Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep59: 5 signs of a bad resume. Avoid these mistakes.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of my Got a Ping podcast, a careers podcast that you should listen to if you are serious about growing your corporate career. So welcome to another episode.

Starting point is 00:00:40 And today I actually want to talk about one of the highly requested topics, which is really around writing a good resume. So recently I've been having a lot of conversations with my clients as well as my community on LinkedIn. And one of the constant complaints I've been hearing about is people who are complaining about not being able to get a job interview or really not making progress in their job search journey and they don't know why. So because of that, instead of actually looking into the more fundamental, I guess, reasons why they're not making progress, what I noticed they have been doing is complaining on social media. So I hope that in today's episode, I will actually inspire you to actually take real action to improve the way that you're positioning your resume and your value instead of complaining on social media, which to be honest,

Starting point is 00:01:31 is such an unproductive activity. Okay, so before we actually talk about what is a good resume, I think it's really important that you understand what makes a bad resume. And why this is important is because if you don't know what mistakes that you're making in your resume there is no way you will learn how to improve it right so we need to be able to identify and fix those mistakes so that you can you know really focus on drafting that you know that resume that really positions your background skills and experiences so before i jump into the top five signs that you have a really bad resume i just want to point out that resume updates right is really not just for active job seekers and in fact for a lot of my clients i actually recommend them to update their resume every six months or at most at most every 12 months

Starting point is 00:02:22 and this is actually a really important point is because when you are updating your resume, it's actually, you actually go through this thought process of really thinking about the value that you bring to the company or, you know, to the industry and how you can continue to grow at your current company. So I think one of the challenges when, you know, people start finding for a job

Starting point is 00:02:45 is that they suddenly feel so lost and stuck on what their actual value is. And this problem actually happens is because they've never really sat down to think about how they can make an impact and how they can actually bring value, maybe not just to the existing job, but I guess their future role as well.

Starting point is 00:03:03 So like I said, a resume update can be a very powerful tool, even though you may be pretty happy with where you are right now. But if you're updating your resume on an ongoing basis, it could also be something that you use when you're doing networking, which then could bring in future opportunities also. Okay, so with that, we actually go into the top five reasons why you have a bad resume and basically how to identify if you have a very bad resume so number one your resume does not have a

Starting point is 00:03:31 career story so what a career story means is that if somebody was were to look at your resume in five seconds can they really understand your overall backgrounds and experiences and pretty much how you have progressed in this role right so one of the things that is consistently asked during interview as well is okay like why did you change from one job to the other um and this is a question i find a lot of um you know job seekers or professional really struggle to answer and if i were to actually break it down it is really because they have a really poorly written resume they haven't actually gone through um that thought process on what their career journey looks like so instead of like you know looking at their career as like a holistic marathon sort of view they're just moving from one job to the other and that's the reason why

Starting point is 00:04:22 they their resume is really bad because they never once sat down and asked themselves okay actually like where do i see my career going so make sure that your resume does have a career story so that people can kind of understand right how you have managed to grow throughout your career and over the years okay so the second reason why your resume is really bad is you either don't have a focus or you have a really bad focus, right? Meaning maybe you have like a really wrong focus. So what I mean is that no focus means, right, your resume is just a long list of like your day-to-day activities, which is basically a dump of all your roles and responsibilities.

Starting point is 00:05:00 So such resumes, to be honest, doesn't tell me much about what your contribution is. It's just like a laundry list of stuff that you have listed down, which is really not the most helpful thing. Or secondly, maybe your resume has a wrong focus. my Power Your Job Search Strategy training is that how to actually bring the focus point in your resume. So if people are only spending five to six seconds on your resume and you really want to attract their attention, your resume must have a focus point. It can't just be like, hey, I'll just write whatever I want.

Starting point is 00:05:38 And maybe people spend like half a day reading it. Yeah, actually it doesn't happen. So depending on where you are in your career, you might want to focus on different things. So for example, if you're a fresh graduate, you might want to focus on your education and your university activities as the main highlight in your resume.

Starting point is 00:05:56 But if you have been working for maybe three to five years, you might want to show a combination of the technical skills as well as soft skills that you have managed to build up. Or if you have somebody who has worked for maybe more than, know maybe 7, 10 or maybe 12 years you might want to further demonstrate some leadership and management qualities because that's something that's probably required at the next level and of course if you are somebody who is a high flyer you want to move to the next level in your career, then definitely achievements and how you have truly made an impact at your job becomes the most, most, most important thing.

Starting point is 00:06:33 But foundationally, highlighting achievements is definitely something that is critical regardless of where you are in your career, but also making sure that you have the right focus point will be able to better help the recruiter HR hiring manager to better understand the positioning of your value okay all right so the third um the third sign that you have a really bad resume is the resume is too long I've as a career coach now even as a former hiring manager at Standard Chartered I have seen resumes that are like I think the longest I've ever seen resumes that are like, I think the

Starting point is 00:07:05 longest I've ever seen was eight pages long. If you think that somebody will spend time, you know, to read through an eight page resume, let me tell you right now, it is not going to happen. And the reason why you have a very long resume, again, is back to the second point I talked about, which is your resume does not have a focus. And because you don't know how to have a focus in your resume, you just put in everything, which is like't know how to have a focus in your resume you just put in everything which is like a laundry list and that's how your resume becomes really really long so it's just pretty much your byproduct of not having um that kind of focus that you need in your resume so not many people ask me okay it's like you know how long is a like a good resume

Starting point is 00:07:41 so i think it depends on where you are in your career. Again, generally speaking, between one to three pages, it's ideal. But I say that the less number of years that you have in terms of like working experience, probably one to two, if you have more and you have a lot of leadership activities, or you have transitioned across different careers, then maybe two to three pages might still make sense and i want you guys to take this point very seriously because i have clients who have who have applied for hundreds of jobs but not been able to get any because they have a very long resume with no focus and after they work with me in a one-on-one session i help them to make it more concise make it clear and better position their career story and And with that,

Starting point is 00:08:25 they could easily get interviews. And in fact, recently, one of my clients who have been applying for jobs for more than eight months, hundreds of applications, not a single interview, but the moment she updated her resume and repositioned herself very clearly, she actually managed to get four interview calls in one week and just in two and a half weeks alone she already attended nine interviews and gotten two job offers so what i'm trying to point out here is that it is so important but most people are actually not taking it seriously okay so let's actually move on let's actually move on to the fourth reason why the fourth sign that you have a bad resume.

Starting point is 00:09:05 And number four is it is too vague. So your resume is just very high levels of, oh, you know, I've checked this document. I have da, da, da, da, da. It's like short sentences that are just so high level that when I read it as a hiring manager, I don't really know what you have done, right? So anything that you have written in which the hiring manager, you don't help the hiring manager better understand the impact of what you have done, then it's too big.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Then it's actually not good enough. So the main tip I want to give you here is that it's don't go too broad. It's much better to go deep, right? So I repeat that. Don't go broad. much better to go deep, right? So I repeat that. Don't go broad. Much better to go deep. And lastly, the fifth sign that you have a really poor resume is you're actually using a lot of copy and paste templates.

Starting point is 00:09:53 I don't know where you guys are finding these templates, but let me tell you that most of these copy and paste templates that you are getting from online, to be honest, right, actually, it's not very, very helpful. And in fact, most of the format are just so confusing to read so like i said um i always tell also tell my clients if a beautiful resume right a pretty resume does not make it an effective resume you need to make sure you understand this point right and i think this is one of the really killer mistakes that job seekers make because they go online search for all these copy and paste templates again i don't know where you guys are getting this from but it's really not the most helpful thing for your for your for your um resume and for your application so focus on like

Starting point is 00:10:35 making sure that the format is very clean it's easy to read actually it's much more helpful than just trying to find some fancy template copy and paste that is really very confusing and difficult to read okay okay so with that that's basically the five signs that you have a really bad resume and personally i'm just sharing from my experience as an actual hiring manager at an international bank in a senior business leadership role as well as nowadays as a career coach i've seen hundreds and hundreds of resumes. And I think these are really the five biggest mistakes that you need to make sure you are not making, not making before you look to improve. Because you can't keep like improving something when foundationally you're already making so many mistakes. Okay. So with that,

Starting point is 00:11:19 I hope that you find this episode super duper helpful. And I also hope that I have inspired you to please take a look at your resume and ask yourself is this really a true reflection of you as a professional and if you're actively seeking for a job right now please go and look through your resume before you go around spamming for jobs and not getting replies but at the same time if you are a working professional just open to future opportunities. I also highly encourage you to check out your resume just to make sure that your positioning is very clear. And even when you go to networking events or you update your LinkedIn profile,

Starting point is 00:11:54 people can really understand how you can contribute and that could lead to future career opportunities as well. So with that, I will see you guys in the next episode. And I hope that till then, you're actually taking the action to go and update your resume. So with that, I hope you enjoyed this episode the next episode. And I hope that till then, you're actually taking the action to go and update your resume. So with that, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you next time.

Starting point is 00:12:09 Bye.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep59: 5 signs of a bad resume. Avoid these mistakes.

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