Surgeons on Strike; Doctors & Nurses Convene
Candidates Aplenty: Steve McGrath
Corrections or additions?
These articles by Kathleen McGinn Spring were prepared for the January 29, 2003 edition of U.S.
1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
New Rules for Resumes: Susan Guarneri
Resume rules change more quickly than the seasons, and
with each evolution they become more rigid. Once upon a time, when
a big issue was whether to play it safe and print on cream-colored
stock or to be bold and go with pale blue, few misjudgments were fatal.
Now, an infraction against a resume rule could easily send the vital
document straight to the trash. Well, not actually the trash, but
rather a black hole in cyberspace.
Susan Guarneri is the owner of Lawrenceville-based career counseling
firm Guarneri Associates (www.resume-magic.com and www.careermagiccoach.com)
and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer. “People tell me
they sent out 100 resumes, and got no responses,” she says of
a common scenario. Of course, there’s no telling for sure what forces
were at work, but, she says, the reason for the resounding silence
could have been something as simple as leaving the subject line on
the E-mail carrying the resume blank.
Employers and executive recruiters now overwhelmingly prefer an electronic
resume to one printed on paper. Once the E-resume is received, it’s
all about getting it into a database. Quickly. Some resumes will make
it no farther. Those that make it to the next level — a trip to
the printer — will have made the cut, in no small part, because
they were written not with a human reader in mind, but rather with
an eye toward wowing a piece of software.
So job seekers need to know how to create a resume that will wow a
keyword-scanning piece of software, and they need to know how to transmit
that resume to an employer in a manner that ensures that he will open
the E-mail, be able to get the resume into his database quickly, and
will see a clean, relatively short document when he prints it out.
Guarneri explains how to accomplish all of this when she speaks on
“The Electronic Resume” on Monday, February 3, at 7:30 p.m.
at a meeting of the Job Club, a networking and support group for job
hunters, at the Unitarian Church in Princeton. Call 609-771-1669 or
E-mail to susan@careermagiccoach.com.
“A seven-year-old resume is really old,” says Guarneri. So
old that it is useless. That is because optical character reading
(OCR), introduced into personnel departments in or around 1993, has
shifted the job of resume review from humans to machines. “Only
the very largest companies used OCR at first,” says Guarneri.
Now, however, nearly all employers use the technology. “It’s cheaper,”
she gives as one reason for the change. Back in 1993, and up through
most of the 1990s and even into the new century, OCRs spent a good
amount of their time on paper resumes, received by snail mail. Now
that most companies prefer to receive resumes electronically, the
documents go straight to databases, where software searches for keywords
in the same way that OCRs do.
Efficient, speedy, and non-discriminatory, the software is not as
flexible as the human mind. “It can’t figure out where you would
fit in the company, what job would be good for you,” says Guarneri.
They search for specific information, and categorize resumes based
on what they “see,” not what they intuit. There are no “Ah!”
moments when the machine, pausing to study a resume, thinks “I
never thought of it before, but this guy would be perfect for that
recreational director/corporate outing position I have been meaning
to create.”
No, the resume must be oh-so-clear on exactly where its owner would
fit in, and on what open position he is qualified to fill. “Employers
and recruiters are telling me they want `quick match’ candidates,”
says Guarneri. Matching up in the age of evaluation-by-software means
crafting a resume with just the right keywords, and then transmitting
it so that it is easy to open, print, and read. Here is Guarneri’s
advice on getting it right:
Figure out your focus. Some clients ask Guarneri for ageneric resume they can use for the three of four types of jobs theywould be happy landing. “It doesn’t work,” she says. “Ittotally confuses the system.” For each resume you must be clearon whether you want to land a position, for example, as a geriatricsocial worker or a teacher of social work at the graduate school level.Search newspapers and the Internet. Find job listingsfor the exact position you seek. Then make a table of all the keywordsyou find. “It’s basically an extraction process,” says Guarneri.”Extract all relevant words based on knowledge, skills, and abilities.”Separate required from desired. Count how many times eachkeyword appears in the ads you have cut out or downloaded. Then rankthem. The words that appear the most are “required” words.The ones that appear almost as frequently are “desired” words.For example, the social worker might find “MSW” in every ad,and “clinic” in 6 ads out of 10. The ubiquitous words mustbe included in the resume, and they must make it in more than once.Words that appear a little less frequently should be included if possible.Software separates job candidates based on the keywords it finds.If every required word turns up, the candidate joins those being consideredfor the job. If many of the desired words are present, too, he movesup in the pack, and gets closer to an interview.Get the keywords up high. Create a qualifications summarynear the top of the resume, and pack it with keywords. Here is anexcerpt from a resume Guarneri just worked on with a manager in thefinancial services industry. “Finance manager with in depth experiencein financial administration and property management, proven abilityto develop and manage client relations, insuring high productivity.Experience includes administrative management, commercial propertymanagement, project management, accounts payable, cash management,billing, and visual practice management software (VPM).”Use synonyms. Notice that the last item, the softwarewith which this manager has experience, is both written out and givenas initials. Some electronic resume readers will search both ways,but others will not. So, for example, be sure to get in words bothin their fully-spelled-out form and in their abbreviated form.Repeat keywords in the body of the resume. Some of Guarneri’sclients think it is only necessary to get the keywords in up high.Not so. Employers look for support for the knowledge, skills, andabilities enumerated at the top. They should find it in details ofwork history, education, awards, and professional affiliations mentionedfarther down.Follow the rules. Name always goes on top of the resume.”Not the word `resume,’ but name. Always name,” says Guarneri.Next comes the qualifications summary, and make sure to include allrelevant degrees, certifications, and licenses in this section. Shesees many clients who put education down at the bottom of the secondpage, but the software may not get that far, and will toss them outfor not having the degree or degrees that it is programmed to seeas required keywords. More details on degrees, certifications, andlicenses can be added after work experience, which should be listedin reverse chronological order.Paste the resume into an E-mail window. After all thework is done, and the keyword resume is complete, prepare it for theE-mail window. Do not just send it as an attachment. “I know recruiterswho refuse to open any attachments at all,” says Guarneri. Mostemployers are leery too. Viruses, including a virulent one named “resume”that circulated recently, have everyone scared.To make sure your resume is not summarily deleted, send it in thebody of an E-mail. Prepare it to be sent this way by saving it asan Ascii file. When you do so, a menu will appear. Choose the “textonly with line breaks” option. Then rename the file, close thewindow, and look for the notepad icon on the desktop. Open the notepad,count 65 characters — including spaces — and insert a hardreturn. Then put in a hard return at the end of 65 characters in eachline. This takes time. “There’s no way around it,” says Guarneri.But omit this step and the resume will appear in the E-mail windowas one long paragraph.Prepare an attachment. Sending an E-mail stating thata resume is attached is no good, but that said, there should be aresume attachment in addition to the resume in the body of the E-mail.This is so, says Guarneri, because an employer might want to printout the resume.The Ascii version of the resume in the body of the E-mail is, of necessity,stripped of all its formatting, including bolding and bullets. Anattachment will look a lot better. It will also be shorter. Becauseof the small number of characters per line in an E-mail window, anE-mail prints out about twice as long as an attachment. A two-pageresume printed from an attachment will be four pages long if it isprinted from the E-mail window. The shorter, better formatted documentis more pleasing to the humans who take over when the keyword softwarehas done its job.The attachment can be sent as a Word or RTF document, but Guarnerisays it is a good idea to consider sending it as a pdf file instead.Opened with Adobe Acrobat, a free program most employers use, thepdf file “really is a picture,” says Guarneri. It will lookexactly the same as a paper resume — bolding, color, stylish bulletsand all.Add a cover letter. Prepare a short cover letter, justtwo brief paragraphs, and use it as an introduction to the resumethat follows in the E-mail.Pack the subject line with information. Never send a resumeby E-mail without filling in the subject line. That is how virusesoften are sent. Employers and recruiters know this and often deleteE-mails carrying no subject line without ever opening them.Many job hunters just put the word “resume” into the subjectfile. That is no good, says Guarneri. It just forces the overworkedrecipient — an employer or recruiter, who may receive hundredsof resumes daily — to rename the file. When responding to a postingfor a specific job, start the subject line with the job code. Followit with a dash. An “n” dash, Guarneri states, convinced thatnothing should be left to chance. “That’s the short dash,”she explains. Leave a space on either side of the dash, type in lastname, followed by a dash, and job title, followed by another dash,and then years of experience.The subject line can be rounded off with anything that sets the candidateapart, perhaps an MBA or other advanced degree, knowledge of an highly-desirablecomputer language, or niche experience. This sounds like a lot, butGuarneri points out that subject line holds from 60 to 80 characters,and that it is perfectly all right to use standard abbreviations.The focus of resume preparation has shifted from personalityto technical knowledge and a firm grasp of what keyword software looksfor, and Guarneri says this is not a bad thing. “I’ve seen toomany people who don’t figure out what they want to do, and put iton others,” she says. With the keyword resume, there is no waffling,no “Gee, I don’t know exactly what I want to do. I just want towork with people.” The job candidate must be crystal clear aboutwho he is and just exactly where he fits in.Top Of PageSurgeons on Strike; Doctors & Nurses ConveneNew Jersey’s surgeons are threatening to cancel allelective surgery on Monday and Tuesday, February 3 and 4, to drawattention to what they say is a critical problem in getting malpracticeinsurance. As it happens, the Women’s Heart Foundation and RobertWood Johnson Medical School are holding a medical conference thatday.Mehmet Oz, author of “Healing from the Heart,” is thekeynote speaker of “Getting to the Heart of It: Interventionsto Improve Women’s Outcomes,” on Monday, February 3, from 11:30a.m. to 7 p.m. at the medical school at 125 Paterson Street in NewBrunswick. Cost: $30 for nurses, $65 for physicians. Call 609-771-9600.Other speakers will be Lou-Anne Beauregard, clinical associateprofessor of medicine, and Bonnie Arkus, founder of the Women’sHeart Foundation.Beauregard hopes to point out the gender bias that women encounter.”Women need to know about the manifestations of heart diseasefor us, as women, as well as to have a better understanding of epidemiologicaland clinical research that is taking place in these areas,” shesays. Among the topics to be discussed as they relate to women arethe use of estrogen for heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias, underutilizedpacemakers and ICDs, and shortness of breath as it relates to congestiveheart failure.Perhaps surgeons not planning to be in the operating room will havea better opportunity to attend this conference.Top Of PageCandidates Aplenty: Steve McGrathEmployers are still looking for a few good men (or,of course, women) to fill senior positions. “There is a criticalneed for salespeople and sales managers, right up to the v.p. level,”says Steve McGrath, founder and president of McGrath & Associates(609-844-7579), an executive recruitment firm with offices in thePrinceton Pike Corporate Center. “There’s a pretty good demandfor scientists and engineers, too,” he adds. “Mechanical engineersare in great demand.” And while there are not as many opportunitiesfor chemical engineers right now, the market is pretty good for electricaland manufacturing engineers.That’s the good news. Those are the bright spots in an economy thatis still refusing to turn around. “Since I’ve been in business,”says McGrath, who founded his company in 1995, “I’ve never seenso many people available. We have more candidates than at any pointsince we started.” Certain industries, he says, “have beendecimated.” His firm specializes in placing executives with companiesin the financial services, pharma/healthcare, consulting, and hightech industries. In that group, the only sector he immediately thinksto list as doing well is medical devices.While the overall economic climate leaves a lot to be desired, strongcandidates are getting jobs, and McGrath says his is one of the fewexecutive recruiting firms willing to work with those candidates.Like most recruiters, McGrath goes out and finds most of the executiveshe places. Typically, they are sitting at desks, more or less happilyemployed, when he calls with an opportunity. Unlike most recruiters,he and his staff are willing to spend time with candidates, many ofthem downsized executives, who come to them.”I spend one day a week working with candidates,” says McGrath.He does this because he might find a perfect match for a client, andalso because “you never know where business comes from.” Inother words, it is entirely possible that one of these out-of-workexecutives will one day be in a position to retain an executive searchfirm. “People have long memories,” says McGrath.When executives do come to him, McGrath puts them through their paces.”It’s a process,” he says of the road to a good, new job.He finds that many executives don’t quite grasp how the process works,but provides insight when he speaks on “What the Recruiter Can— and Can’t — Do for You” on Tuesday, February 4, at 7:30p.m. at a free meeting of Jobseekers, a networking and support groupfor downsized workers, at Trinity Church in Princeton. Call 609-924-2277.McGrath earned a degree in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechin 1974 and an MBA from Wharton in 1977. He went into management consultingand found the part of the business he liked the best was selling consultingservices. After nearly 20 years, he decided that “if I can sellX million for you guys, I can sell some smaller amount for myself.”He left his corporate job, set up his own shop, called up all of hisformer clients, and soon had a substantial roster of clients.The way McGrath started his company points toward what he considersto be the key process downsized executives need to employ in lookingfor a new position — targeted networking. Here is how to honenetworking skills.Reach out to people with entree. Most people think theyknow how to network, but, says McGrath, there are relatively few goodnetworkers. “You need to find the people who can open doors foryou,” he says, acknowledging that this is far easier said thandone.Offer help before asking for help. After identifying thesepriceless contacts, find out how you can help them. “Understandwhat they’re looking for,” says McGrath. Shortly after the meeting,and armed with an idea of how you can be of service, follow-up.Look for a personal referral. Most of the candidates withwhom McGrath & Associates agree to work come through referrals.That is also the way most people land in good jobs. “Identifycompanies you would like to work for, and then work your way in throughreferrals,” is McGrath’s advice.Don’t worry about being unemployed. Being out of workno longer carries even the hint of disgrace. In fact, McGrath saysthat on at least a few occasions he has counseled job changers toleave their current jobs in order to devote all of their energy tolooking for a better job. “If you’ve been out of work for twoyears, that’s a red flag,” he says. But no networking contact— and no employer — will care if you have been downsized.Networking, along with research, carefully targeted online resumepostings, and polished interview skills all require work — morework than many job hunters expect. “A lot of people who approachus make the assumption that we have jobs sitting on the shelf,”says McGrath. But no, he declares: “It’s their responsibilityto find a job, not ours.”Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
