After 15 years of working for multiple employers, I decided to start a brief guide to the Modern Resume for anyone seeking non-academic, private sector employment in the US.   I also decided to write this quick guide because I have spoken with many incredibly talented, unemployed people over the past two years who share a common inability to connect with the hiring process of  mid- to large-size organizations.  The following is based on my personal job hunting, and my professional experience as a former co-founder and operations manager of a multi-million dollar technology consultancy.  Simply put, my life for two years focused on connecting very talented individuals with opportunities.  And in this role I witnessed how recruiters, candidates and managers stagger through the process of matching the right person to the right job.  The resume is only one part of this puzzle, but it remains vital to the process.

Lets begin with the basics.  If you are applying for a job with an established (vs. start-up) organization, two forces will pull at your heartstrings: the need to conform to a template that maximizes readership and circulation, and the desire to appear unique to your audience.  The good news is that you can achieve both objectives with tools already at hand: the list of must-have elements below and an honest appraisal of your skills and achievements.  And so your template is a legible collection, ordered as indicated, of the following information in 2-3 electronic formats: MS Word(.doc), Text(.txt), and PDF(.pdf):

1. Your full name, address, preferred telephone number and email address; Blog URL &/or Twitter info if applicable.  Link to your LinkedIn Profile.
2. A four-to-six line professional summary referring to yourself in the 3rd person (by name, not ‘I’ or ‘you’)
3. A chronological list of previous employers; 1-3 sentences describing your role, and a bulleted list of results delivered (quantified where possible)
4. Graduate and Undergraduate university degree programs completed; honors received at either (or both) and cumulative GPA if you have less than 8 years of work experience
5. Professional certifications
6. Exhaustive list of technical skills, duplicated as necessary to reflect common vernacular (e.g. MS Office, Excel, Word; Object Oriented Design (OOD))

The length of your resume should generally reflect the number of years you have been in the workforce according to the following guidelines:

• 5 years or less: 1-2 pages
• 5-15 years: 2 pages
• 20+ years: no more than 3 pages, no less than 2 full pages

Use conventional fonts (e.g. Times New Roman) of reasonable sizes (10-12pt) with restrained application of bold, underline, italics and spacing.  If you must, go crazy with margins to liberate space.  This approach will focus attention on the content of your resume and minimize the visual garble created when submitting the resume on-line.  What about the temptation to organize your work experience in some creative way on the page?  At best, you will impress a hiring manager.  But that individual, if they find your resume in the first place, will ask you to reformat it (and probably resubmit on-line) in order to satisfy the needs of HR.  A recruiter will probably ignore it and move to the next candidate.  What if you are are applying for a job in advertising and the urge to appear creative is irresistible?  Or what if you are a consultant who served many clients while working for a single employer?  Consider using the resume as a summary of key projects and creating a separate portfolio or list of sample projects to demonstrate key skills or thought-leadership.  Creativity may be demonstrated by your expert use (or integration) of multiple channels: a resume, Web site, and LinkedIn profile for example.  Again, the resume is only one part of the puzzle.

So now that we have covered the basics lets focus on the issue of appearing unique, of standing out in the crowd and attracting executive attention.  The good news is that the most effective way to appear unique is to honestly convey and connect your aspirations and achievements.  How does this work?  Start with your professional summary;  do not waste space with empty adjectives such as “experienced” or “dynamic.”  State your name, years of experience, industries served, primary function(s) and scope of responsibility (e.g. size of teams or projects managed, depth of research conducted).  Begin or end with a sentence that describes your professional raison d’etre two years from now as if you are already there.  This is one of my favorite examples, taken from a business school friend:

Experienced finance and operations leader with 12+ years in top tier management consulting, technology services and successful new ventures; 8 years managerial experience supervising large global teams. Interested in early to mid stage companies that require strong injection of operational discipline to get to the next level of success.

A bit dry (and he used the word ‘Experienced’), but it is simple, succinct and effective.  To emphasize the point contrast this gem with one of many terrible examples I have received:

To seek a challenging career with scope for development where in my knowledge and skills can be used for my growth along with the organization.

The professional summary is a great place to demonstrate strong communication skills…if you have them.  Strong applicants use the professional summary to set the tone for further conversation.  If English is not your first language have an expert review these few lines; a hiring manager will look first at your use of grammar and then for more subtle qualities such as word choice.  Mistakes stand out like tall red flags.  Carefully chosen words distinguish exceptional candidates from the lot.

The chronological list of employment must support and amplify the professional summary.  In the above example, my friend lists several years of employment at a top-tier management consulting firm; his LinkedIn profile also includes recommendations from the CEO of this firm in addition to a select group of mid-level executives.  His work history reflects and enriches the summary statement and lends credibility to his stated interest in “early to mid-stage companies” even though his direct start-up experience is minimal.  Alignment between the professional summary and history builds support for major career moves, and creates a persona that distinguishes you (and your resume) from the pack.

A challenge of the Modern Resume that hobbles most applicants is speaking to three audiences at once: the Hiring Manager, the Recruiter, and the Internet.  Today there is a pseudo-science of search engine optimization (SEO) that one may safely ignore while writing a resume.  Clearly addressing the needs of the hiring manager and the recruiter are paramount; if you get that right the Internet will mostly take care of itself.  Hiring managers and recruiters have several interests in common:

• The total number of years of experience
• Experience working  for similar companies (or competitors), in a role similar (or identical) to the one under consideration
• Applicable skills and compensation expectations

That said, a hiring manager and recruiter have vastly different incentives and interests in potential candidates.  For a hiring manager, quality is paramount; will you bring complimentary skills and new perspectives to my team?  How will you fit into our organization’s culture?  Can you hit the ground running or will we need to provide significant on-the-job training?  What results have you delivered?  In contrast, a recruiter thinks about quantity of candidates first and therefore has the following in mind: Will I look like an idiot for submitting this candidate to the manager?  Does this candidate have qualifications in his/her background that have succeeded in our organization (e.g. graduated from a university popular among employees)?  What is the candidate’s current title and level?  Are the right skills (as articulated by keywords) present in the resume and balanced against the entire pool of candidates I am suggesting?  Are the basics factually correct (e.g. name and address)?  Is this person complying with HR processes and standards to make my job easier?

How does one speak to both core audiences?  Follow the template as described above to make the recruiter’s job easy.  For each previous employment listing include a few lines that describe your role to a hiring manager, and bullet points stating both the results delivered and how you achieved them (e.g. “Increased sales by 40%; created cross-sell analysis using SAS”).  Inventory your technical skills at the end, organized by function or type, so that a recruiter and a computer can do a quick look-up.  But do not abuse this space with skills or tools that you have not actually experienced.  Again, credibility is built like a mountain; it grows from base to peak without question or interruption.

The last step, speaking to the Internet, is often the greatest unknown (and hence the greatest concern) to applicants.  The good news is that 99% of the work has nothing to do with the Internet: keep your template simple; build authenticity by aligning your professional summary with a solid history of achievement; and make the recruiter’s job easy by organizing key data for rapid consumption.  Once completed, simply save your resume in three formats.  MS Word for hard-copy (to bring to an interview), email or for Internet sites that allow you to upload from Word; Text for Internet sites that only allow you to upload text files or cut & paste your resume into a form.  A PDF is the electronic equivalent of a nice, ivory paper and is well suited for email; your resume will appear in a standard format difficult for humans (or Microsoft) to accidentally edit.  The Internet creates new avenues for information sharing but the principles of effective communication remain largely the same.  Traditional media may be dying, but the ability to communicate with impact and influence is recession-proof.