Adjusting my resume
My very positive ConFusion report will follow soon. For now, suffice it to say that I had many career conversations with tech-oriented friends and found out many things that encouraged me.
I'm trying to figure out how to adjust my resume to fit the Project Managment position Dan D. sent me a lead for. He says, "it's more like a project support job, where you would keep track of several jobs and customers all at once and make daily status reports. Attention to detail, good organizational and customer support skills are the necessary qualifications. You won't need a technical background, but you would be exposed to quite a bit of the technical environment and hence will be have to be able to communicate often between technical and non-technical people and sometimes translate."
He also says the projects being managed involve database extraction with doctors across the country. Says Dan, "There's a fair amount of scheduling involved. You'd be responsible to ensure that projects don't fall between the cracks (they do on occasion) and also be a liason between the techs and customer."
That's the sort of job I had before, except database extraction instead of advertisements. Maybe that similarity would result in getting the job. Dan also said "I saw the close proximity to tech without having immediate tech knowledge as plus in your case. You seem very good at translating from geek."
The problem is that the Objective and Qualifications listed on my current resume have nothing to do with this job. This will be my first practice in trying to adjust a resume to a career change, and I'm not sure how.
Objective: to solve fresh challenges in print and computer media that take advantage of my creativity and expertise.
This is the objective I've been listing for several years because that's what I used to do. So far as I know, I need to avoid replacing this statement with my real objectives, "I want to work for you for a while to pay my rent and do process of elimination on what I can do and would like to do". But I'm not sure what to say here. Even with the above description, I'm going to only have a fuzzy sense of what this job really involves, until I go in for an interview and ask. So I'm kind of shooting in the dark at making up something that will be kind of like the job I'm applying for.
Competencies
Desktop publishing
Website development
HTML
Layout design
Computer illustration
Traditional media illustration
Dimensional illustration
Photo effects manipulation
Large-scale signage design
Expert-level knowledge of Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker and Macromedia FreeHand; knowledge of QuarkXPress.
Again, this isn't going to have anything more to do with this job than it did with my last one. Less, in fact. But I'm not sure what to call the sorts of skills this job needs. I'm also not sure I have an adequately approximate understanding of which skills those are. This is going to be a recurring issue, so I need to learn how to deal with it if possible. How have you dealt with it?
Professional Experience
March 2004 to present
Print Producer WB Doner Advertising, Southfield, Michigan
Managed production process including budgets and schedules for newspaper and magazine ads for numerous clients, including Mazda and Hotels.com “Gay Friendly Hotels” campaign. Interacted with print shops and publications and served as a liaison between the prepress software operators, creative directors, art buyers, and the staff members who represented clients. Accomplishments included establishing an official Hotels.com Pantone red.
February 2000 to October 2003
Publications Manager Kirk in the Hills, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Designed and published a weekly bulletin, monthly magazine, advertising, custom supplies, signage, brochures, flyers and other literature. Major accomplishments included dramatic redesigns of the bulletin, annual report and Kirk News, the program magazine and invitation for the Congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, and the design and launch of an interactive website.
May 1998 to February 2000
Graphic Designer Aquent Partners, Southfield, Michigan
Handled numerous accounts across the greater Detroit area. Accomplishments in Photoshop included creating clipping paths for a catalog, setting up macros for automated image adjustment and naming, and scanning and adjusting automotive wiring plans. Accomplishments in Quark included designing staff newsletters and advertisements for publication in Crain's Detroit Business, production art of advertisements for Comerica, and mailers for K-Mart.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Commercial Art with a minor in Graphic Design
Pensacola Christian College, Pensacola, Florida, 1998
I think I should list Penguicon on here, but I don't know how. It doesn't fit the molds I know, and I'm not interested enough in resumes to invent my own molds. There are probably websites full of sample resumes, but I'd rather ask for your advice before I start digging randomly through those.
Comments
rachelann1977 on Jan. 23, 2007 12:11 AM
One suggestion that leapt to my mind immediately was to divide your competencies into technical skills and interpersonal skills. Some interpersonal skills require relevant experience, and sometimes training, as such training is often offered on the job as modules or classes. For example, communication skills; remember the conversation with Chuck about his email correspondence course?
Another thing you can do is to include a section on relevant experience. This section can include any and all volunteer work or small jobs you have done on an individual basis, and things you do just for fun. This is where you list your experience with Penguicon. You know how to be creative with wording here, I am sure of it, so I won't go into detail on that.
rmeidaking on Jan. 24, 2007 5:31 AM
Figure out ways to weave leadership roles into your task descriptions. "Led a team which [accomplished a task]" is always a good line. "Worked with a group to [do something else]" works too. You want to get across that you're a team player (as opposed to the geek who shows up once a week in his Homer Simpson slippers) and you get things done.
You probably want to make a bulleted list of software you're comfortable with, such as PhotoShop and InDesign. Sometimes an employer is looking for someone who already knows the package they use; I've gotten a couple of jobs because the word "QuickBooks" was on my resume.
To get your Penguicon history, you need a section called "Related Experience" in which you say something like:
Penguicon Programming Manager
Coordinated with fifty presenters to establish a program for a mid-sized convention; arranged meeting facilities; contracted for relevant A/V equipment and meeting supplies; prepared convention program books and advertising literature; worked within tight budgeting constraints to achieve desired outcome.
Or something like that. You want to get across that you arranged everything necessary to bring off the event successfully. Anyone who has run a convention should be able to get a job as a project manager, if they want to.
matt-arnold on Jan. 24, 2007 2:37 PM
Shouldn't that be present tense, until April? I wonder if I can lump my past conrunning experiences together.
matt-arnold on Jan. 25, 2007 3:52 PM
I need to comment on this again, because one of the things that really gets me into a dark mood when job hunting is finding out that I need to say things that aren't true. Take your first paragraph, for instance. That would be great advice if you were a time-traveler telling me to go into a different career in which I would get jobs working on teams. But I've never done anything as a team in my career. And I have absolutely never arranged everything necessary to bring off a convention successfully, or even a large fraction of everything necessary.
zifferent on Jan. 25, 2007 5:00 AM — Job Description
http://www.michworks.org/mtb/user/pkg_jobs.ViewJobOrder?an_Orders_ID=2507703&as_FromSearchResult=TRUE&as_view_type=PRINT
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