How to Discuss Your GPA on a Resume

College. It’s a great place to get drunk, fall in love, smoke pot, and occasionally go to class. Your GPA may be great, or it may be awful, or it may be somewhere in between. GPAs don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life. Unless you are going to graduate school, your GPA doesn’t necessarily mean that you are more or less capable of doing a job. All it means is that you studied really well… or didn’t.

Yet for employers, the GPA is one of the only tools they have to use to figure out if you are worth hiring. You probably don’t have a great work history, and your resume is likely pretty slim. So the GPA is the only thing that can tell the employer:

• How hard a worker you are.
• How intelligent you are (probably).
• How much you paid attention in class.

It’s not the most accurate measure, but it is the only measure they have, so employers use it to assess your candidacy. There are arguably reasons to keep it off your resume, but many experts advise that you should list your GPA, so assuming you go that route, here is the best way to put it on the resume, based on GPA.

GPA of 3.8 to 4.0

Go ahead and list your GPA, up to 2 decimals for anything under 4.0 (eg. 3.92). 3.8+ is almost always a good enough resume for even the toughest of jobs. There may be a few elite careers that are unimpressed by anything under a 4.0, but most of those employers recruit directly out of college.

GPA of 3.5 to 3.8

This is still considered a good GPA, but try your best to back it up with the other work you did in college. 3.5 in an easy major isn’t as impressive as a 3.5 in organic chemistry, so make sure you prove that you are still worth hiring.

GPA of 3.0 to 3.5

Here we get into something more complicated. This GPA is not bad per se, but it’s not impressive either. It is simply a GPA like any other GPA. Check to see if your within-major GPA is better than your overall GPA. If so, only list your major GPA, and ignore the overall GPA. If it’s worse, consider doing the opposite (for example, “3.6 GPA in all core classes”) but only if the difference is considerable, since the GPA in your major is more impressive than the GPA you got in your basic classes. If they are about the same, list it regularly or don’t list it at all, preferably don’t list it at all unless necessary.

GPA less than 3.0

If your GPA is anything under 3.0, you need to look for a GPA within your grades that is more impressive. For example, if you had a 3.4 in your major but a 2.3 in your other classes, only list your within-major GPA. If you had a 3.5 overall during your junior and senior years, but you did extremely poorly during your freshman year, maybe you want to put that as well. Otherwise, consider leaving your GPA off the resume. Anything 2.9 or below is not selling yourself to the employer.

GPA Can Be Tough

Struggling only a little bit can cause your GPA to plummet. You may have worked hard for your 2.9 GPA or your 3.1 GPA and your hard work should be rewarded. But when it comes to resumes, the goal is not to share “good enough” achievements. The goal is to share your best achievements. 2.9 GPA may have taken a lot of work in a lot of hard classes, but it is not going to wow the hiring manager, so you should leave it off your resume. In the next post, we’ll look at how to address the GPA at the interview.

Take Away Tips

• Use your major GPA if it is higher than your regular GPA.
• Use your core class GPA as a last resort (overall and major GPA far better).
• Don’t list your GPA if it is under 3.0.
• Consider leaving off your GPA altogether if it is under 3.8 and you have other achievements.

How to Proofread Your Resume

Employers have very limited time to see if you are a better candidate than the hundreds of other applications they receive. Resumes that have a single spelling or grammatical error may be quickly thrown out, because the employer still has 299 other applicants (or more) that took the time to make sure their resume was completely error free.

That is why proofreading your resume is incredibly important. Here are several proofreading tips to make sure your resume is perfect.

Resume Proofreading Tips

• Read it out loud, slowly.

One of the best ways to make sure your resume has very few errors is to slowly read it to yourself out loud. Enunciate each word and make sure it sounds grammatically correct.

• Look for squiggly lines.

Modern Microsoft Word spell checkers do a good job checking for spelling, grammar, and even verb confusion. If you see any squiggly lines underneath any of the words in your resume, there is a good chance it is an error.

• Don’t use a thesaurus.

Using big words does not make you sound smart. Using big words make it look like you tried to hard to make your resume sound smart. Larger words are not always synonymous with the word that you searched for in the thesaurus. If you don’t use the word in real life, don’t use it on your resume.

• Check punctuation.

When you have bulleted lists, make sure that you are consistent with your punctuation. Every bullet point should either have a period or no period, but it is all or nothing. Don’t put a period at the end of some bullets and not at the end of others.

• Check tenses.

Many people change tense in their resumes, especially when editing an old resume. Make sure that your entire resume is in the past tense, unless currently employed.

• Look at the design.

Take a step back and look at the design of your resume. Does it look visually appealing? If it looks cluttered or awkward, chances are it will look cluttered or awkward to the employer.

• Have someone else read it.

The best way to make sure your resume is perfect is to have someone else check it for errors. Sometimes it is hard to see an error that you created, since your brain thinks it is accurate. Other people will be seeing your resume with fresh eyes.

Check Before You Send

Before you send in any resume, make sure you have checked it thoroughly for errors. A single mistake can be the difference between getting an interview and getting ignored.

Take Away Tips

• Always check your resume.

Listing Your Benefits – Putting Only Your Best Information on a Resume

Barbara Pewterschmidt: “Honey, we’re rich again! I divorced Ted Turner and took half his money. We own half of CNN!”

Carter Pewterschmidt: “Hooray!”

Barbara Pewterschmidt: “And TNT.”

Carter Pewterschmidt: “…Neat.”

Earlier we wrote about the importance of limiting the amount of information on a resume. Your resume is designed to sell yourself – it is a sales document with you as the product. When you create your resume, you need to ask yourself: Will this information make the employer want to hire me more. If the answer is yes, you put it in. If it is anything from “no” to “probably not,” you take it out.

Most resumes have a lot of wasted information. Applicants put jobs that have no importance to the employer, accomplishments that are irrelevant, and so many clichés you wonder if they didn’t just get their resume from a random cliché generator.

Yet even resumes that understand the importance of good information often make mistakes. One of the most common mistakes is to list “features” of the product (you) that, while they make you look like a better employee, that effect is marginal at best.

How to Sell Your Features

More does not necessarily mean better. In fact, it can be worse. Let’s look at this using a product example. Say that you are looking to buy a cereal, and you look online to see the cereal’s benefits. There are two product descriptions, both for the same project. Which of these makes you want to buy the product more?

Product Description 1:

• 100% of your daily value of 27 vitamins and minerals.
• Tastes delicious.
• Made with organic ingredients.

Product Description 2:

• 100% of your daily value of 27 vitamins and minerals.
• Tastes delicious.
• Made with organic ingredients.
• Corn was milled using most modern technological equipment.
• Staff that milled corn recently got salary raises.
• Hand washing stations at manufacturing facility are well maintained.
• Shipping coordinators are handpicked for memory and reliability.
• Cereal is only shipped to retail companies with good business ratings.
• Cereal bags are clear so the cereal can be seen when the box is opened.
• Box tops are designed to rip open easily….

Reviewing the Two Sales Descriptions

Both the first and second description are designed to sell you the same product. Yet the second description lists off dozens of additional benefits. Knowing that the staff is well paid and that the box tops open easily is nice. The question, though, is do you really care? Does that additional information actually make you want to buy that product more? For most people, the answer is “no.” The first three benefits were enough to sell the product, and the rest is superfluous information.

Possible Downsides of Listing Many Unimportant Benefits

Still, even though the benefits are clearly useless information for most people, there may be the occasional person that sees those extra benefits and goes “okay, this is a cereal I can get behind.” So the question is: Is there any harm to listing that many benefits, even if they are only of minimal importance?

The answer is yes. There are a lot of possible downsides to listing that much information. The most common negatives include:

• Most important benefits are skimmed over, because the interviewer is short on time.
• Most important benefits are forgotten after a less important benefit is read.
• Most important benefits seem less important because they are part of a sea of uselessness.
• Interviewer is bored with you, confused, and forgets your best qualities.

There are a lot of reasons that listing many benefits that aren’t that relevant to the employer do more harm than good. For every one or two employers that think all of that information is useful, there are 100’s of others that don’t, and the ones that do think it is useful will still probably be impressed by your few best points.

Turning This Information Into Action

The key point to all of this is that when you write your resume, every single item you put in (your accomplishments, your education – even your employers) must do the best possible job selling yourself to the employer. If it doesn’t, it shouldn’t go in the resume, even if that information is still a mild benefit.

Take Away Tips

• More is not always better.
• Limit your information to only your best sales points.

Does The Employer Care About the Jobs, Cont.

In the last post, we started to discuss how many jobs to list on your resume. The answer to that question is “few.” The more jobs you list, the less each job is going to be reviewed by the interviewer, and you risk giving off the impression that you bounce around from job to job.

However, the most important thing to remember is that the employer does not care about most of the jobs you have held. It may seem counterintuitive, but most of your work history is simply not important. The best way to prove this is with examples. For the sake of discussion, let’s pretend you are applying for a job working with computers.

Irrelevant Jobs

Scenario: You are applying to an IT job. You are writing your resume, and you have held 4 jobs in the past. You list them all on your resume. The companies you worked with are as follows:

• 2009-2010 Microsoft Corporation.
• 2008-2009 Intel Corporation.
• 2006-2008 Apple, Inc.
• 2004-2005 McDonalds

It’s pretty easy to see from this list that the employer is not going to give a damn about the McDonalds job. You may have something you believe is relevant (for example, maybe the job is looking for someone that had leadership experience, and you were a manager), but the employer is going to take one look at a resume that lists “McDonalds” as an employer and completely ignore it. The hiring manager simply does not care.

This applies to college graduates as well. You probably worked a lot during college for various crappy businesses. Then you get one job that looks good on a resume, but the boss is a jerk and you quit. Now you have the option of making your resume again for a new employer.

In this case, you may want to only put the one job that you held that was impressive. Yes, it makes your resume look smaller, but no corporate job cares that you worked for a grocery store, or worked as a waiter, or worked as a barista. They don’t care. It’s unlikely any of your achievements with those types of companies is going to impress a corporate employer.

Redundant Jobs

That brings us to another point. What if the jobs are all relevant to the position? Here, still, we have another issue – does the job you list say anything new about your eligibility, or does it bring nothing to the table? Let’s look at a similar list again:

• 2008-2010 Microsoft Corporation.
• 2006-2008 Intel Corporation.
• 2004-2006 Apple, Inc.
• 2002-2004 Dell, Inc.

Now, at first glance it appears that all of these jobs are relevant to the position. However, that is not the question. The question is – does the job add anything to the resume that helps you get the job? The answer is probably a big “no.” Most likely you had the same tasks at Dell that you had at Microsoft, and most likely you already listed those achievements. So while the name “Dell” may be impressive to the employer, it adds nothing that isn’t already on your resume. It is simply added space, and added space with no value is bad space.

Note: The oldest job may not be the redundant job. If you worked at Intel for only 4 months, that is the job that may be useless on your resume. Short jobs and jobs that aren’t as impressive can be removed from a resume, unless it makes it look like you were out of work for a long period of time.

Old Jobs

Finally, jobs you held a long time ago may also now be irrelevant. A job you held for 3 years in the 1980’s is not as useful as the job you held last year. It may have no use at all. All it does is provide the employer with an idea of your age. The older the job is, the less likely it is useful on your resume, especially if your newer jobs are more impressive.

Overall, it is important to remember that resumes are essentially sales documents, with yourself as the product. You only want to list your absolute best features. All of the less important features are unnecessary.

Take Away Tips

• Your resume should only list your best and most relevant jobs.
• If there isn’t a great reason to put the job on the resume, don’t list it.

How Many Jobs Should You List on Your Resume?

This is a question that a lot of applicants have. You have held anywhere between 0 and 100 jobs in the last ten years. You want the hiring manager to see how qualified you are for the position, so you are tempted to list every single job you have held to show the employer that you are a work experience machine.

Quality over Quantity

This is not the best strategy. In fact, it is the worst strategy. Employers have all of 30 seconds or less to look at your resume before deciding if you are someone they want to seriously consider. When they see that large a resume, one of three things is bound to occur:

• The employer won’t bother looking at anything other than the first page.
• The employer will spend less time looking at your more recent jobs in the interest of time.
• The employer will skim around, missing important points.

No matter what happens, your chance of getting the job suffers. You have a limited amount of time to draw the interests of the interviewer. The best way to do that is to have your best information be the only information available to the interviewer.

The Employer Doesn’t Care

The truth is that the employer really doesn’t give a damn about the crappy job you had 10 years ago. Maybe you believe the tasks were relevant, but if you haven’t done them recently, the employer is going to doubt that you still have any of the skills.

Similarly, if you held a lot of jobs in a short amount of time, the employer is not going to care about any job you held for a very short period of time, nor are they going to think highly of you for bouncing around from job to job.

Whenever you write your resume, it is important to ask yourself: Does the employer care?

In the next post we will take a look at some examples to help you figure out whether the employer cares about the job you are going to list on your resume.

Take Away Tips

• Always choose quality over quantity.
• Remove any jobs that don’t help you get the job.
• Review the next post.

Highlight Successes on a Resume

Time for a steady stream of blog updates that I forgot to post. Everyday Interview Tips may need to be renamed “Almost Everyday Interview Tips.”

Most people write terrible resumes. Based on this knowledge, there is a good chance your resume is terrible. Sorry. The truth hurts. You have a terrible resume. Embrace it. Acceptance is the first step towards recovery.

Your resume probably sucks for many different reasons, but one of the most common reason is the failure of most resume writers to put down successes and achievements on their resume.

Most Resumes

The achievements section of your resume is designed for achievements. Achievements are areas of work that you were successful in the past. Achievements are not simply the tasks you were assigned. Most people’s achievement bullet points look like this:

• Worked with Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, and Access.
• Completed projects on a tight deadline.
• Hard worker with various boring skills.

This is bad. These are not successes. Anyone can work with any of these products, or claim any of these claims. If you open a complicated data analysis program, and you randomly click several buttons and then close the program, you can claim you “worked” with the program too. The question is – did you work with the program successfully.

Listing Successes

Your goal with your resume is to show the things you have accomplished. Yes, it is a good idea to put a few keywords in there about what you worked with simply because it gives the employer a good idea of what you know, but that does not mean that you should take that as an opportunity to simply list off experiences.

Instead, list of achievements. Focus on what you have actually completed successfully, even if you achieved very little. Here is how the above list can be written better, even if you have very few good achievements to your name.

• Generated over 300 resource documents, 50 spreadsheets, and 10 Access databases.
• Completed an estimated four week marketing campaign project within a two week deadline.
• Established companywide organizational processes for hiring new recruits.

Even if you haven’t achieved much in your time at your previous employer, you have likely completed several tasks successfully. What were they? How can you write them in a way that impresses the employer?

The employer does not care what you worked with nearly as much as they care whether or not you worked with it successfully. The best way to show them that is to list achievements, rather than tasks, on your resume. Try to integrate keywords, but make sure that the focus is on what you actually brought to your previous company.

Take Away Tips

• Focus your resume on the items you successfully completed.
• Don’t simply list tasks you were assigned without mentioning their achievements.

How to Keep Your Job References Informed

Your references do play a role in your ability to find employment. They may seem like a formality, especially nowadays that references are left off most resumes until requested, but as many as 20% of all applicants lose their employment chances because of bad references. Bad references can legitimately harm your ability to find a job.

In an earlier post we discussed what makes a good reference. Good references are people that:

• Are energetic – both about you and in general.
• Are important – they hold a high up position.
• Are informed – they know what you did at your job.

The last one is important. The greatest reference can become a bad reference if they are not informed about the employer that is calling them. You need to make sure your reference knows what to say.

3 Ways to Keep Your Reference Informed

• Give them a copy of your resume

First, the reference should have a copy of your resume on hand. This allows them to know what experiences you listed, so that they know to mention those experiences when the employer calls.

• Warn them of the incoming phone call

You never want the phone call to be a surprise. Warn the reference that a call might be coming as soon as you get called in for an interview – before the interview has taken place and before any references have been given to the employer.

• Arm the reference with information

Send the reference the job description, company information, and some of the key points you expect to bring up at the interview, including a list of what you would like emphasized. Make sure they know what you will be saying and what is important to the role, so that they can provide their own responses accordingly.

Keep Them Notified

You should also keep your references notified of your progress, and let them know how the interviews went after each one is completed. Also, whether or not you got the job, thank your references at the end of your interviews. You never know when you will need their help again in your job search, and you do not want them to be annoyed by the number of interviewers they need to be talking to.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Notify your references of the potential phone call.
• Send them a copy of your resume and cover letter.
• Make sure they know everything about the company.

How to Choose Your References

Last post we discussed why references are more important than people believe. Today we will look at how to choose who should be your reference.

Choosing References

Choosing the right references is important. When a hiring manager interviews a reference, they are not only looking for information about your candidacy. They are also looking for subtle clues about how great an employee you really were.

It is against the law for a reference to speak poorly of you to the interviewer, but references that don’t give you a glowing recommendation will seem apathetic to your employment, possibly because they do not think that highly of you.

When you choose a reference, they must meet all of the following criteria:

• They must be energetic about helping you find employment.
• They must be energetic naturally, both in their speech and mannerisms.
• They must be knowledgeable of your tasks at your previous job.
• They must be prepared, and know that the job will be calling.
• They must be in a position that gives them authority.

All of these must be true. That means that if your old boss loves you and wants you to find a job, but also talks like Ben Stein, you may want to find someone else. Employers are going to listen to that person speak about you in monotone and assume they don’t care about you or your hard work.

Also, make sure that they have something to say – especially the tasks relevant to the position. A boss that only knows one or two of the activities you did during your employment is not a good enough reference.

Finding References

Evidence suggests that hiring managers do call references, and that many applicants are turned away for either “lying” on their resume or for having a reference that doesn’t speak about them in a glowing fashion. Yet this can easily be because the reference simply wasn’t good enough at informing the hiring manager about your hard work or tasks. Make sure the reference you choose will not have these issues.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Choose energetic, informed references.

How Important Are References?

Let’s be honest. You didn’t put much thought into your references. One is an old boss. Another is a dude you knew in college that looks like he made a name for himself. Another is a relative with a different last name that you are pretty sure won’t be noticed. You think to yourself “these won’t matter.”

Well, they might. According to an article at AOL Jobs (http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/09/13/reference-check/?ncid=webmail), as many as 1 in 5 potential jobs are turned down because of the reference check. That’s an amazing 20% of all applicants. However, the reason that they are being turned down is not what you may think.

Why Applicants Are Being Turned Away

According to the poll numbers, most employers do not call references to see how awesome an employee you were. They call to see what your job duties were. You have your job duties on your resume, and you explained your job duties during the interview, yet still 20% get turned away. This can only be due to two possible reasons:

• You lied or exaggerated on your resume.
• You chose a reference that either didn’t know all of your tasks or failed to communicate them effectively.

We will discuss the second one in a later post. What we can see, however, is that lying (or exaggerating) on your resume can have some serious repercussions. If you claim you “worked with” a piece of software, yet you only worked with it for a week a year prior to leaving, it is unlikely that your reference will mention it, and chances are you will be seen as a liar. You did not even lie, but your exaggeration over how much you used the software caused you to lose out on a great job.

That is why it is important to both be honest and choose the right references. Find someone that knows all of the tasks you had, and can communicate them effectively. In the next post we will look at how to choose your references, followed by a post on informing your references of these jobs.

Take Away Interview Tips

• Choose the right references.
• Don’t lie on your resume.
• Don’t take references for granted.

Thoughts on Chris Osborne’s Blog Post on Resume Clichés

Recently we discussed why resume clichés decidedly terrible. They bring literally no value to your application. Anyone can say them and prove that they are true. They are meaningless, terrible phrases that everyone uses, and by using the same exact phrases you do nothing to stand out from the 1,000 other applicants that are vying for the exact same role. . If everyone is wearing a black shirt, and you want to get noticed in the crowd, you don’t by a black shirt. You buy a pink shirt or you go naked.

In Chris Osborne’s blog post he addressed this very point. Resumes and LinkedIn profiles (which read like resumes, in many ways), are filled to the brim with annoying job clichés that bring no obvious value to the reader. His blog post is worth checking out. We would, however, like to address one small area a little bit. From the post:

Before:

I am an effective and enthusiastic writer using communication skills to drive results, in a hard-working and dependable manner. My 20+ years experience helps me multi-task so I can think out-of-the-box about being a terrific people person.

After:

I am motivated to encourage my readers and clients to find creative and fun ways to express themselves in resume and profile writing. In general, my clients and readers discover that following some simple, but effective, tips and suggestions increases the readability and effectiveness of their resumes, and they usually see an increase in traffic across their social media profiles.

Thoughts

It should be obvious why the “after” is clearly better. It’s unique, it’s specific, and it’s engaging. The “after” paragraph is exponentially better than the original. Osborne does a great job showing how one paragraph can be completely rewritten to essentially say the same thing, but in a unique and interesting way.

The only thing worth addressing, however, is this statement:

What is easier? Saying that I have “excellent communication skills”? Or explaining exactly what that means. For instance, do my communications skills persuade? Inform? Motivate? Close deals? Educate? And if my communication skills do one or more of these important things, what type of results have I delivered?

Don’t forget – it is not just a matter of looking for better, more specific words. That is only a part of it. You also want to make sure that you use your accomplishments. Of everything you can put on your resume and cover letter, your accomplishments are 100% unique to you.

Using the above “after” example by Mr. Osborne, he has effectively communicated his motivations and goals. That’s great. The thing to remember, though, is that other people can still use that exact same paragraph and have it be true to them. While Osborne chose a unique, more specific phrasing, he does not mention any accomplishments that are unique to him.

Nor should he, necessarily. This is not to say his paragraph isn’t perfect for what it is designed for – to attract visitors on social media profiles. When you are writing your resume, though, don’t forget to use your accomplishments as often as possible. Only you accomplished the things you accomplished, but thousands of people can be “motivated to encourage their readers.”

Take Away Tips

• Avoiding clichés should be one of your top priorities.
• Your goal is to be unique and stand out from the crowd.
• Delve into specifics, in goals, skills, and accomplishments.