You're listening to a CNA podcast. Hi, it's Tiffany and Gerald on the Work It podcast. Now, a little story here, about 6 years ago, I had to clean up my resume because I was looking for a new job. At that time, I hadn't touched it in 8 years. So what did I do? I turned to Google for help. Now this is what Google said to me, List your achievements from most recent and work bad work.
Highlighting any recommendations or awards you have won along the way, then put your education background and list some skills you have, which may be suitable for the job you are applying for. Now by the time I was done, it was almost 3 pages long because everything felt important to me. OK, I know this is where you will be shaking your head at me.
Yeah, yeah, I think firstly, you have GPT today. It's a lot easier now it's a lot easier, but I think when it comes to resume writing, right, I think everyone can agree that they feel that their resume is always a work in progress. They don't feel that they have the perfect resume. There's always something to add, update, enhance in our resume, where we want to apply for jobs, right?
So I think Most people want to put everything that they have inside, and that's why you hit 3 pages or more very quickly. There's an art actually and a bit of science or as to how we should tailor our resumes a bit better so that it appeals to the recruiters, hiring companies to attract them to take a second look at what you've written on your resume and then call you in for an interview. I know this is something that's really on the top of many people's minds, people who are
job-seeking or even maybe not job-seeking as well. How do you write? A good resume and what to look out for. So I call in the big shot today, right? I'm really happy. We have a Lim Zirong, master professionals at the Institute of HR Professionals to walk us through this thing about resumes and to give us some tips and hacks. Welcome, Zong. Hi,
thank you. Thanks for having me. So
Zong, give me a ballpark, right? How many resumes have you seen so far in your career and in percentage terms, how many do you think are well written? Wow,
how many? Over hundreds or close to 1000. I mean, because I've worked in HR for close to 19 years by now, and I would say,
how many are actually well written?
I like to be cautiously optimistic, so more than half would be well written.
But these good ones, are they already like they're fresh from the job portals or are they like already pre-screened? Oh, you mean there's a difference? Yeah, the ATS. Oh yes, OK, application software.
So I would say in the earlier part of my career, I will screen every resume myself though now in the second part, I do have a team that helps me to pre-screen.
Now that you have heard what I did in the introduction, what's the good thing I did and what's the bad thing I did?
I think first of all I want to start by saying a lot of people fall into the pitfall where, oh, now I want to look for a job, I want to update my resume and then they just build on. What they have previously updated in the past. Like personally, I was, I started my career in Temasek, then I will have a resume that wrote Temasek, then I moved on to Unilever. I put on my resume experience on Unilever,
and then then I keep building on and on. But the truth is when we build on our resumes, we should also revisit the old parts and maybe refine it or even delete it or make it shorter rather than to take a very lazy. approach like a Lego where you stack, stack, stack and and now you have your 3-page or your 4-page
resume. Yeah, yeah, OK, OK. So I should actually go back and then relook at some parts and maybe shorten shorten some things, maybe even delete some things,
right? Especially if some are highly operational and especially if you're applying for a much more senior role already. Let's say you're applying for a director role after 15 years. South Korea. You don't need to use to do campus recruitment coordinating the logistics with the hotel. Yeah, you should delete that
by now. OK, OK, that's a good tip.
Can I give another tip too? You know sometimes people put their contact details under header and footer. So their name, their email address, their mobile number, and unfortunately, when they go through ATS, the application tracking system. Their contact details may not be captured because it's in the header field. So always put your contact details in the body of your resume. In the header, it becomes very small and tiny and that might not be captured.
Then if you got shortlisted, the ATS don't even have the contact details to contact you.
Oh my goodness, I didn't know that as your resume is incomplete. But why, why would people want to put their contact details in the header is because they want to space is one thing. They also want it to be repeated on every page. They want it to be more visible, but actually on the contrary, if software is involved, right, it could be invisible. Wow, that's like, OK, my mind is a little bit blown right now. I would probably have done and put it in the header because I
want to maximize the page space, right, right? OK, so. Walk us through very quickly the entire process of recruitment from the time our resume is submitted into the job portal.
When it's in the job portal, then progressive company would have certain form of screening by picking up keywords first. Hence, that's why I advise job seekers to always include reasonable keywords. Don't include very bombastic one where, you know, you inflate your title so big that it's not so common out there. Make sure it's relevant to the job that you are applying. Another pro tip, look at the job description and look at the keywords in the JD and try to incorporate some of the keywords
in the JD into your resume. And this way, it is more likely to be picked up by the system in the first stage of automated screening.
So should you copy and paste wholesale the keywords or you should try and I don't not plagiarize and use this copy and paste,
you're missing something, you missed out the parts to write down your impact at work because JD is usually listing the responsibility to help execute this event, but you wouldn't say execute this event and achieve a certain impact. And the second part has to come from your experience. So
resumes are already used at the beginning of the process, right? And the process starts with some form of screening and if if it's customized well like what Zong was telling us, then. Your resume has a higher chance of moving on to the next stages. So what happens after the resume has been picked up?
Let's say. Then usually the recruiter would do a phone screening in today's age or maybe a video screening, which is now so common after COVID-19. Now after some sort of phone screening, usually we move into a physical interview where possible, though unfortunately, I've still seen companies sticking to just video interviews throughout the whole selection process. I think that's the ease of convenience and they also thought, oh, I don't want you to come all the way.
Now candidates love it, right? You don't have to take a half day leave to go for an interview with Goldman Sachs. Then call me old school, but I feel when the candidate meet the interviewer in person, you get the chance to size him or her up to, is this someone that I want to work with or work for that you might not be able to tell so clearly over an interview, right? So 3 interviews, even physical one as a two-way courtship where you're evaluating the company.
Don't just go to say I need this job badly, I need Goldman. to love me and hire me. I see.
So I read that it takes a hiring manager on average 10 seconds to decide if the resume is in the accept pile or the reject stash. OK, what do you first look at? If I were to put eye tracking software into your eyes, which content takes the most of your eye time?
I would say your last most two recent jobs and your time roll, but I want to qualify that first of all, it depends on The hiring company and the nature of the industry first. If you're a startup looking to hire, probably you wouldn't be so obsessed about the staying power of an individual, but rather you are more obsessed on has this person done 0 to 1 work, the ability to do something from scratch and to scale it up, versus if you are applying for a more traditional company, then the recruiter
might value. Oh, did you spend 4 years in your last most recent gig and your last second most recent gig was it at least 3 years or so. So I wouldn't say this is what I look for, but depending on the nature of the industry, the recruiters may look at it this way.
So they will still look at the first two jobs. It's just that maybe someone from a startup company might look at what you have achieved, whereas somebody who is in a bigger company, a legacy company value longevity. So they might be looking at the
duration. the first page is usually your last gigs.
Correct, but there's always the top part where you can write a short little bio of yourself.
Personally, I don't think it is necessary, but if you still want to include, I recommend keeping it to 2 to 3 sentences. Yeah, I've seen resumes where the personal bio was almost like 1/3 of the first page and all this personal bio is self-description of an individual, not substantiated by your achievement or impact at work, depending on the interview or the screener who picked up your resume. He or she may believe or may not believe in it rather than going into the qualitative details.
I think Zong mentioned a very important principle which is you need to create a resume that is reader friendly, so you need to put yourself in the shoes of the reader. What are they looking for, what will appeal to them in terms of keywords, in terms of what's important information for them to see about you, so that it makes the whole reading, the whole 10 seconds more worthwhile. Yeah, yeah.
Now you talked about putting your contact details in the body. Now, what are the things are necessary to put inside the resume?
I think one thing that I would personally recommend is start with the achievement that you have achieved in that company. When I was at Unilever, what was the top two. Achievement that I've done. So start with the achievement first, then followed by some of the tasks or the work that you have done in that gig. Yeah. This way your achievement steals the limelight and quickly seizes the attention very quickly. It catches your eye,
right, because you put numbers inside there, right? Yeah, you qualify numbers and it's a very nice welcome distraction for your eyes. It gives your eyes, there could be some numbers peppered in there too if you just see a long essay, you feel like I don't want to. Yeah, yeah, so when you put some nice words with not proper formatting, I think it sends the signals to the reader. What I'm getting so far from both of
you is that it's a bit like storytelling, right? Writing a resume is storytelling, so it depends on who your reader is. If I'm applying for a managerial position, then you want to put straight up that you have led teams of what sizes, you have led them to achieve certain transformations
that you can include in your 2 to 3. This is a summary if that is the intent. OK,
what if though I am applying for a specialist role, but I don't want to put myself into a corner and say that this is what I'm good for. I want to open up the possibility of maybe down the road, you might want to consider me for a more managerial position because that means that I get promoted. What then should I focus in this
resume? You must remember the three E's, your experience, your exposure, and your education. The experience part, keep it 1 to 2 pages at max I would feel that exposure, what are the things you do outside work, volunteering or even part of associations that you'll be very, be very active in, and then lastly, your education, keep it short, where did you graduate from, etc. And I, I think back to your point on, on, on that, your resume is supposed to land you an
interview where possible. And once you land, if you land the interview, then use that conversation to highlight your career aspirations, how you may or may not want to be only a specialist, and then probe the company if they provide that option and opportunity and pathway for you to pursue. OK,
but be very honest with me, how many recruiters actually look at the volunteering part? Honestly, I think that volunteering part is a nice to have and possibly people will put it in maybe if they are headed towards politics or they are headed towards, I don't know, like a director position or they want to join some association, then they want to try to
put everything in, shore it up, right? But how many recruiters or hiring managers actually look at the volunteering part, the exposure part like you said.
I think it has to go back to what are the companies that you're applying for, right? You want to work for a company. That has a good purpose. I believe that companies with purpose last, brands with purpose grow, and people with purpose strives. And when you look at a good recruiter, when you look at the resume and look at that volunteering part or the exposure part, you get a sense of what drives this individual, what is his purpose in life, and then see if there's a marriage between.
His passion and what the company stands for,
you know, this thing about what should I focus on in my resume, especially if today we have got a lot of good experiences and everything feels like it should be in there, right? I, I typically would advise us to take a look at, are you aware of this principle called the Gestalt? Principles. Basically, it's a set of rules or laws, right, principles that are developed to help people design better user experiences. It's meant to allow people to quickly understand complexity and
make sense of complexity. So when I apply this the principles into resume, I treat the resume as a complex document, right? Just how our careers are actually very complex. We've got many different experiences, we do many different things across many different jobs. And how do we quickly design our resume according to this principles so that people can still see and make sense very quickly? Who am I? across all of all
these experiences. So if I use a metaphor, right, like fish bone and the meat around the bone, we can look like that very fat fish with a lot of meat, right, and that's what we want to look like. But at the end of the day, if we strip away the meat, what's the bone that's there, the core, which is what Zhurong, I guess was also bringing up, right, that that.
The essence of who you are, why are you doing what you are doing, the purpose of your career, there's a narrative, a storytelling like you said, right, that needs to come across. So how do we bring across this storytelling in our resume? We can design it according to Gor principles, and some of these people are like, for example, putting in content, words, experiences at different places so that
it signals certain things about you. And also, of course, things like less is more, right, you don't have to put everything you put in the right thing so that people send the right signal to their mind. And of course, I think one of the things that I would advise people to do is to test. So take your resume, give it to 5 different people and ask them what do they think you're trying to say in your resume. So you want to give it to a range of people so that you can see that regardless of what
Experiences they're reading from, how are they perceiving you? OK. What are some red flags in a resume that will make a recruiter like you toss
it out? red flags. Maybe I will answer it not from my perspective but from how I know some recruiters, they, they have told me. I mean, I mean one of the very common ones would be, oh, there's gap years in between jobs and I'm really I'm really. Agains that though, and I feel very deeply passionate about this because in the 1980s, it is common for people to find a job and stay for 20 or 30 years.
Whereas if you look at now, economic cycles are shorter, ups and downs are faster, layoffs are increasingly common, and I really believe layoffs may not be an issue with the individual. It's just because of the business needs and hence I urge recruiters do not see gap years as a red flag, but Normalize the gap periods, there could be people who took a gap period for house giving, caretaking, or really unfortunately went through a layoff, and I think it should be normalized and treated as common.
And not using the same yardstick like the 1980s where we want a continuous period of employment for 35 years. I think those days is a little bit over.
What about if you are reading the resume and you're very confused because this person, everything is just like a jumble jumble of stuff.
If you're working in a startup. In a very cutthroat or hardcore industry, then maybe such a profile will be fascinating because you want innovation, creativity, and not be bounded by the traditional boundaries. So a good recruiter knows the company well to know how to hunt or look at recipes that may be suitable. Now,
when recruiters read resumes, because we're all humans, right? I'm sure they're bound to be subjective biases. OK. So it could be maybe if you put an address in there, here in Singapore it's very obvious like which district you live in. Yeah, you live in District 9, District 10 people, people automatically like it or not infer certain things right about you. So how can we work around them knowing that the person who's going to be reading my resume. Might already infer some things about me.
So first of all, some tips you as a candidate, then we should not over include certain information like address, I don't think it is necessary. So some people may not realize you don't even really need to put the year of when you graduate from your school. You can graduate from the National University of Singapore or MIT, but you don't have to say 2007.
OK. But then do you put your secondary school, your junior college, your poly, that kind of stuff, because people can again in Singapore infer the route that you took and then extrapolate and say oh maybe you come from a certain SES, social economic strata,
and it's very true in resumes. I would see people putting secondary school when they come from the usual, the branded schools I mean. At least not in the recruiters that I've met and also as a HR professional, I've never let a secondary school, a branded one influence if I was shortlisted you or not. I mean, not really.
Yeah, I think it adds that little food for thought signal that affirms certain perceptions, but when it comes to really selecting, you're still going back to the experiences, the achievements, what you have done, I think those are more tangible things that recruiters would. Look out for there was a situation where someone was applying for a job in Jurong and they're staying in Pasir Ris. and then I think the recruiter.
Just discounted the resume saying that this person might be late for work or not.
But what if this person has BTO flat near Boon,
or drives like a BMW. I was taking a ride with a family car every day towards the west side. You cannot assume these things. Exactly, exactly. And then the other one is, of course, photographs, photographs, right? Some people say you must put, for example, if you're applying for certain kinds of jobs, you should put a photograph, but I think by and large, if there's no need to, my own personal opinion is you shouldn't put because photographs are highly subjective. You could be too good looking.
You could be not up to someone's expectations and then you wasted that 10 seconds because the person's mind is on the photograph instead of reading the other things. But at which point can I inject my own personality into the resume? Because I've read resumes where I can sense this person is fun, like there's a cheeky tone to it. Maybe it's in the 1st 2 or 3 sentences, but how much is too much.
I've seen resumes in my career where they started putting Each competency 4 out of 5 stars, and then they color their stars. So it looks so visual and it's very pretty, but the truth is, the ATS system is not going to be able to capture the stars that you colored in yellow, the 4 out of 5 for communication, the 5 out of 5 for empathy, and the 3 out of 5 for investment intelligence.
I totally agree with that. I always advise people don't bother putting that because the reader cannot validate. That rating that you give yourself, we always like, I like to give myself 5 popcorn. 5 stars all the way right? because we Asians, we tend to downplay, OK, we give 1 or 25 and 3 and then some 4s, it's very arbitrary,
but it looks very pretty though. I mean it is very pretty, but Maybe it is suitable for the advertising industry. I'm not sure. I'm stereotyping here, but
yeah, but who knows, I think, I think those are charts, right, and they usually come in one pages, one page resumes, right? I think those are really good if today you are out for networking. Yeah, if you're out for networking and you're meeting somebody for the first time. And maybe finding out a little bit about the job, do you have something on hand to show me and
you straight away produce that out. And then very quickly at a glance, you can see that and it doesn't become that arbitrary anymore because they have had a conversation with you. Well, I think today you really, really gave us so many tips, so many hacks. I mean, I for one will be Looking through my resume, not because I am job hunting, but I think it helps to consistently look at it so that when you really need it, you don't have to do this major overhaul. So thank you so much
for your time and your expert advice. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Welcome back to our Ask Me Anything segment where Gerald and I take on a work-related question that you have sent to us. Now today's question was sent in by a listener who I'll call Xavier. He says he's in his twenties and has just resigned from a job. Now, initially he thought he was not the right person for the job. After stating his intention to leave, and he told his manager,
the interactions were a bit disappointing. Now, it sounded like Xavier was not sure whether he was set up for success in the first place. OK, let me give you an example of what he said. I knew that I was the first official hire for the position, but I was also saddened to hear from my manager that they knew from the start that Having a less experienced individual like myself was not going to work out and that the higher ups wanted someone like myself on board because I was much less experienced
and therefore would not command as high a salary. Yeah, so Xavier is now searching for jobs, OK, and he wonders if he should disclose what he went through in his next job interview. If asked for his reasons for leaving, should he say what he went through? Will it hurt his chances of getting a job? Wow. So sounds like there's actually a
few things happening here, right? The first one is, of course, Xavier and his feelings about how he has departed from the last job, and this has a lot to do with how he feels that
He was set up for failure, right? I think it's probably quite confusing for Xavier because when you get into a job first and then you thought that you're the best person hired, and in Xavier's case, he probably thought there was a case and then when things didn't work out and he wanted to resign and the boss told him, uh, actually we kind of know that you're going to fail. Yeah, can you imagine. Yeah, and and then we only got you in because
you know you were cheaper. OK, OK, so I can imagine Xavier and we can imagine how it's very confusing for him, right? And this definitely would um dent his confidence for the future job interviews, especially if he has to ask, he has to tell people like why he he wanted to resign without a job. Yeah, yeah. So I think this being a very confusing time for Xavier.
Xavier would probably need to Find some closure or some way of thinking or reframing this situation so that it doesn't get carried forward to the future. I think there can be a lot of resentment, a lot of disappointment, help with the previous job, and this can actually easily show in the next job. During the interview when employers, the HR, they are sniffing for anything that is not. Proper, they were probe a little bit more, a little bit more, and then it gets out. So Xavier has
to really come to terms with this situation first. If you were in Xavier's suit, what would you do? Yeah, you know what, it's true, the psychological part is going to be very difficult, but also at the same time, OK, I'm a very half glass full kind of person. So I think the first thing I would do after I have licked my wounds and tell myself it's not me, it's them. Yeah. I think that's not me, it's them.
I think it would be to also see that actually, even if I was the only person for that role, even though less experienced, cheap, but you know what, there must be something in me that the employer found that I was hireable. Otherwise they could have just kept the position open. So maybe I will need to reflect back on all the things that I've done and ask myself, what is it that I can bring to the next job role? Are there transferable skills? Are there things that I would
consider my strength? You brought up a really important point, right, that it's it's them, not you. And you were picked for the job as the best possible hire at that price at that point of time. So I think these are positives, the silver linings that Xavier can take along with him. I think Xavier has to remember that he was doing a job that was scoped to a higher level, more experienced. He was trusted with kind of responsibility.
And this is something that Xaia can probably take forward to the next employer to share that, you know what, I was doing a job that was for someone that was a lot more experienced. I learned a lot from it. I realized that I needed to find something else. Yeah and I can take on more. I have proven that I can take on more, so that's why I'm applying for this job. I also like to think that from Xavier's perspective, why would the boss tell Xavier, you know, this, that is such a low.
Whether is it low move or is it could it be because they actually have quite an open relationship like like good communication, they trust each other to say the boss Xavier, could be that the supervisor really said that to maybe make Xavier feel that it's not you, it's actually us. We did a mistake, so I'm I'm trying to do something good by telling you that, but of course it has that the other unintended effect on Xavier, which is why why Xavier wrote in.
So I do think that open communication could be something that's also of a silver lining to show that you know what those things didn't work out, you still could get along with the people in your company. Well, Xavier, I I hope that your situation becomes better and both of us are really sorry that you were put in this position, but like we have been talking about here, I think there are silver linings in this situation. You can use some of these as you approach your
next job interview. Don't let this one setback affect you. So if like Xavier, you have a work-related question, do write into us. We are at CNA podcasts at Mediacorp.com.sg. We're also on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, me, Listen, and YouTube where a video Version of this is at. The team behind the Work It podcast is Janaini Johari, Joanne Chan, Saya Win, Alison Jenner, Shahzad Dalilia and Christina Robert. Video by Hanida Amin. I'm
Gerald and I'm Tiffany. Have a great work week ahead and don't let anybody tell you you are not good enough.