Monday, February 14, 2011

Constructing Billy Skywalker's Resume: No Experience




The dunkel ales were going down the gullets of Bobby Solo and Billy Skywalker like a fine wine. Each drop being savored by the taste buds, often starved for moisture on this desert planet.

"You asked me what you should put on your resume if you have no experience," Bobby Solo started. "Lets pretend you have no sales experience but that is the job you are applying for. When you list your employment, try and and find elements in your job that are related to sales to include as your bullet points. For example this radio job:"
SWAMP RADIO (103.7 FM)-DAGOBAH 5/92-6/95
Promotions Assistant
•acting Promotions Director 6/1-10/92, 8/20-9/15/92
Air Personality
•organization, set-up, operation of SWAMP Radio's Maritime Days Promotion, handling $65,000 dollars in station revenue
•organization, set-up, operation of SWAMP Radio's client remote broadcasts
•weekend/weekday evenings and overnights
•sub for full-time announcers
•remote production/appearances
•network spot production
•morning drive news production/board operator

"Some of these are sales related. As Promotions Director you are dealing with clients. Running the promotions also deals with clients. Even though you are not selling the clients directly, your actions in promotions are reinforcing the sale by dealing with customers in a positive, professional way. Since sales is about dealing with people, that experience can translate into sales skills, especially the soft skills" explained Solo. "Here is how I would rewrite that job:"
SWAMP RADIO (103.7 FM)-DAGOBAH 5/92-6/95
Promotions Assistant
•acting Promotions Director 6/1-10/92, 8/20-9/15/92
•Worked directly with 17 business owners and station clients to organize and execute their advertising promotion campaigns that generated $3,999-$55,000 in station revenue per campaign
•Wrote and presented 17 advertising plans to business owners and and station clients explaining how their ad campaigns would successfully drive customers to their businesses
•Reviewed commercial production with clients to make sure it was correct for their ad campaign
•organization, set-up, operation of SWAMP Radio's Maritime Days Promotion, handling $65,000 dollars in station revenue
•organization, set-up, operation of SWAMP Radio's client remote broadcasts

"If all you have is your education and you've never sold anything in real life, I would spin the bullet points on my past jobs, whether they are in fast food or retail, to talk about the customer service, management, or supervisory experience I have along with any other people skills that an employer could find important."

"If you are applying for a technical job and all you have is classroom experience you can still list that experience in the same way you would if you had real world experience. Something like this:"
MOS EISLEY TECHNICAL COLLEGE, MOS EISLEY 2009-2012
Lab Work
• Software installation, upgrades and configuration for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Office, and various anti-virus, malware, spyware software
• Implementation of event auditing, software installation, publishing package, and password policies through Active Directory
• Configuration of group policy and local security policy.
• 50 installations of Red Hat Linux
• Creation and management of 60 Linux user accounts.
• 7 months using Microsoft SQL Server to do queries and manage databases
• Monitoring system performance
• 48 installations of anti-virus programs, firewalls, intrusion detection systems

"The key is to give an employer an understanding of what you did in class so they have a starting point to ask you questions. If they know you understand a little about SQL they will ask you questions about SQL and what you already know. If you just list "SQL" in some sort of list of skills or key words, they won't know your level of experience and might ask you something you have no idea about and that makes you look bad. You have experience. It is just in the class room rather than the real world so explain it just like it was a job in the real world."

Ev Note:
The complete resume is next blog...
Thanks for reading!
Ev
"A Heck of A Nice Guy"


This is a nine part series on how to write a good resume.
Here are links to the other parts:
Pt. 2 Career Objective
Pt. 3 Education
Pt. 4 Length
Pt. 6 Detailed Bullet Points
Pt. 7 Age
Pt. 8
No Experience
Pt. 9
Final Resume

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