest drive thru times in three years. I was able to outsell every single credit card in this company more than the 17 other crew members combined. I had a lot of just no numbers like factual numbers or I hired 17 people I put on an event for 100,000 people I helped to sponsor and fundraise $20,000 for this group or organization for this event I dealt with events from 100 people to a million people, I handled 14 vendors anything that you can put a quantitative number on is something that's going to make you stand out because it's showing an actual story and adding some parameters around it instead of saying I coordinated with vendors and sponsors you're saying I dealt with 17 sponsors at one time and I raised a million dollars I hope that you can see just the difference in those two statements it's kind of like that super vague goal versus that really defined smart objective so almost how you have to think about your resume. 

Clearly i'm very very passionate about this topic of resumes I could talk for so long about resumes and I could if I didn't care as much about my time limit but I do want to mention one thing that I see as a huge trend right now that is not actually a very good thing with the increase with the rise of the love of these marketing programs like canva I see a lot of students and a lot of resumes that are coming up with these super fancy graphical resumes now there's pros and there's cons to everything but what I will definitely say right now is don't do it when it comes to the artificial intelligence on the back end of screening resumes if you download that is a picture if the program that you're using downloads that as high quality pictures on into a pdf document they're not going to be readable by the artificial intelligence screening software's on the back end now a lot of these screening software's and the back end they also require you to type in all of the information they're getting smarter and smarter as they go and that's good for some of these organizations but not all of them do that so when you are downloading this really super fancy resume and it comes out as a picture it's not always readable and so if it's not readable it's not going to actually get through the system and end up on someone's desk there's so many companies now that are using this pre screening software and then these resumes you may not even see them maybe one job has 1000 applications and only 30 make the parameters that that organization has set up maybe they only see 30 resumes and they never even see your resume because it wasn't able to be read by the technology allow other people to tell you no but also make it so that way they can see your resume to tell you now now there are ways around this of course you just have to structure it properly I'm working with one of my interns right now we did her resume. 

I said okay keep all of your resume items as chunks like text box chunks in word but then yes definitely take that picture fade it out make it however you want and then just bring it into your word document as a background image or okay you really want that super fancy header and you want that color that we're going to maximize for printing and view ability on your screen like absolutely do that as an image and then pull it in you can use just that one little thing or put it behind your text so that way your text is still able to be read and then of course always always always always save your resume as a pdf before you send it to anyone and send them the pdf it's amazing to me how many people would send me their resume in word there's so many problems with that so many problems with that just in terms of the formatting if you've adjusted your margins it may not load right if you save it as a pdf at least when I open it I will see it how you intend for me to see it there's so many other tips and tricks that I want to share with you guys things like don't put your address on your resume at all anymore nobody does that anymore it's a huge identity theft issue it also can lead to bias subconscious bias or obvious bias if you are trying to get a job in a different location companies might downgrade you a little bit in their application stack if they feel like you're going to try to negotiate moving costs or if you're not able to start right away in addition to the identity theft just leave your address off of course your email address making sure that it's professional, making sure you're not using that middle school email address. 

 

It's amazing how many of those that I still see come across my desk. Oh my goodness, there's so many things. With that, my dear, dear, dear, lovely, lovely friends. I hope that that was maybe five tips or tricks to just really help you supercharge your resume, get you past some of that artificial intelligence onto somebody's desk, that they can then read your resume and your application, and you can rock it in your interview and get the job of your dreams. I always just love you all so, so much. I hope you have a wonderful day. And I know that time is precious. I know the time is something that's non returnable that you can't get more of that it's just so valuable. And that is why I always end my calls with thank you so much for making the time to take the time to listen, listen to this podcast and to share. 

So, so many people have reached out to just share about the podcast and how much of an impact it's making on their lives. And I'm just so thankful and grateful that I get to share with you each and every week. So thank you all so much for your time. I am so excited about what we have coming up here in the next month or two I'm so excited to share with you. I hope that you all have a fantastic day. Have a fantastic week and I will talk with you soon.