Saturday, January 20, 2018

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!

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