How to Make a Resume

Mary Berman, from Farmington Hills, Michigan, had been looking for work since February 2009 before starting her Guerrilla Job Search, in mid-September.

Up to that point, 20 weeks of job hunting had produced zero job interviews.

Just 7 weeks later, she accepted a job on Thursday, November 12, as a marketing executive assistant.

How did she use Guerrilla job hunting tactics to find work 65% faster?

“I started with the Coffee Cup Caper. I sent a paper Starbucks coffee cup with my cover letter and Guerrilla Resume. I heard back from them a couple days later to get my first interview,” says Berman.

After her first interview, which went well, Berman followed up with panache.

“It was Halloween time, so I decided to send them a chocolate covered apple with my hand-written thank-you note attached. A friend of mine, who was off work that day, played delivery person and took it to [the employer]. That was a big hit — they were thrilled — and I got the second interview out of it.”

Berman’s second interview was with the executive vice president. Afterwards, she followed up diligently. “When I came home, I wrote a 30-60-90 day plan. I had taken copious notes during the interview and used that information given to create suggestions for what I would do in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. I sent that to them via FedEx with another thank-you note. And I got a job offer.”

Now. Let’s break this successful Guerrilla Job Search down …

1. Start smart

The Coffee Cup Caper — a paper Starbucks cup, full-color Guerrilla Resume, and a Guerrilla Cover Letter (asking to meet for coffee), shipped in a box — gets extraordinary results. By contrast, ordinary resumes and cover letters, sent by email, get ordinary results.

2. Follow up with style

Delivering a Halloween treat with her thank-you note was correct seasonally, if not politically. Use good judgment before sending items that might be perceived as bribes by employers sensitive to such things. In Berman’s case, however, it worked like a (chocolate-covered) charm.

And, leaving out the gift, could you arrange to have your thank-you note delivered by a courier, or a friend posing as one? Of course.

3. Give employers another reason to hire you

Mary did this in spades after her second interview, when she sent a written plan of action for her first 3 months on the job.

A 30-60-90 day plan is a way of proving you can do the work — before you’re even on the payroll — by describing how you would learn the job, build rapport with employees/customers, and contribute to the bottom line.

Mary’s plan was 8 pages long and took the better part of a Friday night to prepare. (Before you balk at spending an entire evening at home researching and writing a 30-60-90 day plan, ask yourself if you wouldn’t trade a night out for getting a steady paycheck again.)

4. Score style points with your delivery

Mary’s first follow-up, the chocolate-apple-thank-you note, was delivered by a courier, not by email. Her 30-60-90 day plan was delivered by FedEx, not by email.

Do you NOT see a pattern? Email should NOT be the sole delivery method for your career documents.

Bottom line: This smart Guerrilla had failed to get even one job interview in 20 weeks of conventional job hunting with conventional tactics.

After adopting unconventional Guerrilla tactics, she found work in only 7 weeks.

If Guerrilla job search methods can work in Michigan, where the unemployment rate tops 15%, they can work where you live. The only thing stopping you from thinking and acting like a Guerrilla is you.

The same Guerrilla Resumes and Cover Letters Mary used are here.

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A smart man once said that if you want to be successful you must help people around you to have success. When we seek a new job, the only thing that worries us is to find a good company, a high salary and to be hired in a top position in the hierarchy of the organization. In one word, we are only concerned about our own success. From this perspective the recruiter, who receives our resume and interviews us is an obstacle. He or she is an enemy, standing between us, and the sublime situation, in which we already have all the things listed above.

What I will propose at this moment is to try to change this paradigm, which is so widespread. As I said before, if we want to be successful we have to help others be successful. We wonder now how we could help, as a candidate, the recruiter in front of us to have success.

The answer is very simple if we try thinking the way they do. The recruiter is just a man whose job is to find suitable candidates. He wants to find them as easily and fast as possible. He wants to prove his boss that he is an efficient employee, which brings good results. His success is measured in the speed with which he manages to find and hire valuable candidates, who subsequently prove to be employees truly dedicated to the development of the company.

Therefore, if you want to help the recruiter to be successful you have to help him as much as possible to see that you are such a valuable candidate. The first step towards this goal is the way in which you write your resume. The recruiter does not have much time – help him to read as fast as possible your resume. Do not write the resume on more than two pages.

Format your resume so that the information is easy to find. The recruiter has a profile that he is looking for. You do not have to work with human resources to realize that if there is a sales position the recruiter will look after sales results previously obtained, or if a position is PR, he will look after the events in which you were previously involved. Try to sense the profile that they are looking for. Often, it is even published in the recruitment notice. Help him to identify this profile in your previous experience. You can even bold certain keywords if you consider it necessary.

The recruiter does not seek a job description – he is looking for a person, a man who got results, so give up copying your job description in your resume. There you can give details of the projects in which you were involved, the results obtained what you learned and the ideas proposed.

The recruiter wants to discover a candidate with personality. It does not mean that you come to the interview looking eccentric, but certainly, you can avoid writing your resume in the format of the European Union, for example.



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