The Hindu Business Line : Stop before you resume

WHAT are the most common mistakes in resumes? How can you write an effective resume if you have little or no job experience? When is a resume too short? Too long?

Can graphics be used on resumes being sent electronically?

These and more questions find an answer in the third edition of Resumes! Resumes! Resumes! from the editors of Career Press. A sampler:

Keep in mind that prospective employers will spend less than 30 seconds reviewing your resume. You must keep it clear, concise and focussed on the information that will sell you best.

Leave at least one inch at the top of the page, and use one inch margins around the other three borders as well. Never go smaller than a half-inch margin. Large margins create a pleasing, organised, uncluttered feeling and many employers use that space to make notes.

Include information about your high school education only if you are a recent graduate or did not attend college or a trade school — in other words, if it is the most important educational credential you have.

Keep line length as short as possible. Studies have proven that it is easier to read information that's laid out in a longer block of copy with shorter lines than a short block of copy with long lines.

Avoid including personal statistics, hobbies or outside interests on your resume.

This information is usually irrelevant and may even bias a potential employer against you.

Find the book before you find a job.

Many roads to success

ENNEA means nine in Greek, and gram means points. So, what is enneagram? A nine-pointed diagram. And that might remind you of what you learnt in geometry class, but the nine points in the diagram stand for nine types of basic personality characteristics, writes Luis S. R. Vas in 9 Roads to Success, a book from English Edition Publishers.

There are too many claimants to the model and so one can safely surmise that the roots of the enneagram are disputed. While some trace back the model to Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and so on, there are some who find the origins in religion. Read on:

No two snowflakes are alike, though they have much in common. No two people are alike in all ways, ever. At first, your enthusiasm for the enneagram may cause you to run rampant typing people. Relax. No point is better or worse than any other.

The enneagram has found its way into the toolkit of many organisation development consultants who are using it in coaching, communications, team-building and leadership development programmes. They use it to understand personality differences.

The MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) maintains that each of its 16 personality types can be derived primarily from the comparative weight given by representatives of each type to one of four mental `functions' (intuition, feeling, sensation and thinking). For this system there is a complicated set of rules governing which function is primary, which is secondary, which is tertiary and which is the `inferior' function for each individual personality type.

To successfully incorporate divergent views and practices into an organisation, an effective communication infrastructure is required — a web of multiple communication channels needs to be opened. When an organisation creates mechanisms for feeding back the information obtained from these enriched encounters, into decisions that impact organisational structure and policies, it begins to become `self-organising'.

In Beyond Ambition, Robert Kaplan wrote that the drive to make a difference in organisations is rarely an `unalloyed blessing'. Many leaders who are driven to master their environments suffer a penalty: they become too ambitious, too competitive, too controlling, too hungry for rewards, too resistant to feedback, too unwilling to change. As a result their ethical stature suffers.

Do you see the points in these lines?

Skill-set toolkit

INTERESTED in a successful career? But that means too many things, you might fret. There are simply Thirty-five Business Skills to Know, says Thinking Research in a guide that is `revolutionary, straight-to-the-point'.

The foreword explains the idea behind the book: "You, the modern day knowledge worker, is under tremendous pressure to stay ahead and, for want of a better word, survive. You are expected to know more than your peers. You are expected to keep on learning. And often, you are expected to pay for it yourself, if your company can't pay for your executive education classes and for the hopelessly expensive business books." And the aim: "We just hope to give our readers pure actionable intelligence". A sampler:

A cardinal rule in decision-making is that you don't make a decision until there is disagreement. If everyone agrees, you can't tell what the decision is about. May be there is no decision to be made at all.

A few stress prevention tips: Work from a clean desk — eliminate distractions and control interruptions; play for tomorrow today — estimate the duration of upcoming activities; strive for balance — do something everyday that involves and supports the non-business components of life (such as family, social, physical, spiritual, intellectual and so on); and bring closure to today — make sure as many activities as possible are completed and accounted for.

You can skim vast quantities of information quickly and still find the salient points — for example, review the contents of a magazine, or a report on your desk. Look at the contents' list, the titles, the subheadings, the illustrations, words in italics, in fact anything that stands out from the mass of words. Try to find the pattern or structure of the material before plunging into it. Similarly, concentrate your attention on nouns and verbs rather than adjectives or preposition.

When a winner makes a mistake, he says, "I was wrong." When a loser makes a mistake, he says, "It wasn't my fault?" A winner makes commitments; a loser makes promises. Winners make it happen; losers let it happen.

The simplest rule about stressful conversations is that people don't register intention despite words; we register intention through words. In stressful conversation, the emphasis is on what is actually said, not on what we intend or feel.

Forcing someone to guess your intentions only prolongs the agony of the inevitable. Do not just plainly assume during stressful conversations that people know you mean well. Disarm by restating your intentions.

A worthwhile read.

Tailpiece

"When I get angry, I start throwing things."

"When somebody throws things, I get angry."

"Hmm... why not talk things over?"

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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Stop before you resume