Ensure your CV impresses in the first six seconds

You spend a long time keeping your resume up to date, and then more time tailoring it for a specific job application. But did you know that whether your resume gets past an initial selection depends on it delivering key information to the reader within six seconds? 


This new evidence of the importance of a resume's first impressions comes from a recent American report that used eye tracking technology to examine how recruiters make decisions. The recruiters in this research are professionals, and hiring managers probably spend less time, and give up more easily, if the CV they are reading does not deliver evidence of a match to the job requirements in an even shorter time than six seconds.


What is the reader looking for in your resume in the critical first six seconds? The main information the recruiter wants to read is:
  1. Name
  2. Current position title, organisation and dates of appointment
  3. Previous positions, organisations and dates of appointment
  4. Education or qualifications
If the reader proceeds to explore your resume further, they are mainly skimming for keywords that suggest fit with the position you are being considered for.


During the vital six seconds, readers are distracted by:
  1. photos
  2. clutter
  3. lack of clear layout or hierarchy


The lessons here are:
  1. reduce the cognitive load on your reader, 
  2. deliver the key facts in a clear and easily assimilable way, and
  3. speak the language of your target audience - use the same keywords in your resume, plus
  4. take out unnecessary information that could waylay your reader


The report I cite here is promoting a professional resume re-writing service but that is not only unnecessary but can prove counter productive anyway. I will explain why not to use a resume re-writing service in my next post.

Tips for new year career planning

As you settle back into work for the new year, it is a good time to take stock on your career direction. By mentally preparing yourself for the right opportunities you will be better able to identify those opportunities, and to take them. Here are some simple steps in career planning.

1. Consider good moments in your career

Who was there to share those moments to to help make them happen? Send them new year greetings. Invite them to have a coffee to catch up. Talk to them about the career highlight you share, ask them to relive it from their perspective.

2. How can you plan to have more good career moments?

Think about what was enjoyable about these times. Find adjectives to describe the key feelings and cognitive processes involved. Recall what happened, the steps involved. What did you do to make it happen? What skills or experiences did you use? Did these career moments rely on a particular environment? How could you make similar situations happen again? What skills or experiences may you need to acquire? 

3. What are your obstacles to achieving more of these great moments in your career?

Are they truly insurmountable, or are you holding yourself back? Discuss this with a trusted friend or your partner, and get their view.

4. Now you have remembered your career highlights, do not forget them!

In situations when you need confidence or a boost, spend five seconds remembering those times in your career when you excelled. Recreate in your mind and body how good it felt! This will inspire you to have confidence in yourself and to pursue greater career potential.

5. Set three objectives to help realise more career highs

Just three, and check in on them at Easter, in the new financial year and again in September. Maybe set one objective per trimester. Your objectives should seek to rebuild, or capture, outstanding career moments.

How to gear up your career in the new year

A new year gives the opportunity to reflect on where we want to be and set strategies for achieving our potential.    The following tips don't take much time and will give high returns in putting you in control of your career and opening greater opportunities. 


Check your public profile
Google yourself. What comes up? Do the search results capture your achievements so that a search specialist, like me, will be able to find you for a position that matches your capabilities? If they do, well done and go to my next tip.


If your public profile does not showcase your potential, here's what to do. 


1. Create a profile. 
This should be on your staff page if you are at a university or college, or in an online community relevant to your specialisation, such as the following networks: 
http://academia.edu/
http://www.researchgate.net/

Also create a profile on LinkedIn 


Already have these profiles? Update them. 


My next post will cover more items for your career management new year's check up.

The vexed issue of PhDs and how to select people for academic roles

How we blood people for a career in the academy, the topic of a column in The Oz Higher Ed this week, is Peter van Onselen’s take on the problem of selection for all academic roles, from junior to executive positions. To be considered for any of these, a PhD is required. Yet is the PhD a rite of passage to earned academic glory -- or a perverse incentive? The skills and behaviours required to complete a PhD have little correlation to the skills and behaviours that lead to success in roles other than research. It is time for a rethink about how we recruit and select for academic leadership positions, because many baby boomers will soon retire from those roles and replacements will need to be found.

The blooding theme is a striking description of the PhD experience but Professor van Onselen does not exaggerate. I treated my own PhD as a project and a lesson in how to think deeply and widely at the frontiers of knowledge – and then quickly moved on, but not into academe itself. Working outside the academy provided more opportunities.

Now I work in recruitment for the higher education sector, I see the difficulty my clients have in finding people suitable for senior academic appointments. The difficulty is particularly acute in the professions where PhDs are scarce and traditional academic profiles based on peer-reviewed publications are even scarcer. In architecture, leaders design rather than churn out words. Accountants use numbers to tackle real-time problems. People who lead in the professions have good management skills, skills that would be valuable to the academy. Where to find the leaders who will ensure that universities continue to be the right structures for learning, research and community engagement?

People who could be great for academic leadership roles are often lacking the right skill set, or qualifications. Leading researchers may feel their PhD training has not equipped them for the financial management and other management tasks of a Head of School. Some claim that professional managers should take on these tasks. This does not happen in other sectors; people continue to acquire skills through their careers but may climb the ranks from where they started. Gail Kelly started out as a bank teller and rose to CEO of St George and then Westpac. She understands every aspect of banking including the customer experience. A generalist accountant or lawyer would not have that knowledge. 

Research publications and PhDs are counted in university rankings as well as in appointments and promotions of individuals. That is not going to change, and in the rise of the power of students as consumers, rankings only become more important. We must entice good teachers and researchers to diversify their skills into leadership and management, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. And in fields of professional endeavour, we must make it attractive for people who are mid-career to undertake research, or revive their academic profiles, so they can truly be eligible to lead within the academy.

How to be noticed for senior management positions in academe

Getting yourself noticed for senior management positions is not only important because you get to practise the skills required to succeed in such positions; if you aren't noticed you are likely to miss out on opportunities. Most people don't notice when these roles are advertised, and some -- especially women -- do not want to put themselves forward. For these reasons, it is vitally important to be noticed as a potential candidate, before your ideal role becomes available. 

Follow the points below and I may tap you on the shoulder about becoming an academic leader.

Be Seen

Create a LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date, it only takes a few minutes each month. If you're worried you will get unwanted approaches, shut them out in your settings. Keep your university staff page up to date and comprehensive. If your institution's systems make updating it too hard, create your own website, or blog. Don’t forget to add the links to your LinkedIn profile.

Be Known as a Deft Administrator

If people notice you managing well, they are more likely to suggest you for a management role. Serving in Deputy or Acting positions is ideal, but these opportunities are few and can be hard to get. Consider other roles that will get your administrative skills noticed and valued by peers, such as editing a journal or becoming involved in a project. Showing your diplomacy, and your competence in getting things done to a level of excellence, not only earns respect from peers but impresses a selection panel.

In an upcoming post I will address the selection criteria used for academic leadership positions, following a research survey I am conducting of the higher education sector in Australia. In the meantime I will speak generally about the skills and experience required.

Acquire Relevant Skills and Experience

The ability to manage financial outcomes is increasingly important and yet many academics fall short in this vital area. Consider managing a conference or other event, and be able to talk about the financial outcomes (did it make money? how did you raise additional funds?). If you don't understand budgets at all, there are plenty of short courses designed for generalists.

Being able to manage change, is another capability of strong contenders for leadership. As change becomes the ‘new normal’ across campuses and disciplines, there are many change initiatives you can become actively involved in. Remember to be considered in your approaches and evaluate the impacts of your actions, so you can both articulate how you manage change and become better at it. Being able to drive change from the ground up is great for getting involved in your institution, in advocating for changes (both up and down), becoming good at consultation and building support for initiatives. 

Many successful academics do not want to serve in administration for their academic communities. It is true that management positions on campus today leave little time for research or teaching; while a good track record in both these areas remain prerequisite to being eligible. A desire for academic achievement through others, and through the sometimes exhausting processes of modern universities, is mandatory. And we do need more people willing and ready to step into these positions, with the respect and support of their colleagues, if we are to maintain the strength of our universities through the impending retirement of so many baby boomers currently in these roles.