Black Sales Journal

Your key to getting an interview is your resume.  Many professionals make the common mistakes and don’t realize it.  They only know that they are not getting calls.  Read on for some serious suggestions that can really help.

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We have talked about the resume in other posts, but this one will help you reform this important tool.  You may need to consider some omissions and additions.  These items will change the attractiveness of your resume, and now is the time to do it.

Your resume is not a complete bio, and it is not a curriculum vitae, it is designed to create the level of interest that prompts someone to say, “I want to learn more about this candidate!”

The perfect resume may not exist, but having more than one resume (Black Sales Journal 11/21/2011 Is Your Resume Race Neutral?) is something that I strongly suggest.  A resume for the job of sales representative for an equipment manufacturer that will require extensive cold calling is much different that a job as an order taker who doesn’t have to cold call but requires the ability to handle volume and extraordinary organizational skills.

Having sales skills and an understanding of the process in the overall is much more universal than just knowing how to sell a category of products.  Your worth may increase some with specialization, but knowledge of sales skills and the process often trumps product knowledge.  The X factor will be relationships in the right position.  Remember this in your wording.

6 Items for Consideration

As you start this year’s job hunt, you will want to reform your resume to consider these important changes from the resumes that you may have been used to constructing:

Remove the objectives section – What in the heck does it really get you?  I hired for years, and realized that this section was often someone telling me what I wanted to hear so that they could get the interview.  It did not work. In many cases, the objective section could be used against you if you are not careful in how it is constructed.   This will also open up valuable room by shortening the total length, while not sacrificing any content.  It will also give room for other important items that enhance your marketability.

Remove short-term irrelevant jobs – If you have short term irrelevant jobs, including temporary employment, you will want to consider shortening the actual resume by excluding these positions, especially if the positions are for less than a few months.  Yes, you will have some employment gaps, yet you will be able to explain them fully in your job application, which you should have to fill out and sign, and during the interview.  If you would like, you can have an abridged version of the resume, and to represent accuracy, a full version.  Your search for the job will include the abridged version.  This is only important if you have several short term or temporary jobs.

List job accomplishments for each job – A great outplacement professional and reference named Dave G. gave me some solid advice a couple of years ago.  He indicated that a good resume needs at least 3 accomplishments shown for each important position.   An accomplishment is just that, something that was accomplished, and not a skill.  Appropriate examples would be:

• Achieved a 12% increase in growth in sales and total revenue for the 2011 year for my assigned territory
• Increased customer count 20% while increasing customer retention by 8% 2011 versus 2010
• Achieved rank of top sales executive in the Eastern Division and #3 ranking nationally.

Be ready to back them up with substantiation if necessary, but don’t be ashamed of indicating these notable accomplishments.  Be specific and as concise as possible.

Know and include the keywords for the positions that you want – This one is important and I will write on it more in the very near future.  Keywords are important from the standpoint of the screening process.  If you resume gets screened out, you will miss the opportunity to be interviewed.

I will never attempt to say that I am a keyword expert, yet I understand the concept.  You will as well.  In a search for eligible candidates in a high-volume search (one where many candidates have the similar qualifications) such as sales representative, employers use automation to make the search easier.  Software utilized to find the keywords in your resume will be used to segregate those that go to the top of the pile from the others.  You want yours to be in the top of the pile.

Key place to find these keywords would be the job description or job brief for the job that you are applying for.  Other hints would include your college placement office, a recruiter or headhunter, and industry magazines and reference books.

Sites to get more valuable information on keywords are as follows:

Job-Hunt.org http://www.job-hunt.org/resumekeywords.shtml

Quintesssential Careers.com http://www.quintcareers.com/resume_keywords.html

If you are involved in what you suspect as a high volume search you should know your keywords, and make sure that cover letter and resume have an adequate amount of them.

Skip the references – I will keep this one short.  Everyone knows that you can produce references.  When I would get a resume that indicated “References available upon request”, I would always wonder why it was there.  At some point I took it off of my resume and don’t think it was ever missed.  It is common, but not necessary.  If you need the room, use it.  Both you and the prospective employer know that you may be called upon to provide references.

Keep the resume as “race neutral” as possible – You have read this one in Black Sales Journal before ((Black Sales Journal 11/21/2011 Is Your Resume Race Neutral?).  Let you resume work for you by keeping it “race neutral”.  You don’t know that the prospective employer is y fair, and you do not know what experiences that they have had in the past which my work against you.  Avoid tipping off your race during this phase.  They will know soon enough when they call you for your interview.  Mentions of your fraternity, sorority, or social groups can benefit you but also can militate against you.  If you do not know that it will benefit you, such as they drrk a Black candidate, then avoid it.

Pay Attention to Detail

If your resume is the key to getting in the door, make sure it is solid, and correct.  Have it reviewed by more than one individual, and that the keywords are there.  It is difficult when you are chocking this full of information about your favorite topic (yourself!) for you to easily note all the things that need to be tightened up or corrected.

Your comments are welcomed.

Be Effective!

Finding a job is tedious and requires a plan.  I would like to say in jest that you could go crazy looking, but there is some truth to it.

When it comes to the job hunt, you have to have a plan, and you have to stick to it.  You also will find it necessary to stay vigilant for that excellent opportunity that just might slip by if you do not recognize it.  No one wants to miss the “perfect” opportunity so I’m dedicating this post to important tips that may help your sourcing of job leads.

Instant Notice is the Best Notice

Twitter is turning into an important source of job information for all jobs, and especially for sales positions.  It is also an area that Black sales professionals do not use effectively.

One of the tips is that if you are not on Twitter, and you are searching for a sales job, you need to get with the program.  I am not saying that you need to tweet friends and associates, or follow Paris Hilton’s tweets and I am not talking about telling someone what you had for dinner on your vacation! I am saying that after you sign up, and with the understanding of a few important terms, you can follow sales positions and potential employers as they look to use social networking to find potential applicants.

Have you ever used Twitter to see what was in the job market?  Do you know how?  I did not either until I started using it to follow blogs and promote Black Sales Journal.  Some of you miss out on job offerings and some just end up getting them later.  The first notice of a job posting is often by Twitter.  It is a lightning fast broadcast which goes out using a hash tag to all who are following that hash tag.  An example of a hash tag is #sales, #NYJobs, #selling, and #chicagojobs.

A tweet is essentially a broadcast to all followers; it differs from an email because email goes directly to the selected recipient. A ‘tweet’ was once described to me as an outpouring of information, this “pouring out of information” can be to your benefit as you can receive updates about brand new opportunities as they become available.

Twitter is easy to sign up for, and easy to use.  You will need to practice with hash tags, as there is an amazing amount of information that you can come across with the correct tag.  Now if you are job hunting I would suggest that you consider a piece of software called TweetDeck (I use TweetDeckv38.1).  Here is the sales pitch… Both Twitter and Tweetdeck are FREE!  

You can follow job sources as they come from the following:

• Employers – many of them directly tweet their job openings to the public.  Increasingly employers of all types are doing this, and it is being effective for them to get a strong response.
• Job Web Sites – Many of the best job web sites are sending out tweets on the postings.  They want as many people to see these as early as they can in the process.  I would not doubt the effectiveness of this activity.
• Postings by Topic – I mentioned a few of them in the preceding paragraph.  This includes following #sales, #selling, #jobadvice, #interview, etc.  You will get all jobs, and you will have to pick out the jobs for sales professionals.
• Postings by city, region, or area – This would be exemplified by the tags such as #chicagojobs, #NYjobs, #sacramentojobs, #houstonjobs, etc.  Now this will get you all jobs, yet if you have Tweetdeck, you can follow your area, and the cities that you might consider selling in.

Get Rid of the Misconceptions

Yes, this is a way that some people spend needless time sending short inane messages back and forth.  Yes, anyone can do it from his or her cell phone, and they do to a fault.

But….this can be a powerful medium.  A broadcast blast that goes out to everyone “listening” informing him or her about the job you want.  You need to be in on the front end so that you can respond.

I described web sites that are online offering advice and also posting jobs.  If you will refer back to BlackSalesJournal 1/24/2011 5 Suggested Internet Sites for Finding That New Sales Job you will see these sites.  Note that they all are accessible by Twitter as well.

Wrap Up!

Tweetdeck is now part of twitter after having been developed separately.  You can access both Twitter and Tweetdeck by going to Twitter.com.  If you elect to try it, you may consider following Black Sales Journal’s posts on Twitter as well.  All posts are all posted onto Twitter and they will link directly to the site.  Our username is BlackSalesJrnl.

Get with the program and try some of the new tools.  As I said earlier, Twitter and TweetDeck are both available by going to Twitter.com.  You will be amazed at the activity on the screen based on what you are following.

In an upcoming post I am going to show some of the Twitter users you might want to consider following.

Your comments are welcome.