Executive Resumes, Personal Branding & Executive Job Search

 Photo courtesy of Mat Robinson of Enduring Images Studio

“If someone doesn’t have a photo of himself on his LinkedIn profile, I’m not inclined not to trust him,” a hiring manager said the other day. Many people feel this way. Whoa! This message is coming in loud and clear: If your goal on being on LI is to network and potentially be considered for job opportunities, get a photo up there, and make it a good one!

Have you noticed that the photos are bigger on the new LI profiles? LI is moving in a direction paved by other social media sites that know that visuals are HUGE in terms of impact and influence. You only have to look at the role visuals pay on Facebook and, of course, the explosive growth of YouTube. The new media button that is being rolled out by LI is further evidence that visuals – in this case slide shows, videos, and additional photos – are key to conveying individual and corporate brands.

With the new, larger LI photo, you have more of a chance to create a more personal connection with the employer or recruiter who views it, before they ever read a word about you. Your executive resume also will be read with more interest if the reader has a mental picture of you. A properly lit image of you, appropriately dressed, with an engaging expression, can enhance your written profile, invite trust, and provide an intimacy that words alone could never do! 

Think about what a friendly, open, constructive person looks like. Do you like the headshot of someone you’re connected to? You want your image to be professional but not stuffy.  Above all, you want to look approachable.

The good news is that you don’t have to win a beauty contest for your photo, just have a great expression.

Here are 7 valuable tips that can help you ensure that your photo will HELP YOU, not hurt you (remember, having no photo WILL hurt you), and even serve as a competitive advantage for you!

1. Hire a portrait photographer to get a professional quality headshot of you facing into the camera. An angled picture can make you look sneaky. A profile picture doesn’t allow for eye contact. Sometimes your investment can be little more than $100 for a professional to help you out. Don’t use a Facebook-type picture of you partying with friends. If you can't afford a professional, then find a friend with a digital camera to take some pictures of you against a white background. Then pick the best shot.
2. Use good lighting so that your photo gives a fair representation of what you look like and so that your face isn’t bathed in shadows.
3. Use a white or neutral background. Some people use black. You don’t want to have a photo with a distracting background. Try to capture from the neck or shoulders up.  
4. Dress for success. If you are applying for an executive or managerial position, dress for the role. A good rule of thumb is to dress the way your immediate superior does on the job. For a woman, avoid too much jewelry or busy patterns. For a man, keep your tie (if you are wearing one) from stealing the show.
5. Have the photographer try to capture some of your personal brand attributes by conveying them in your expression. They may include one or more of the following: leader-like, sincere, assertive, strong, charismatic, steady, creative, humorous, outgoing, confident, etc. 
6. If you are worried about age discrimination, then feel free to touch up the gray hairs and use a healthy layer of foundation for a youthful and energetic appearance. I recommend getting a professional makeup job done, for both men and women. There’s a reason why TV anchors look so great and why they have teams to make them look that way! Ask your local hair designer for a referral to someone good.

1. Finally, try to look as up-to-date as possible. This means having your hairstyle and your clothing styles current, but not far-out trendy. Some of the larger stores have personal shoppers: Nordstrom, J Crew etc. Take advantage of their free guidance in selecting a suitable outfit.

See how great a professional headshot can be by viewing the image above. If you are in the New Jersey/New York area, contact Mat. Otherwise, try to find a professional near you whose work you like. Your headshot on LinkedIn, done right, can be an immediate invitation to a recruiter or hiring authority to read on and find on-brand, written content and, hopefully, more visuals that cause them to contact YOU.

Most people approach the matter of submitting their resume with some trepidation - certainly with the sense that there is some mystery surrounding whether a recruiter or hiring authority will, in the first place, see it at all and, in the second place, act positively on it. And so much rides on whether they do! Success or failure can make the difference between getting an interview or not.

So, what should a resume be these days? Everyone knows times have radically changed in terms of job search and recruiting. Old-fashioned networking is still a good way to get a job. But companies and job seekers alike are finding new opportunities for networking and search on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other online networks. And the increasing use and sophistication of applicant tracking software (ATS) has put a premium on knowing the keyword rules.

But there are a couple of tests you can run your executive resume through that will give you an idea of whether yours is ready for prime time. The first has to do with whether a human being viewing your resume will be inclined to put it in the Yes pile. The second has to do with whether your resume has a good chance of being retrieved electronically so the recruiter will actually see it.

Test #1 HUMAN EYES

Can the reader figure out your unique selling points in 4 seconds? Since you have ONLY 4 SECONDS to make an impression, is your resume set up to be visually accessible and with critical key content that will motivate the recruiter to contact you?

Test #2 ELECTRONIC RETRIEVAL

Does your resume have the keywords and formatting that will enable it to be retrieved in an electronic search by a hiring authority or recruiter for a specific job?

If you've answered "Yes" to both #1 and #2, read no further. But if you've answered "No" to either, keep reading for 6 quick pointers on effective ways to get your resume to pass both these tests.

HUMAN EYES - 3 POINTERS

1.Customize your resume for each opportunity. State your career brand - your unique promise of value for that specific opportunity - right at the top under your contact information. If you don't know what yours is, look through my earlier posts or contact a Certified Personal Branding Strategist like myself for help.

2. Use the target title (as listed in the ad) somewhere in your profile, and use the core competencies required for the particular job somewhere in your profile, preferably in text or in columns/lists if you have too many. This is important, because when a human being scans your resume, s/he will be looking for a match with their open job.

3. Make your top accomplishments stand out visually. For instance, in the experience section below your job title, select the one stand-out contribution you made when you held that particular job title. Then bold it, box it and/or graph it. And use numbers! Then there will be just 3-5 such statements over your whole career that the eye will have to process. Take advantage of the 4 seconds you get to whet the recruiter's appetite for reading about the other accomplishments for each position in more detail!

ELECTRONIC "EYES" - 3 Pointers

1. Identify the keywords in the ad. They will be the required and desired titles, skills, degrees, training and technologies listed. Try to include them in the text portions of your resume as well as in lists/columns. Newer, more sophisticated ATS systems can identify keywords in context and may drop or give less value to lists.

2. Save your resume in ASCII/text format. This is because the formatting you use in your Word version may not translate well, therefore making your resume very hard to read. To save a Word doc as a .txt file, choose Save As from your drop down menu under File and select "text only" - then clean it up and save.

3. Keep your section headings simple and obvious in your ASCII/text version: Summary, Work Experience, Education. The ATS is geared to look for these. If it doesn't recognize a heading, it may well drop that whole section, deep-sixing your resume's chances.

Although all of the above may sound daunting, make every attempt to render your executive resume both people- and machine-friendly. Swing the odds in your favor!

Has anybody told you...

You MUST have a 1-page resume. Not true! The Career Directors International survey of recruiters, HR managers, and career coaches/resume writers shows that most people care more about the quality of the material than the length of the resume.

You MUST not go over two pages. NO, see reason above.

You MUST have a QR code on your resume. NO, so far there is no indication that this practice is catching on in a big way; if you put one on your resume, only some will click through.

A video resume is the way to go. NO, with 25% saying they would not view one and 13% saying they would, don't go out of your way to make one.

You don't need to be on social media. NO, Only 27% of people said they don't or rarely use social media to check out a candidate before deciding to interview them.

So, what should job seekers do in a positive direction?

• Get on Facebook!
• Get on Twitter!
• Create a branded 100% complete LinkedIn Profile! Add apps!
• Write a resume of 2-3 pages that has excellent content.
• Visually present information so that the resume can be scanned in 1-2 minutes.
• Extend your online identity footprint; make your content on other sites support your personal and career brand as expressed on your resume.
• Take advantage of online opportunities for visuals: LinkedIn's slide app, Pinterest, youtube, etc.

Get in gear for the new job search with these suggestions!

Many things may happen before a recruiter or hiring authority ever sees your resume. These are some: s/he Googles your name, searches for you on LinkedIn, checks Facebook to see what kind of person you are, checks Twitter for evidence of thought leadership.

Then, if you pass those screens, s/he will typically, if hiring for a large company, see an Applicant Tracking System-generated form that has automatically sorted your resume into standard categories (summary, work, experience, education). If at that point you have passed muster, s/he may actually look at your nicely formatted Word resume or the ASCII/Text you submitted.

There are ways to optimize your online identity and resume submissions to improve your chances of being considered for a job. We've talked about some of them earlier in this blog. But what, fundamentally, do you have to do at every stage of your career attract the interest of employers? Show your work results.

Seth Godin has a gift for asking profound questions in a simple way and with few words, an anomoly even in the world of short-form blogs. One of his questions has to do with the answer to "Can I see your body of work?"

He says, "Few people are interested in your resume anymore. Plenty are interested in what you've done." So, how and where can you tell them what you've done, if your resume isn't the first thing they look at?

1. Your own website. Grab a URL from GoDaddy that is your name or your name + your professional identity:  JimJames.com or, if that's been taken, JimJames_Agile.com. Build out a simple 5-page blogsite using Typepad or Blogspot. Home page: your headshot and your branded value proposition. A second page with a beautifully formatted branded executive resume. A third page with selected leadership initiatives, project highlights, or success stories. A fourth with Testimonials about your work. A fifth with your blog. (Yes, the more we know about current competitive job markets, the more blogging - or active tweeting - can help you convey your thought leadership.) And PUT YOUR CONTACT INFO ON EVERY PAGE.

2. Put your branded executive resume with Challenge-Action-Results success stories after every position up on Google docs. Then publish it to the Web making it searchable by search engines. Google docs also lets you share Presentations and Spreadsheets to enrich your presentation of your brand.

3. Build out your LinkedIn Profile. Make it 100% complete and then use some of the apps that allow you to showcase further the value you bring to the table. PowerPoint Presentations, videos, your Twitter feed, reading list etc.

Doing these three things will give you a good foundation to build on as you progress in your career. Keep these items current. You can do this by keeping a record of your projects or inititives with their results and periodically uploading it.

Your identity on the Web should be on-brand and on display on as many professional properties as possible. Godin, with his signature cut-to-the-chase communications, says that if you don't have achievements to convey, you perhaps need a different job.

So, celebrate the work that you and your teams do. Let people know about it. Go public. Ensure that the recruiter or hiring manager going through the steps of an online search on your name pre-qualifies you before ever seeing your resume in hard copy!

Thanks to CIO Magazine for the logo.

The top technology authority in an organization can be the CIO (Chief Information Officer), CTO (Chief Technology Officer),VP of IT (Vice President of Information Technology) or one of the newer hybrid titles that emphasizes leadership in both the business and technology organizations.

What aspects of your role do you want to emphasize in your CIO resume? How much do you want to emphasize your technology credentials versus your business acumen? Is the job you are targeting looking for a CIO who is primarily an innovator, a business leader, or a technologist? What is the role of the CIO in your target company? A full business partner, a support to the business, someone who ensures business agility, someone who makes sure the networks work, or other?

It's important to customize your CIO resume to the particular position, given the wide variability in corporate expectations of the top technology leader. But whichever slant you take, you need to pay attention to the following when writing your CIO resume (or CTO resume or VP of IT resume).

1. Establish your leadership brand in the top third of page one and consistently reinforce it in the body of your executive resume. This is where you incorporate the answers to the questions above for the particular company.

2. Tie your accomplishments in technology to their impacts on the business as a whole; consider P&L and margin improvement, cost reduction, risk management / security, business process improvements, product innovation, providing a platform for high growth etc.

3. As the top technology authority, emphasize your ability to think and plan strategically about technology and the wider business.

4. Leave summary of your technology skills to the end of your executive resume or leave them off altogether; you will most likely, in companies larger than startups, be managing the managers of hands-on technologists.

5. For each position, give Challenge-Action-Results stories that demonstrate the mission-critical nature of the challenges you faced, how you strategized and exercised leadership, and what the results were in both technology and business terms.

Follow these tips and you will be a long way towards writing a great CIO resume. For general tips on what makes for a great technology executive resume, click here.