Job-hunting is not fun, especially when you don’t have the right resume. But then again, what is the right resume? It seems there are hundreds of opinions as to what your resume should look like. No wonder would-be employees are so frustrated!
Today we’re going to tackle one common enigma about resume writing…what can you do when you’ve had job titles that don’t reflect the job you actually performed? Our coaching clients struggle with this problem quite often. Usually, what we find is that the job seeker doesn’t know how to articulate what they want to do and what they’re good at. They may not be connecting with their career passion or vision. Many are pretty sure about what they don’t want in their career but not what they do want.
Since titles are only meaningful in context to the what, where and when of a job, it is important to know where you’re headed so you can determine what to do with your titles, if that is a concern for you. Titles are important because they let the reader know a lot about you. If the title was incorrect, that’s a problem. You can’t do much about the past or what has already happened. But you certainly can do something about your future. That’s why we always say that it is critical for you to put the future into your resume.
Let us explain first what we mean by context by giving you some examples. A controller at a $1M company with 20 employees is performing a much different job than a controller at a $100M company with 200 employees. An IT Project Manager in 1983 is doing a different job than an IT Project Manager in 2009. And, my favorite; an Account Executive working at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in Manhattan, NY is exposed to a very different corporate culture than an Account Executive at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in Atlanta, Georgia.
Here are five basic guidelines regarding titles on resumes:
1. There are few true rules in the game of resume writing, so the first thing to know is that you have a lot more flexibility with your creative approach than you might think.
2. Know who you are and where you want to go. Titles mean different things in different companies, so don’t get hung up on the title; make sure you know what kind of job you are looking for so that your resume is tailored to that end. If you don’t know who you are, get a coach to help you find out!
Recently we coached a client that had titles on her resume such as Information Architect, Project Manager, Technical Writer and Documentation Specialist. Turns out, she is all these things, but neither title is what she wants for her future position. What we found out through her coaching session is that she needed help properly contextualizing who she is as to her previous job experience with where she is looking to go and what she wants to create in her current job search. We discovered that her expertise (who she is) is in the area of User Experience, a role that is in high demand and in short supply.
Unlike “Project Manager,” a title that can be found everywhere, “Director of User Experience” will set her apart from her competition. We suggested that she use this “made up” title at the beginning of her resume as part of her Career Vision or Professional Summary. It’s perfectly OK to make up a title in this way.
3. Regarding your past and chronological career history, you have to use the actual titles that you were given by your previous employers – this is a must! Human Resources and/or hiring managers do keep this information as a matter of record on your employee files. Therefore, when references are conducted, your actual title can be exposed. The last thing you want is to have to explain why you changed the title on your resume. Let me take that back. You’ll never get the chance to explain, you simply will not get the job!
4. However, you can be creative by adding a slash (/) or putting into parenthesis the title that better describes what you actually did. For example, if you had a title of Marketing Manager, but what you really did was sales, you could do the following: Marketing Manager/Sales Consultant or you could put Marketing Manager (company equivalent to sales representative). Once you do this, you must illustrate through your bullet points under that role the achievements that support the sales aspect, in this example.
5. Regardless of what titles you’ve had, it’s important to understand that your task is to have a resume that is the least confusing to the reader. If someone has to try to figure out who you are professionally, they are not going to be captivated by your resume long enough to want to call you and invite you for an interview. Clarity and communicating it effectively is KEY.
A candidate that we recently interviewed struggled with titles on his resume that did not match either what he did or what he wanted to do. We steered him towards redesigning a resume that more clearly identified what his strengths were. Through coaching, he discovered how to use his titles while connecting his areas of expertise with what he is passionate about and design a resume that more clearly illustrates what he brings to the table.
If you’re having a hard time designing your resume to be a true reflection of who you are, talk to us about our specialty coaching services. We will customize a session for you to help you identify your areas of passion, assist you in creating a vision for your career and matching these with the most inspired version of yourself possible. We’ll teach you how to distinguish yourself so you can be more competitive in this tough market place. In so doing, you’ll be creating the best possible scenario for working in the profession of your choice while aligning with the position that best represents and expresses the joy of who you are.
Tapping into this type of focus and energy will bring your job search to an exceptional level greatly enhancing your results and the potentials therein.
