Hi Stan!

Your resume is indeed well formatted. It also thoroughly describes the duties and responsibilities of your past jobs. And THAT is the problem with it. Duties and responsibilities only tell an employer what you did, not how well you did it. They do nothing to sell you or differentiate you from the competition.

Permit me to illustrate the difference with an example. Let’s write a resume for Steven Spielberg. If we took the approach that most people do, filling the resume with job duties and responsibilities, it might read something like:

STEVEN SPIELBERG - MOVIE DIRECTOR, Hollywood, CA (1974 – Present)
Responsible for reading scripts; selecting scripts to direct; developing the shooting schedule; storyboarding the film; hiring the art director, set designer, costume designer, cinematographer, etc.; approving all costumes, sets, and prop designs; auditioning and hiring actors; managing the daily shoot of the film; making creative decisions about the shots; coaching actors in their performances; reviewing the daily edits; managing the overall film editing; hiring and directing the soundtrack composer, etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum ….

How exciting would that resume be to read? Obviously nowhere near as exciting as Spielberg’s films. But lack of excitement is not the real problem with this resume. The real issue is that, when all is said and done, you could remove Spielberg’s name from that resume, and replace it with the name ‘Ed Wood’. Ed Wood is infamous as the worst director of all time, having created such Z-Grade movies as “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and “Glen or Glenda”. (See for yourself. Rent Tim Burton’s film, “Ed Wood”, starring Johnny Depp, along with a copy of Ed’s actual movie “Plan 9 from Outer Space.” You won’t believe your eyes.)

If you put Ed Wood’s name at the top of the resume, it would read exactly the same as Steven Spielberg’s resume. As movie directors, they both had nearly identical duties and responsibilities. As a matter of fact, Ed often wrote his own scripts and acted in his own movies, so he would actually have MORE on his resume than Spielberg would.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of Spielberg’s agent. If you had to convince the head of a major studio to hire your client, Mr. Spielberg, what would you talk about? More likely, you would present:

• The box office revenue of such hit films as Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park,and Saving Private Ryan.
• The enormous shooting budgets entrusted to Spielberg by other studios, and the equally substantial Return on Investment (ROI) generated as a result.
• The Academy Awards, Emmy Awards, Director’s Guild Awards, and numerous other awards Spielberg has won.
• The caliber of talent that has worked with and for Mr. Spielberg, including Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Richard Dreyfuss, and Tom Cruise.
• The times when Spielberg has pioneered or successfully taken a creative risk, such as being the first director to convincingly integrate computer-generated special effects with live actors in Jurassic Park.

With these accomplishments, Steven Spielberg clearly differentiates himself from the competition. The studio head might care very little about a director’s actual duties and responsibilities, but what he does care about are the results.

So, to apply it to your resume, Stan, cut down the job description and focus on your accomplishments. To identify them, ask yourself:

• How is performance measured on my job?
• When have I exceeded expectations, goals, or quotas?
• What am I proudest of in my job?
• When have I reduced costs or increased profits?
• When have I shown initiative, creativity, problem-solving ability, or leadership?
• When have I gone above and beyond the call?
• What is the difference between before I took the job and after I left?
• If they had put an idiot in my job, how would things have turned out differently?

It is your ability to demonstrate the quality of your work through your measurable accomplishments, not just the duties and responsibilities you performed, that will sell you.

Good luck, Stan. Make your resume a blockbuster!

Job Coach Jeff