Career Matching - What does it really means? [infographic style]

Resume Customization Part 3 of 3 - How to do a L3 Total Revamp Customization?

The last article demonstrated the 3 levels of customization, touching on creating different resumes for different generic roles and using Applications Tracking System (ATS) to cross check for missing keywords between your resume and job description before you send in the application.

This article will show you how to do a total revamp customization. First of all, let me try to describe the difficulties of doing a L3 Total Revamp Customization, it often takes much effort to do the initial copies. Most of the client's I've coached typically takes between 30 to 90 minutes to do the first fully customized resume for a single job. This is due to the time needed to research & understand the organization's work, analyze and reflect on own work history to rewrite resume to match as closely as possible to the job posting. One challenge in writing this article is how best to describe on how to do, as each job profile and job posting are different and often highly specialized; one could also use a different resume formats to tailor to each circumstances such as functional resume format to emphasize on previous functional skills.

"Formula" to L3 Total Revamp Customization
Rewrite resume's description in the same manner to each job description / requirement in your previous work's context.

Basic Diagram to L3 Total Revamp Customization

Sample Writing for L3 Total Revamp Customization

Customization if done correctly should help your recruiter / HR to read your resume and identify matching experiences to the posted job descriptions. Imagine if I continue to use my standard resume which would probably include other non-relevant experiences such as curriculum development, public speaking, training and assessment tools; while these are good competencies and personal achievements that I am proud of, they are not what the job is looking for.

A good L3 Total Revamp Customization should matches 70% or more of the job descriptions and experiences. Even if you only have 50% of the requirements, depending on supply and demand, there is still chance to be shortlisted.

Some pointers to add:
- Never ever copy & paste the entire job description without describing them in your work history's context. Imagine you are the HR reading your own same job description in the candidate's resume, you would be wondering if the resume is for real or the candidate is trying to be funny.
- Use functional resume format if the only relevant experience were more than several years back and they are not your most recent experience.
- Try to find out if the position is newly created or a replacement, if its a replacement there is good chance you may find the previous person or co-workers in the same department over social media such as Linkedin. You can then gain further insights through Linkedin (or making connections & interview them) and possibly derive hidden information such as the work culture, stress, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), why are people leaving or joining etc.
- If there are any mutual connections, you can send your customized resume via the mutual friend, this top down approach may possibly help you land an interview faster and bypass the bottom up hurdles of ATS, recruiters, HR screening to the decision maker or the hiring manager that matters the most.

Lastly, not all jobs require to do a L3 level, some individuals have enough responses even without customizing at all. It really depends at the moment in time, among the competition if you happens to be the most matching in the eye of the recruiter. If you find the response to your job application lacking, you may then want to review your approach and see if customization would increase the response rate.

Hope the above is of help, do make sure whenever possible, job search while you are employed, its often easier & more attractive to the recruiter (akin to poaching competitor's people) then when you are unemployed. The hurdles also increase gradually as the unemployment length increase; avoid that situation to your best effort. Build network every now and then, not when you need help during job search.

That's enough for this article, please feel free to comment or feedback to me on your thoughts.
All the best to your career endeavors! May the luck be with you!

Resume Customization Part 2 of 3 - the 3 Levels of Customization

The last article "Resume Customization Part 1 of 3 -Why customize?" set the foundations on why customization is needed to achieve good responses to job applications. Having convinced you on why the need, this article shall induct you on the different levels of resume customization.

The first level of resume customization is L1 Functional Roles Standardization. Often in our career, we are exposed to different tasks or job roles, in fact hardly do our roles stay the same over the years. For example, as a Career Coach, 5 years ago, my tasks were mainly profiling assessments, interventions, events organization and programmes coordination. Fast forward to my current roles, I am still doing some of those but with new expanded tasks such as workshop facilitation, courseware writing and curriculum development and so on. So for the purpose of L1 functional roles standardization, I could customize & write several resumes, each for different roles eg. Trainer, Case Officers (a term used in social work similar to Social Worker), Education and Career Guidance Officers (similar to Career Coach but in academic institutes such as schools, ITEs, Polytechnics), Recruiters, Events or Programmes Coordinators...

For each of these roles, I would need to re-write a resume that highlights relevant skills corresponding to each role. Eg. for role of Trainer, my work experiences should elaborate on workshops facilitated, curriculum and course wares written, public speaking, promotion and marketing for launches of new workshops, satisfaction surveys from workshop attendees etc.

Bear in mind, this "trainer resume" is meant to be sent for Trainer similar jobs, thus all the other non-relevant aspects such as coaching, counselling, psychometric tools and intake assessment should be reduced or deleted entirely. The goal is to give that first impression that "this candidate is the trainer profile that we are looking for!"

The second level of resume customization is defined as L2 Key Words Match (ATS). ATS stands for Applicants Tracking System, which is a matching tool traditionally used by recruiters to filter and sort applicants' resumes by using program to "read" the words in job description versus applicants' resumes; after which those resumes with the highest number of matching key words would then be "scored" and displayed on top. This way, it would ease the work of HR or recruiters from sifting through hundreds of resumes and simply focus on those that are most matching. When it comes to shortlisting candidate, recruiters only need to shortlist enough candidates for hiring managers to interview; this means that those candidates whose resumes are saved in "unreadable" pdf format or have little relevant key words would be skipped over entirely.

Fortunately, we now have the same ATS capability available for job seekers; websites such as CareerHero.asia and Jobscan.co, allows one to run a direct match to see the missing keywords, thereby allowing applicants to do a quick basic customizing edit to their resumes before they send to employers through portals or direct emails. Some websites such as JobKred and MyCareersFuture.sg also have a database of various professions for you to research and browse each occupation's relevant skills and competencies, some even direct you to suitable training for your career transition planning and skills expansion.

Lastly, the most tedious level of resume customization is the L3 Total Revamp Customization. It involves rewriting the entire resume to try to match each point of the job you are applying. It typically takes an average of 30 to 90minutes or more during the initial attempts, just to draft one fully customized resume to apply for 1 job. However if done correctly, the end results or impression that the receiver gets would be "this candidate is has all the requirements that we are looking for!".

In the next article, I will touch on how to do a L3 total revamp customizing of your resume to the job you desired.

Resume Customization Part 1 of 3 - Why customize?

We hear this advice often "customize your resume to the jobs you're applying!". But what exactly is customizing resumes?

Isn't resume supposed to be factual, as in there's only 1 version of me, the candidate, what else does employers want? [a common rebuttal from some of my clients].

Before answering the question, lets try to see first why the needs to customize your resume; then in later parts we will go into the "how to" part to customize the resume.

Above is a screenshot grab from Singapore's JobsBank website (myskillsfuture.sg)

As you could see, even for an admin job, there's varied requirements in its job title, number of years in experience required and different skills & competencies needed.

Some admin jobs require the workers to perform basic accounting functions, like payable, invoicing, receivables similar to the "Accounts and Admin Executive".

Others requires you to help out in HR side of administrative work such as vetting time sheets, payroll processing, interviewing etc.

The key here is to illustrate the different operation processes and work that each organization does, and correspondingly each role in these different organizations. At times, candidates may felt that they have those competencies and could even elaborate them confidently but when you look into the resume, often these information aren't even there. Clients may then said "oh I've done those before, when I am interviewed I will share then"

My question is, if you did not even show those competencies in your resume, how do you expect to be shortlisted for interview in the first place?

The value of career coaching is that you have someone to look into these blindspots & highlight to you areas of improvements, with the ultimate aim of increasing the response rates to your applications then eventually the interviews, the offers and the dream job you desired!

In part 2, I will share on "3 levels to customize your resume", stay tuned ;)