The ONLY question hiring managers want answered

Career

The ONLY question hiring managers want answered
by Shana Spooner



Jim wants to be a Vice President. He worked his way up the ladder in a major company. Now, he’s at a standstill. "Since the merger, Scientists are no longer valued. They won’t consider a Scientist for a senior management position. I need my resume to impress both business people and scientists with my qualifications and experience. In particular, what should I do with my resume to make people want to interview me? How can I prove that I would be a good senior manager?"

Jim needs to get the interviews to prove he’s good VP material. Having a good resume is one step to get the interview. That’s the step for which Jim came to me.

Let me begin by describing Jim’s resume. It’s three pages long and written in paragraph format. Jim tried to cram everything he did, everything he accomplished and everything he published into his resume. He knows that it’s not good to have a really long resume so he used a small font size. That way, his resume wouldn’t spill over to yet another page.

Here’s what Jim needs to know and do to beef up his resume:

Before writing his resume, Jim should first list what he loved and hated about past jobs. Then he needs to use his resume to focus ONLY on what he enjoys. That way, Jim is more likely to get a job where he can focus on what he likes to do. From speaking with Jim, I found he loves the activities of (1) turnarounds (2) leadership and (3) relationship building.

Jim must keep in mind that the average reader spends five seconds viewing a resume before deciding to either read further or dump it in the ‘you have great qualifications but go pound sand’ file. Keeping that in mind, Jim needs to use his resume to answer the ONLY question the hiring manager wants to know which is "Will you make me look good?"

With that in mind, Jim needs to use a few targeted bullets that answer the questions: How did I make the company money and how much? How did I save the company money and how much? Who did I build strategic relationships with and to what end?

Examples of bullets that focus on what Jim wants to do in the future and answers the hiring manager’s question, "Can you make me look good?" are: (for turnarounds), "Redesigned work which reduced costs by 30%." (And for relationship building), "Lowered clean-up costs by 65% through building and fostering relationships with multi-national government authorities and scientists."

Here are format suggestions. Jim should use bullets, not paragraphs. He should use an easily readable font such as Ariel or Times New Roman. He needs to use a point level of 11 or 12. A pleasing to the eye resume attracts the reader. Crowded, wordy paragraphs with a small font that’s stylish but not easy to read will go in the circular file.

Jim should delete the last page of his resume. This is where he lists a bibliography of his published articles. The listing pigeonholes Jim as a Scientist. It also has nothing to do with the job he wants. A better way to let people know that he is published is to write one sentence at the end of his resume that states "Published in various national trade magazines.

Jim should write a one-page resume. Being forced to write a one-page resume allows the most important information to stand out. One way he can accomplish this is to list achievements for his past 3 jobs. For positions prior to that, Jim can either list only the company where he was employed along with his job title or he can list one major accomplishment for each job.

Jim needs to remember that the only purpose of a resume is to get the interview. And the only thing a hiring manager wants answered is "Will you make me look good? And can you prove it?" To this end, Jim needs to keep his resume concise and written in high-level business terms. He needs numbers and percentages to prove he made his managers look good through his work in the past.

At the end of our session, Jim commented, "Your resume advice was GREAT! It was also helpful that you reaffirmed my own image as a leader."


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Shana Spooner has been called "a career makeover guru." She provides her clients with clarity on the career direction they would be happiest pursuing and then gives specific actions to get there. Spooner’s makeovers are conducted by telephone so that she