How to Get Hired: Are You Targeting a Specialist Position or Generalist?

There are different kinds of positions to apply for. One thing to consider when you're looking for a job is to target the company you'd like to join and make sure you fit the position they are looking for. Monster outlines 2 kinds of resume formats - the generalist and the specialist with recommendations on the best approach for you. Read on and discover which one is right for you

The Generalist's Advantages

Positioning yourself as a generalist could be effective if you:

    Target Small Companies: "A company with fewer than 500 employees may see a job seeker with a broad base of skills as giving them more for their money," says Dave Upton, founder and CEO of ExecuNet. At tiny companies or startups, a broad array of skills is often essential due to the need to wear different hats, Upton added.
    
    Target Downsizing Companies: Organizations that consolidate functions will often want someone who can do many things, such as a single HR generalist who can handle compensation and benefits as well as recruiting functions, says Stefanie Cross-Wilson, co-president of recruitment and talent management at Hudson.
    
    Will Take Any Job: Recruiters agree that the scattershot approach yields scattershot results even in the best of times. But if you simply want a foot in the door of a company -- any company, doing anything, anywhere -- selling yourself as a jack-of-all trades could pay off.

The Specialist Positioning

Selling yourself as a specialist is preferable if you:

    Know Exactly What You're Looking For: If you're sure about what you want and know how your skills match up to the requirements, make the case that you're the one they need and don't muddy your resume with a variety of unrelated skills.
    
    Work in a Competitive Industry: These days, employers who used to receive dozens of resumes for a position may see hundreds or thousands. The person who fits the job best, particularly in a competitive field, is more likely to get the job than someone who can do a bit of everything, recruiters say.
    
    Seek a Job Requiring Specialized Skill:  An employer filling a job that requires deep knowledge of industrial automation, forensic accounting or video game design, to name a few, can usually find a candidate with the exact skills to match the job. If you don't have the specific skills, your knowledge of gardening, accounting or music theory, while nice to have, won't make up that deficit.

The Best Approach

Still not sure which approach is best? Recruiters recommend playing it safe by positioning yourself as a "specialist, with breadth." To do this:

1.     Research a job opening and the company to find out exactly what skills are needed and what other skills might be useful.
2.     Emphasize the depth of your expertise in the most necessary job skills -- the ones that actually match the job description -- and add your compatible skills at the bottom of the resume
3.     Don't send out a hodgepodge resume. You're more likely to confuse the recruiter or the hiring manager, who may think of you as a dabbler without depth.

This tactic, recruiters say, will cover your bases by showing the breadth and depth of your skills, and that could be a winning combination in a tight job market.

Top 10 Resume Mistakes

Here's a cool article I found on Monster.com on 10 resume mistakes you should avoid.

1. Typos and Grammatical Errors

Your resume needs to be grammatically perfect. If it isn't, employers will read between the lines and draw not-so-flattering conclusions about you, like: "This person can't write," or "This person obviously doesn't care."

2. Lack of Specifics

Employers need to understand what you've done and accomplished. For example:

A. Worked with employees in a restaurant setting.
B. Recruited, hired, trained and supervised more than 20 employees in a restaurant with $2 million in annual sales.

Both of these phrases could describe the same person, but the details and specifics in example B will more likely grab an employer's attention.

3. Attempting One Size Fits All

Whenever you try to develop a one-size-fits-all resume to send to all employers, you almost always end up with something employers will toss in the recycle bin. Employers want you to write a resume specifically for them. They expect you to clearly show how and why you fit the position in a specific organization.

4. Highlighting Duties Instead of Accomplishments

It's easy to slip into a mode where you simply start listing job duties on your resume. For example:

* Attended group meetings and recorded minutes.

* Worked with children in a day-care setting.

* Updated departmental files.

Employers, however, don't care so much about what you've done as what you've accomplished in your various activities. They're looking for statements more like these:

* Used laptop computer to record weekly meeting minutes and compiled them in a Microsoft Word-based file for future organizational reference.

* Developed three daily activities for preschool-age children and prepared them for a 10-minute holiday program performance.

* Reorganized 10 years worth of unwieldy files, making them easily accessible to department members.

5. Going on Too Long or Cutting Things Too Short

Despite what you may read or hear, there are no real rules governing the length of your resume. Why? Because human beings, who have different preferences and expectations where resumes are concerned, will be reading it.

That doesn't mean you should start sending out five-page resumes, of course. Generally speaking, you usually need to limit yourself to a maximum of two pages. But don't feel you have to use two pages if one will do. Conversely, don't cut the meat out of your resume simply to make it conform to an arbitrary one-page standard.

6. A Bad Objective

Employers do read your resume's objective statement, but too often they plow through vague pufferies like, "Seeking a challenging position that offers professional growth." Give employers something specific and, more importantly, something that focuses on their needs as well as your own. Example: "A challenging entry-level marketing position that allows me to contribute my skills and experience in fund-raising for nonprofits."

7. No Action Verbs

Avoid using phrases like "responsible for." Instead, use action verbs: "Resolved user questions as part of an IT help desk serving 4,000 students and staff."

8. Leaving Off Important Information

You may be tempted, for example, to eliminate mention of the jobs you've taken to earn extra money for school. Typically, however, the soft skills you've gained from these experiences (e.g., work ethic, time management) are more important to employers than you might think.

9. Visually Too Busy

If your resume is wall-to-wall text featuring five different fonts, it will most likely give the employer a headache. So show your resume to several other people before sending it out. Do they find it visually attractive? If what you have is hard on the eyes, revise.

10. Incorrect Contact Information

I once worked with a student whose resume seemed incredibly strong, but he wasn't getting any bites from employers. So one day, I jokingly asked him if the phone number he'd listed on his resume was correct. It wasn't. Once he changed it, he started getting the calls he'd been expecting. Moral of the story: Double-check even the most minute, taken-for-granted details -- sooner rather than later.

Are You a Fresh Graduate? Here Are Some Resume Writing Tips

This post is dedicated to new graduates. Here are some tips to write your resume from Monster.com

Young graduates face one of the hardest tasks in all CV writing, which is how to differentiate themselves from everyone else and not come across as a wannabe with overblown intentions but little to offer.

Contrary to popular belief, naked ambition is not highly regarded by recruiters, who are actually looking for evidence of maturity and judgement, at least an appearance of originality and creativity and the definite hint of potential commitment.

Your challenge is to imply all of these things without being so crass as to actually say them. This is where intelligent candidates can score highly by making the most of their NON WORK activities and interests.

Young graduates rarely have a great deal of work experience, and if they do it tends to be irrelevant to their future career. I often see long CVs that ramble on about the communication skills the person learned selling burgers and the numeracy skills they acquired at an all night petrol station.

This sort of information cuts no ice with anyone. Important things about work experience might be whether or not you did it to fund some amazing trip around Europe or whether you did it to pay for your university tuition fees and then managed on sheer talent to convert it into degree....

Years ago, milk round employers started introducing trick questions on their graduate trainee recruitment applications. They asked things like: What is your worst mistake and how did you recover from it?

Think about that question and what it implies about the people they are searching for: people who can first of all recognize an error, then come up with a strategy to deal with it, then manage a project that gets the result.

What this means in CV terms is that it is that you need to be reflecting on where you are now, not pretending to be Richard Branson.

Avoid using the word 'I' at all costs but describe the experience you do have in such a way that brings out all its value.

Examples:

You chose your study path
Tell them why, what was in your mind, what evolution there has been in the light of experience, what skills you believe it has given you, appropriate to what kind of roles in real work. Do this in a concise and intelligent way that tries to imagine what they want to know about you (see above). Make sure it is not merely blind ambition but also shows judgement, knowledge outside the syllabus, awareness of modern developments in culture and business.

You have non work activities
Don't just list them in a dull way; if you practice martial arts mention the resolve and inner calm they help you achieve; if you have participated in voluntary work say why you did it and what you got from giving your time; if you have rebuilt a VW Beetle from scratch and supercharged the engine, you can describe your engineering achievement; if you have travelled and worked abroad, make the most of it by laying down at least one interesting piece of bait for people to connect with at the interview.

The heart of your proposed CV
The focus is bound to be your studies, and for some professional starts it is essential to achieve high grades, which can justifiably be mentioned in detail.

I often advise people to say why they chose specific courses, who their tutors were (if famous) and what they learned, specifically, from that branch of study. If you fancy investment banking, for example, and have experience in using the same appraisal system that top trading organisations actually use, then mention it and say what you did with it. If you haven't, and you expect to break into a golden career, find out quick!

Your knowledge
Young people without maturity, and who are unlikely to be of any use to an employer, expose themselves at once by expecting everything to be done for them. I get enquiries from History graduates who vaguely fancy a career in e-commerce because it pays well (they imagine). Forget it - unless you are a History graduate who has spent hours on the Internet, read the e-business gurus and can talk convincingly at the interview about the future. If this is you, say so in your CV; if it is not you, then you aren't much use at the moment and you need to use your initiative to acquire information that wasn't handed to you on a plate.

That rule applies to every field of activity. People with 1st Class Honours degrees can almost ignore it, but everyone else can benefit from having gone beyond the narrow confines of academia and well beyond what the university careers service has ever dreamed of.

If you have knowledge, flaunt it and get it out there. Locate your employment targets on the Internet, research the company in detail and contact them direct. Don't expect to follow all the other sheep through an easy gate marked "A graduate career". It isn't like that any more. People with training who left school at 16 can be just as highly regarded as Computer Science graduates who have no idea what they want, what is possible and how to move themselves forward.

It's a tough world out there
It is entirely commercial. All careers in the future will be sales related in some sense. Wise up to that fact immediately and be prepared to develop your career from whatever angle you can gain entry into the world of your choice. Many of the most successful people I write CVs for started life by leaving school at 16 and showing initiative at every step of the way. Bear in mind that as a young graduate you are untried and unproven and that the world does not owe you anything. You have to prove yourself and make yourself valuable enough to employ.

The way to start is by showing that you can actually sell yourself, getting the message right, positioning appropriately, not producing a bombastic imitation of a mature career CV.

Snappy letters work wonders
Spend time on your application letters and throw the first 25 you write away. Until you have one that sings, that is less than a page long, that excites interest, that does not repeat your CV and is not soured by blind ambition, you have not yet written the letter. When you have written the right letter it will open doors and you can adapt it for application form statements.

I cannot tell you how to write a letter. It's a creative process, par excellence. You need to throw away your constraints and start by just saying what you want to say in plain English. Then tidy it up and add a few choice buzzwords. Then cut the ones that go too far. Then write it again, and again and again and again until it feels just right. Then try it out and revise it if no results come back.

Like your proposed glittering career, your very first application requires some hard work, commitment, maturity, willingness to get your hands dirty, admission of ignorance, capture of new knowledge and all the creative flair you can muster.

via Monster.com