SPEAKERS CORNER: Lloyd Feinstein ~ Preparing Your Resume for the Hiring Audience

By Beatrice Barone
Does your resume speak to the right audience?  At his compelling September 24 presentation, Lloyd Feinstein (Career Marketing Consultants) tells you how to prepare your resume for the hiring audience—which is not Human Resources, unless that is your industry.
Feinstein urges job seekers to think like the hiring executive who typically delegates all but two things:
1)    Power over hiring and firing.
2)    Information flow.  A tip to capitalize on this point and get directly to a hiring manager is to send them a letter with a hook line as the first sentence to catch their attention.  Do not attach your resume which will only get the letter opened and sent to directly to HR without the hiring executive’s ever reading it.
The sale:
A key job search problem is the sale; you want to make sure you are selling yourself to the hiring executive.  Feinstein recommends Neil Rackham’s book Spin Selling: “If the interviewer can’t sell you to their boss, they won’t present you to their boss!”
Make it easy for the interviewer to buy into you and sell you to the hiring manager:

• Do not have any gaps in your resume
• Provide full disclosure by including all dates and complete work history

Feinstein shared statistics from USA Today, GAO and ADP showing that 36 to 44 percent of people lie on their resumes.
The Marketing Resume vs. the Traditional Resume

Answer Three Hiring Decision Basics/Questions:
To conquer the sales issue and market yourself to the hiring executive, your resume needs to answer three hiring decision basics/questions:
These first two items combined total (10 percent) of the decision-making
1)    Can you do the job technically?
Do not just bullet a skill.  Explain the skill set.  Use parenthesis and industry jargon.
2)    Have you solved our type of problems?
Include P-A-R (Problem, Action, Result) stories
The third point makes up 90 percent of the decision
3)    Is there good chemistry; will you fit? 
This is your (A) Fit, (B) Chemistry and (C) Personality.  Your fit is how people see you (management style, communication, interpersonal, negotiating skills, personal mission statement/how you will function day in and day out)
Hiring Process Example

Resumes Received = 715
Candidates Phone Screened = 30
Candidates Interviewed = 7
Hired = the 1 with ALL of A-B-C (90 percent)
Feinstein opened his presentation with a quote from Buddha, “Believe nothing unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” Returning to that quote at the end of his presentation, he asked participants, which resume format best satisfies the hiring decision basics?
The answer: Use the Marketing Resume
Lloyd L. Feinstein, President, Career Marketing Consultants of Monroe, New Jersey; is co-author of Career Changing: The Worry-Free Guide, a book which has received wide acclaim including syndication by The New York Times, excerpted by The Wall Street Journal and Success Magazine, and selected as one of the top ten career books by USA TODAY. He can be reached at 609-655-7730 or www.careermarketingforlife.com.