Develop Your Personal Brochure with Care

Fall 2007

The mission of a resume is not simply to provide a history of your professional experience and qualifications. For practical purposes, a resume is a marketing document, your personal sales brochure that helps you get the job you want.

The market for candidates has been good lately, particularly in accounting and finance, but employers are still very deliberate and selective. The goal of your resume, then, is to get the attention and interest of a hiring manager, and win an interview where you can sell yourself in person.

In most fields—especially in accounting and finance—you differentiate yourself more effectively in your resume through your experience and accomplishments, rather than through creative language and design. Using a nonstandard presentation detracts from the key message that your talents and experiences can fill a real need.

From manager to executive, the current resume standard is two pages, with one-inch margins and plenty of white space. Avoid going over two pages or making it dense with detail. Effective brochures don’t cram information into every bit of available space, so don’t do it with a resume. Use plain white or off-white paper with no designs on it. Pick one typeface, and stick to it throughout the document. An initial review of a resume may take seconds, so make your resume clean, straightforward, and agreeable to the eye.

Following are several additional aspects of a resume that you need to consider.

Summary—Include a summary paragraph that sticks to the facts and includes bullet points that identify key areas of experience or interest. For instance, mergers and acquisition experience would be the kind of key area to highlight; being "results-oriented" would not. Also, avoid listing accomplishments here. Put those in the work experience section.

Work experience—List your experience in chronological order, with your most recent experience receiving emphasis. For each job experience, list the company first, along with a short description if not widely known. Include annual revenue and number of employees to give a sense of company size and complexity.

When describing your experience within a position, do not use the basic responsibilities found on your job description. Hiring managers are familiar with many positions in accounting and finance. Provide accomplishments. Use brief bullet points, not paragraphs, for easy reading. Start with action verbs and end with results generated.

Beyond your most recent experiences, keep the prior positions lean and limited. Experiences older than 10 years are not as relevant. Consider using a "prior experience" section to consolidate those earlier positions. For those with 10 or more years of experience, education is listed after experience, followed by relevant awards, certifications, and associations.

Get personal—A personal section may allow the reader to get to know you briefly, and possibly draw a connection with something in which they have an interest. An avid runner who sees "marathon runner" in a candidate’s personal section has one more reason to spend time with the resume.

Respect your space—Avoid unnecessary adjectives or flowery description. Every competent manager or executive is already assumed to be results-oriented, resourceful, dynamic, highly motivated, hands-on, strategic, and so on. These descriptors are subjective, add no value, and take up space. Real estate on a resume is precious, so avoid redundancy. Accomplishments in your experience section should complement your summary section, but not repeat anything in it. Also, run a basic grammar and spell check to avoid simple mistakes.

General vs. targeted—Build a general resume that best promotes your abilities and interests. Then modify it to highlight those experiences and accomplishments that best match the position for which you are applying. Don’t overdo it, because it may look too tailored. Remember, you can draw connections in a brief cover letter.

Quality control—Ask trusted friends and colleagues for a review. Get a review from an accounting and finance professional, and if you know any hiring managers, ask them for their opinion too.

Keep it up to date—Make adjustments to your resume each time you change positions. Better yet, review and update your resume every six months. This will help you continually refine your career history and focus on where you might be headed.

A resume is a marketing instrument to get your foot in the door, but it is not a replacement for networking. It is only one of the coordinated steps you should take to own your career and move confidently to your next position.

David Maturo is a partner with Attolon Partners LLC, an executive search firm in Philadelphia. He can be reached at dmaturo@attolon.com.