Your resume is like your own personal commercial. It is a snap shot of you, your most important qualities, and your skills and talents. The purpose of your resume is to gain attention. Therefore, you must always be positive and focus on your best attributes. Remember, there are several other candidates applying for every job, and your resume must get your foot in the door for an interview.

Who are you writing your resume for? Normally, two people are going to look at your resume. The first person is a human resources manager. This person works at the company you will be applying to. They look at candidates at the broadest level. They ensure you meet the minimum qualifications or requirements for the job. Sometimes, the HR Manager will also spot check a resume for accuracy. Often, the HR Manager is the first hurdle in getting an interview. From a pool of resumes, they select only a few of the best candidates. These resumes are forwarded to the other member of your resume audience — the supervisor.

The supervisor, regardless of the actual job title (manager, consultant, etc.) is the person you would be working for if you were hired. This person will be looking for very specific skills, knowledge or experiences that qualify you for the job. Since this person may have several resumes to go through (in addition to normal work duties) they may only look at your resume for one to two minutes. In that time they are judging whether you are worth following up with an interview.

This may seem harsh, but it is the nature of the business. Do not view this as an obstacle. Instead, turn it to your advantage. There is where we must address some resume rules:

1. Companies do not hire resumes, they hire people.

— Remember that the resume is the first step of a long process. This process involves people and that is what the company is looking for. Every interaction you have with this company (especially your resume, but also phone calls, interview, etc.) reflects you and what kind of person you are, so be professional.

2. Be clear, be concise, be correct.

— To be "clear" you must avoid slang, jargon, acronyms, or abbreviations that he reader may not understand. You should also use an accepted format, like chronological or functional, to guide the reader.

— To be "concise" you must avoid all articles. For instance, do not say "I fixed my company’s distribution problem by logging all pending transactions." when you could say "Fixed company’s distribution problems by creating transaction log."

—   To be "correct" do not unnecessarily embellish your participation in a project. Also, do not claim a particular expertise when you are only slightly familiar with something (like a computer language, foreign language, or piece of equipment.) On the other hand, do not be shy. If you have novice or introductory training in something, let them know. That way they don’t waste training dollars on a skill you already have.

3. Positive actions pay.

When describing what you have done, always focus on the positive actions you have taken to improve your area, master your job, or solve problems. When describing your past experiences, don’t say you went to work everyday for 5 years and made no meaningful contribution. Instead, tell them about the time you were awarded for good performance, or how you were promoted to positions of greater responsibility. Show them that not only can you do your job, but you also do it well!

Now let us look at some resume types and talk about why we use them:

Should you use a chronological or functional resume?

If you only have one or two specific specialties AND you followed a sequential promotion process in one or two companies, use a chronological resume format. (For example, first you were a personnel clerk. Next you were a senior personnel clerk. Then you changed organizations and became a section chief for a personnel section. Following that you were in charge of a personnel division for a company.) The chronological resume format best supports this kind of situation.

If you worked for many different organizations in many different capacities you may want to use the functional resume format. (For example, first you were a property manager. Next, you moved and became a manager of a distribution point. Later, you were a logistics planner/analyst. In your last job you were in charge of a trucking company. In this case you could use Management, Logistics, and Distribution as areas of functional expertise.)

Now we need to talk about the content of your resume:

RangerBuddy.com uses its Targeting and Tailoring Process™ for resume writing. With this method, we target our audience, and then we tailor the content of the resume to fit the audience. While you are very interested in how to tailor your resume content, take a moment to understand why targeting is more important.

In archery, which is better? To wildly hurl arrows down range and hope they hit something or to pick a particular target and aim only at it? Well, if you have no archery skills you may think that not aiming may be a better strategy. For the experienced archer, however, aiming at a target is critical. While we may not make you a seasoned resume writer/editor, we do intend to give you sufficient knowledge and information so you can develop a good resume writing plan.

Targeting allows you to focus all your energies at one point. Targeting helps you make the best of your efforts and prevents wasted time and energy. Job searching is similar to our archery analogy. Too often, candidates scatter general resumes about, handing them to anyone. With this method there is no quality control. You could be handing your Computer Programmer resume to a restaurant manager looking for a bus boy! The worst part is you just wasted time, effort, and resources. We recommend you target your resumes so they are going to the audience that wants them.

Targeting begins when you decide what it is you want to do. Some blessed individuals know exactly what they want. For most, there is uncertainty and fear in knowing how to translate military skills into civilian/commercial jobs. Banish these thoughts! If anything, you should find an easy time assimilating into the civilian work force. Military people are experts at ingenuity, initiative, leadership, and teamwork. What company would not want these skills? A good guide is to focus on things in your current job you enjoy and try to find those traits in another job. In fact here is the best job advice we can give:

Find something you enjoy, something that will challenge you and help you grow. If you can find something like that and it lets you use all your best talents and qualities, then that is the job for you.

If you are still having trouble deciding, talk to friends, take skills inventory, or just peruse some job listings. Maybe something will spark an interest in you. For now, we are going to assume you have a general idea of what you want to do.

Once you have found the job you are interested in, find out what companies have those kinds of jobs. The Internet is the best tool for quickly researching companies. As an example, go to your favorite search engine and type in consultant. If you do this in multiple search engines, you would probably see company links like Andersen Consulting, Delloitte and Touche, Ernst and Young, and maybe Price-Waterhouse-Coopers. Likewise, if you searched for defense consulting, a search engine might reveal Booz-Allen-Hamilton. If you are interested in Defense Consulting, you might check out Booz-Allen's website (www.bah.com). There you will see Booz-Allen speaking Booz-Allen's language. As you read through the site, you see them talk about what is important to them. When they describe their job vacancies, they list certain prerequisites and skills in very specific language.

As you write your resume, thing about that language. Use it subtly, but write to make their HR Managers feel comfortable with the fact that you have the knowledge, skills, and experience they are looking for. Show them you understand what they want and need in an employee. Face it, you have had many experiences. Use the ones that "fit" the company you are writing to. Take the defense consultant job again. If you have only had two jobs (one as a military intelligence analyst and one as a manager of a video rental store) you need to talk about the information that relates to defense consulting. Therefore, talk about the military analysis stuff and gloss over the video rental place. However, if you had zero management experience in you military analyst job and the Defense Consulting job wants to see some management experience, then highlight your management skills also.

As you can see, resume writing under the Targeting and Tailoring Process™ requires a lot of research. The targeting process helps you identify the jobs you are interested in so you can tailor your content to match the company. Here at RangerBuddy.com we strongly urge you all to spend some time reviewing this system. In the long run, it will prove quite helpful.

Now here is an outline to follow for the Targeting and Tailoring Process™.

DETERMINE YOUR INTERESTS, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

List on some paper all the things that interest you, all the individual skills you have, and any special abilities you know of.

Interests are the things you spend your free time on (like reading, sports, computer games, etc.)

Skills are things you have learned about or how to do (like a degree in management, translate French, organize files, lead people, etc.)

Abilities are things you are good at with out practice (good with numbers, great at meeting people and talking to them, great long distance runner, etc.)

DETERMINE THE THINGS YOU LIKE

Once you have this list, look and see which of these things you most enjoy. Find a combination of them that you could do for work. For instance, you may love sports, know how to speak Spanish, and find it easy to talk to people. If those are the attributes that you enjoy the most, why not find a job that lets you use them.

RESEARCH THE MARKET

Now go to an Internet search engine and type in "sports, Spanish, people, Virginia (or whatever other state you are interested in working in.)" When we did this, we saw a company that does Sports Marketing. Some of their jobs included selling advertising space at local sporting arenas. Do this again in other search engines and find a few jobs you are interested in.

IDENTIFY COMPANIES

Once you have found some jobs you want to pursue, research the companies. Check out their websites, search through newspapers for articles about them, and get a feel for their language. Look for what is important to them. Do they mention integrity a lot? How about teamwork? A newspaper article mentions one of the companies is opening a new store in Texas. They could be looking for Spanish speakers.

INVENTORY YOUR LIFE

Now it is time to look at content! Inventory you professional job experiences. Lets start with your Education. Beginning with the most recent school you attended, write down the following:

School Name. School Location. Dates attended.

Degree/Training received. Grade/GPA.

Awards, honors, opportunities.

Continue this process with other schooling back to but NOT including high school.

Do not include short course work you may have received on the job. For instance, if you had a 2-hour class on Race Relations, do not include it in your Education. While you do want to keep track of these classes, they will not be listed here.

Next, list your previous work experience. Starting with your most recent job and working backwards, write down the following:

Company Name. Position Title. Dates.

Normal duties. Accomplishments.

Do not limit yourself to space at this point. While resumes should only be one to two pages, this inventory of your experiences should be all-inclusive.

TAILOR YOUR CONTENT

Once you have your list. Find common threads of accomplishments that relate to the job you are interested in. Circle these experiences.

Now you are tailoring your content. Identify two to three of the accomplishments that relate to your prospective job and list them again on a new page. Read these listings and see if they are in the same language as the job vacancy you read. If the vacancy is talking about a project manager and your experience is as a team leader, write it as Team Leader, but talk about how you managed people. If the vacancy is talking about forecasting and your job was as an Analyst, write it as Analyst, but talk about how you forecasted enemy movements.

WRITE YOUR RESUME

Now that you have your content, write the resume. Remember to use one of the formats (chronological or functional.) When you are finished, the most important thing you can do with it is PROOFREAD!