Power Résumés
Sometimes, Tysinger says,
it can be helpful to sit down and inventory what you have to
offer. “One of the questions I ask my client is,
‘Do you speak a second language?’ The fact that you
can will sometimes give you an edge over another
candidate,” he says.
Lyons suggests you write
your résumé so that your most important
experiences are up front. “They should go right there on
page one,” she says.
• Completeness
According to Tysinger, it’s not
true that résumés have to be one page in length.
That’s a myth. Résumés should be as long as
you need to list your experience,” he says—but
within reason. Up to three pages are acceptable-more is not. A
four-, five-, or six-page résumé begins to
resemble a CV and should be cut. Linney agrees with trimming
lengthy résumés. “Previous experiences can
be minimized,” she says. Of course, only include
what’s relevant to the job at hand.
Singer, the
surgeon-turned-medical director, recalls a near-disastrous
result when he tried to format his résumé into a
two-page document. “Somehow, all of my board
certification was dropped from the final copy,” he says.
When he went to the interview, he was asked about his
board-certification. “I wasn’t aware until that
moment that none of my board certification information made it
into my résumé,” he says. “It was
pretty embarrassing.”
One way to ensure that your
résumé contains all the relevant information,
says Tysinger, is to have someone who is familiar with the
position, or, at least a friend, go over it carefully. A second
pair of eyes may catch mistakes, like Singer’s, or items
the applicant didn’t think to put in.
Once you’ve
determined what to include, start thinking about format.
Thousands of sample résumés can be found in books
and Web sites if you want ideas about how to present your
credentials.
There is no
“best” format, says Tysinger—although
personally, he prefers résumés on beige paper
with 20 percent rag. “It photocopies and faxes
well,” he says, “and it presents a nice,
professional image.”
Keep your
résumé visually simple. Use one type font
throughout, avoid graphics, and use one-inch margins all
around. “Go for readability,” says Tysinger.
“A good question to ask is, ‘Can I read it at
arm’s length?’”
A cover letter completes
the package. “Keep it to one page and address it to a
person, not a position or ‘to whom it may
concern,’” says Tysinger. The cover letter should
include three paragraphs: The first states what position
you’re applying for and how you found it; the second, why
you’re applying for the job; and the third should tell
the recipient that your résumé is attached and
how to contact you.
Much of this boilerplate
information will be useful no matter what position you seek,
but if you’re a physician looking for an executive
position, you’ll want to take your résumé
to the next level—and this is the other area where
physician résumés often fail: They focus on
the wrong things.
A basic
résumé is great if you’re looking for an
introductory position, but if you have the kind of background
and experience needed for a management job, your
résumé had better match up, and that means
focusing on elements basic résumés don’t.
The executive résumé
“I call them power
résumés,” says recruiter Gaillour.
“And they should highlight your accomplishments, not your
responsibilities.” In other words, a basic
résumé’s laundry list of jobs is no longer
as important as what you achieved in that job—and
sometimes, that kind of focus takes a little extra thought.
To prepare a “power
résumé,” Gaillour suggests asking yourself
the following questions:
• What has challenged me?
• What did I do to meet the challenge?
• What was gained as a result?
Use action verbs in your responses, and
quantify the results with numbers whenever possible, Gaillour
says.
Linney provides some
examples: “Your résumé could tell how
much money you saved an employer, or how you improved
performance,” she says. “Maybe you increased safety
or reduced length of stay,” she says. “In the end,
all people really care about when they’re reviewing
applications is what you’ve done and what kind of success
you’ve had.”
A recruiter or professional
résumé writer can help you turn a basic
résumé into an executive one, but you can also do
it yourself by following the advice given by Gaillour and
Linney. Highlight your accomplishments and make certain they
are the focus of your résumé, but to really stand
out, take one step further: Tailor those highlighted
accomplishments to the specific job you’re seeking.
Shlian agrees.
“That’s the problem with many of the
résumés I see,” she says.
“They’re not telling this particular company why
they should be considered for this particular job.”
Eliminate objective
statements—empty phrases like, “My objective is to
find a management level position in a managed-care
company.”
“Employers
don’t care about your objectives.” Shlian says.
“They want to know what you can do for them. That’s
what you should be telling them.”
Jones also warns against
vague phrases such as, “I’d make a good
administrator.” “How do I know you’d make a
good administrator unless you tell me what you’ve
done?” he says.
In other words, the more
specific you can be about your accomplishments, the more likely
you’ll be considered. If you can show a potential
employer that you’ve succeeded at exactly the kind of job
the organization has to fill, you’re all but guaranteed
to earn a call or interview.
To ensure that response,
you must know your strengths and sell them to a particular
employer.
Jones, the former
ob/gyn-turned-administrator, says, “If you’re
looking at three or four different jobs, then you’d best
prepare three or four different résumés, each
tailored to the job you’re applying for.”
Shlian says the effort will
pay off. “If you haven’t worked in business,
it’s sometimes difficult to see why this extra work is
necessary,” she says, but it’s how businesses work,
and it’s what’s expected of candidates considered
“executive material.”
“A lot of doctors who
practice medicine think they can become administrators just
because they want to,” says Shlian. That may have been
the case five or six years ago, she says, when such
opportunities were at their height—but it’s not so
easy today. Because of mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing,
opportunities in medical management have narrowed and become
highly competitive.
That’s why it’s
more important than ever to become résumé savvy
if you’re seeking administrative work.
Lyons says, “Your
résumé has a big job to do.” It not only
has to convince an employer that you can do the job, but do it
better than hundreds of other applicants, some of whose
résumés may be as persuasive as yours.
That’s why Gaillour
says, whenever possible, it’s best to make some kind of
contact, either formal or informal, with the decision-maker
before sending off your paperwork.
“Résumés are really marketing
collateral,” she says. “They should always be
preceded by an introduction to a decision-maker or someone
close to the decision-maker.”
That’s the kind of
competition you—and your résumé—face
in the battle for today’s executive office. It’s
why you should always write your résumé as though
it’s a champion for yourself. Because, bottom line,
that’s exactly what it has to be.
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How to Write an
Electronic Resume
Don’t think you’ve
mastered the résumé until you can produce
a safe and effective electronic résumé.
In today’s
high-tech business environment, electronic
résumés are becoming more and more
prevalent. “We love them because they’re
easy to keep on file,” says Mary Frances Lyons,
MD, a recruiter with the St. Louis-based executive
search firm Witt/Keiffer. Despite common thought,
however, they are not just paper résumés
you send digitally. They are distinctly different, says
Susan Joyce, the owner and publisher of Job-Hunt.org, a
Forbes “Best of the Web” site, and U.S.
News & World Report’s “Top Site for
Finding Jobs.”
According to Joyce,
“Electronic résumés have made the
whole process of applying for jobs so much
easier,” but they can also leave you open to
privacy issues and identity theft if precautions
aren’t taken. “There is a great deal of
personal information on a résumé that can
be misused, and it is painfully easy to lose control of
an electronic résumé,” says Joyce.
For safety’s
sake, be sure to take the following steps with any
on-line résumé you create:
• Remove all contact
information from the résumé. The only
exceptions would be an unlisted cell phone number and a
secondary e-mail address, or a “throw-away”
e-mail address you set up for the purpose of receiving
responses.
• Know where
you’re submitting your résumé.
“Not every job is real, not every employer is
genuine, and not every Web site can be trusted,”
says Joyce.
• Don’t pay
anyone to distribute your résumé to
recruiters. “Talk about loss of control,”
says Joyce. “It doesn’t get much
worse.”
Joyce also provides
these tips for creating more effective
e-résumés:
• Put an
“effective date” on the
résumé if you’re posting on a job
Web site. Electronic résumés can stay
posted for a long time on some Web sites, so an
effective date will
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inform potential employers whether
or not you’re still likely to be interested.
• Your first line
should be “Résumé of”
followed by your name. “You really need to state
it’s a résumé,” says Joyce.
Otherwise, employers may wonder why your employment
history found its way into their e-mail box.
• Use plain ASCII text
when you’re formatting your résumé
because not all e-mail software will receive all fonts.
• Add a
“skills” section near the top of the
résumé where key words can be
concentrated. Use as many key words as you can to
showcase your skills. Large employers, says Joyce, use
applicant tracking systems to sort through
résumés, so the more buzz words you
use—such as “team player,”
“highly motivated,”
“result-producing”—the better. Just
remember to use the key terms inconsistently.
“Having two versions of a term, like ER and
emergency room,” says Joyce, “means
there’s a better chance your résumé
will rise out of the depths of the database and into
the light of human attention.”
• Don’t send your
résumé as an attachment.
“Attachments depend on someone having the time
and motivation to open them,” says Joyce.
It’s better (and quicker) to cut and paste the
contents of your plain-text résumé into
the body of an e-mail message.
“Remember,” says Joyce, “don’t
blanket Web sites or recruiters with your
résumé. Just because it’s easy to
do so doesn’t mean you should. You’ll have
better success if you take the time to customize your
résumé for each job and with electronic
résumés, that’s easy to
do.”
Finally, says
Francine Gaillour, MD, MBA, an executive coach and the
founder of Creative Strategies in Physician Leadership
in Bellevue, Washington, follow up each electronic
résumé with a phone call. It’s a
good way to provide your contact information, and it
provides the recruiter or potential employer with
something your competition may not: a
thoughtful—and human—touch. n
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Barbara Wilson, a New Jersey-based
free-lance writer, is a regular contributor to Unique Opportunities.