Who is the person in your resume?

Bob (not his real name) was looking for a new career as in equipment sales. He'd already had an illustrious career as an airline pilot but was looking for a career that would reduce his time away from home and increase his job security. But his impressive professional resume wasn't getting him in the door.

Then a friend pointed out where he was going wrong. He told Bob "People perceive a pilot as someone who is literally and figuratively 'above it all', someone who doesn't get his hands dirty." The hiring managers who saw his resume didn't see him as someone who could relate to customers of heavy machinery. "That's not you," his friend told him. Bob's resume wasn't giving potential employers a good picture of who he was and what he had to offer.

So Bob did a radical revision of his resume and concentrated on two areas. He broke two resume rules to present a better picture of himself to hiring managers:

• In professional experience, Bob emphasized his experience in home building and rebuilding, a career he had tried after leaving the airline. It hadn't been a successful career but it did let hiring managers know that he knew how to work with equipment and with his hands in manual labor.
• He added a section for related experience to include jobs when he was young and hobbies he'd pursued including working on race cars and with large equipment.

Within two weeks after sending out his new resume, he had two job offers in his new career. And what did the interviews focus on? "All the interviewers wanted to talk about was experience I had just added," Bob said.

Ask someone you trust to look over your resume. Ask them what kind of person do they picture when they read what you have written. How does that person match up with what hiring managers are looking for in your chosen career?

In general, we are told to focus on presenting our best professional accomplishments in our resume and downplaying unsuccessful efforts and leaving out outdated experience and hobbies. But accomplishments that present the wrong picture of us may not be as important to hiring managers as valuable experience even if it didn't result in impressive success or professional recognition.

Make certain that the person in your resume presents what you truly have to offer to the employers in your career path.