Stever Robbins here. Welcome to The Get-It-Done Guy’s Quick and Dirty Tips to Work Less and Do More. Today's topic is creating a resume when you are new to the job market and don’t have a work history.
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Michael writes/calls in:
After listening to your "It Has To-Do with your Resume," I noticed you focused more on established people who already have a resumé or work experience. My question is as follows: Stever, what is your advice for a young person, either right out of high school or one writing a resumé for the first time, in creating their resumé?
Looking for Your First Job?
Now is a very challenging time to be entering the workforce. Thanks to the tens of millions of unemployed people--no matter who you are--you’re competing head-to-head with people who have more experience and more contacts than you do.
Welcome to the wonderful world of economic downturns combined with the aging of the population. But before you get too mad at your parents’ generation, remember they had hair spray and dial telephones phones growing up. You have hair gel, text messaging, the Internet, iPods, the Wii, and AXE Body Spray. You win.
Why Write a Resume?
Why do employers want resumes? Because they hope a resume will give them a clue about who they want to hire. Maybe they see that Fred the job applicant worked for a competitor. They want to hire Fred because they know that with just a little bit of “enhanced” interrogation, Fred will be thrilled to reveal all of those competitive secrets. Although this is highly unethical and some would say immoral, the interrogation part at least might currently be legal, so bring in the water buckets, boys.
If an employer isn’t looking for specific company experience, they may be looking for candidates with specific skills and experience: operating heavy machinery, writing ad copy for fashion magazines, or creating complex “innovative” financial instruments for the good of society.
Assess Your Skills
Although you can’t compete with skills that require experience in the job market, you can compete with the skills you do have. Look over the classes you have taken, student groups you have been involved with, clubs, extracurriculars, boys or girls clubs, scouts, and so on. Make a list of all the skills you have developed. It may help to do this with someone who knows the kind of job you are applying for, so they can help you identify relevant skills. You may take your accomplishments for granted, but they may hide seriously needed skills. Did you budget a school play? Did you organize a fund-raiser or other event? Did you sell enough magazines to pay for a trip to Tasmania? These are all skills you can highlight on a resume.
Consider organizing your resume into sections by skill. In each section include your experience that demonstrates the particular skill. “Sales skills” might include your Tasmania magazine sales, your senior year fund-raiser, and your experience buying and selling rare comic books. “Leadership skills” might highlight your uncanny ability to drag your entire social circle to fifty consecutive weeks of Rocky Horror Picture Show every Saturday night at midnight. Ok, that might be an exaggeration.
Or, maybe not. Just like someone with more on-the-job experience, your resume is telling a story. If you can turn your Rocky Horror excursions into a credible demonstration of leadership prowess, go for it. Just make sure to present it so it builds a strong case.
- Organized and motivated 12-person cast to attend fifty weekly performances. Resolved conflicts in the group, helped match people to the role that best utilized their skills, and provided Mapquest directions to the theater when Bernice lost them for the thirteenth time.
One skill set worth exploring is your technology skill set. We’re in a unique moment in history where the younger generation “gets” technology in a way that the older workforce doesn’t. If you can find a way to present those skills in a way that’s valuable to someone over 30, you just might be able to use that for a foot in the door. As an experiment, see if you can get 5,000 of your friends to start listening to this podcast. Then call me. The word “internship” springs to mind.
Emphasize Qualities as Well as Skills
Employers want more than just skills. They say you can train people for skills, but not character and values. Though resumes are mainly about skills, you can also sell an employer not only on what you can do, but who you are.
Qualities like:
- commitment to hard work
- an ability to learn
- a problem-solving orientation where you fix things and don’t just wait for others to fix them
- patience, and
- a willingness to work for cheap while you learn might all be qualities a future employer could appreciate.
I taught Junior Achievement, and a high school junior showed so much initiative on his team that I hired him as my intern. I knew he didn’t know how to do what I needed; but his willingness to be proactive and take responsibility impressed me. Back when I was an intern, long ago, I worked for very little money, but asked to sit near the CEO to learn what his daily job was like. Little did I suspect that years later, I would end up writing articles on that very topic. (The URL is in this episode’s transcript.)
I hope this gets you started. Rather than organizing your resume around jobs, you’ll organize it around skills. You’ll scour your schoolwork, volunteer work, social life, and just about everything, to find the skills you have that an employer could use. Then create a resume that tells the stories of a skillful person with the character to take those skills and do Great Things for that employer.
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