Landing a Job During a Crisis: Part I

At the time of this writing, San Francisco is in the tenth week of shelter-in-place since the official lock-down was announced due to COVID-19.  The population-density of the city, coupled with being a hub for international flights, mandated that city leaders take early and aggressive action.  Like much of the rest of the country, non-essential stores and services are closed, restaurants are open for pickup and delivery only, and the workforce is dialing-in remotely to conduct business. 

As people shift how they spend their daily lives, businesses are up-ended and venture dollars are harder to come by.  Companies, many of them startups, (particularly those that are grounded in people-driven offerings), are struggling.  The list of layoffs grows daily:

• Airbnb lays off 25% of its staff
• Uber layoffs (round 1)
• Uber layoffs (round 2)
• Yelp lays off 1000 and furloughs 1100
• Eventbrite lays off half of its workforce

Layoffs equate to the “supply” element of the supply-and-demand job market.  The other side of the formula is demand; A.K.A employers’ vacancies.  Unfortunately, there is more bad news; many companies are freezing hiring.  This creates high supply and low demand, making the job market a very, very competitive place to be right now.  So how do you position yourself to land a coveted role? The answer is threefold, and will be covered across a series of short articles.  But in a nutshell: 

1. Craft your Story
2. Focus on Business Value
3. Network

This article will focus on the first point.  

Craft Your Story

When people ask what skills I look for when hiring data analysts, my answer is always this: “The number one asset is story-telling”.  Nowadays, students don’t even have to be information systems major to be exposed to SQL.  If students are in a data-oriented major or MBA concentration, then they will be highly proficient at SQL and Python and perhaps other languages.  The point here is that finding candidates who can extract data is table-stakes.  It is finding those that can tell compelling data-narratives that are valuable.   Storytelling is important in every business role, whether its data, marketing, strategy, or sales. But first you have to learn to tell your own personal story; initially through a resume, and then during the interview process. 

Tech Resume Academy was developed for the exact purpose of helping job-seekers express themselves on their resume.  I’ve read hundreds of resumes that are bullet-after-bullet of disparate, mundane responsibilities.  They lack the proverbial color that conveys the richness of their experience. 

I’m not suggesting that the resume should read like a piece of prize-winning literature; you do not want style to eclipse substance.  Rather, there is a “sweet-spot” that can preserve the succinct, crisp responsibilities while still adding rich color that articulates the environment, outcome, and impact of the work. 

Like all good stories, your bullets should address the

• Who: who are your stakeholders? who did you collaborate with?
• What: what did YOU do? What can YOU personally take credit for? What was the outcome? What methods/frameworks did you apply?
• Why: Why did you undertake the task? To facilitate customer success?  Or for internal cost savings? Or to identify areas of friction? 
• When/Where: these are addressed in your Title and Tenure

Good Storytellers Adapt to Their Audience

Writing a strong resume is a time-intensive endeavor, and once written, its easy to consider it “done”, but a resume should be a living document that is amended and optimized for each job application.  Let’s assume a candidate named Mary conducts a search across job boards and finds two open positions: “Data Analyst” at Company A and “Data Analyst” at Company B. Despite the similarity in the job titles it does not mean that her well-polished resume can be submitted to both roles without first modifying it to align with each position.  The responsibilities and/or priorities for Company A and Company B are likely to differ, and as such, the resumes should be structured to resonate with the roles accordingly.  This may require

• Shuffling of bullet points to align to the priorities of the role
• Inclusion of vocabulary used in the job req (recruiters should not have to do mental gymnastics to determine whether you meet the criteria)
• Willingness to drop or rephrase bullets that may be in conflict with the job req.  (This may occur when a candidate is applying for a more senior role than he/she currently occupies, such as a Sr.Analyst applying for a Manager role.  In this case, the candidate’s resume may have many tactical, in-the-weeds responsibilities reflective of the work of an Analyst.  As impressive as those are, they don’t speak to the role of a manager who is tasked with oversight and nurturing of a team.  To address this, the candidate should evaluate whether any of the tactical bullets can be re-framed to focus on collaboration, up-leveling, and enablement of others, etc).

Don’t Leave Your Audience Guessing

Like the objective statement, the following resume attribute falls into two schools of thought; some believe a resume should be only a single page, while others believe the one-page rule is archaic.  I am a proponent of the latter.  

When a resume includes a header, education (sometimes inclusive of grad school), and more than a single job, there is little room to detail the full responsibilities of the role(s) without being forced to cut.  As a hiring manager, I do not want candidates to cherry-pick one or two projects (that may represent only a fraction of their work effort).  Rather, recruiters and hiring managers should be able to read the resume and understand what one’s day-to-day activities include, whether its “evergreen” work, ad-hoc projects, or meaty strategic initiatives…include the relevant work! 

If candidates have been at a company for more than two years, they likely have contributed to a breadth of outputs that warrant more than three or four bullets.  Sometimes, it may take more than a single bullet to represent the scope of a given projects, and that’s OK.  I’d much rather understand the current role of a candidate in greater detail so that I don’t have to read between the lines as to whether he/she has done X, Y, or Z. 

This may manifest itself into a page-and-a-half or even two pages.  While I encourage using the space needed to accurately represent the work, I would recommend avoiding orphan lines.  Orphan lines are usually 2 to 4 sentences/bullets that bleed onto a second page (and which feel oddly isolated by the page-break).  Sometimes adjusting margins or consolidating verbose bullets can rectify this, allowing the text to fit onto a single page; alternatively, one can add a few more bullets to the resume to ensure at least a quarter of the second page is full.  A quarter page is the minimum needed to be aesthetically comfortable.

If you leverage these tips to craft your resume, you should find that they will facilitate a more positive response with hiring manager and recruiters. 

Check out part II of the blog series here: Focusing on Business Value