For best results, make your resume results-oriented

Like a good marketer, you need to see your product -- you -- from your customer's point of view. Your resume needs to focus on results, not characteristics. A results-oriented resume regardless of format, helps employers reduce the risks that are associated with hiring because they see what you have accomplished as well as your attitudes toward work.

The risks that concern employers include such matters as whether you:

n are a quality worker,

n have integrity,

n have excellent work habits,

n can get along with others in the workplace,

n may have something undesirable in your background that has created problems with previous employers.

When these risks are removed, only the positives about you are left.

To reassure prospective employers, include examples of what you have done for other employers. Use your self-assessment to offer specific information about how you helped previous employers improve their profitability, recognition and visibility. Whatever your line of work, your accomplishments in one or more of these three categories can be measured.

When you provide examples, you are showing results of tests of your abilities and focusing on the needs of the employer rather than your own needs. If you have had several jobs, you should have enough material to fill several pages.

Avoid going into detail about individual goals or career objectives. If you do, the prospective employer is likely to get the impression that you are more interested in yourself than you are in the company. That can be reason enough to remove you from consideration for the job, even before a full evaluation of your credentials takes place.

It also is a good idea to avoid lengthy statements about your character or the kinds of companies you worked for. Your achievements and what they meant to your past employers will be sufficient information for the reader.

Include a description of your accomplishments for each employer, setting them out in statements that are easily read. Avoid hyperbole, but include as many facts and figures as necessary to substantiate achievements. It is important that everything included is factual.

Take credit for your role in a project you managed if others were involved. Focus on past work history rather than schooling, unless you are pursuing a position in the academic, technical or research areas where advanced training is critical to successful job performance.

If you are younger than 40, revealing your birth date can sell an employer on the idea that you are a go-getter with the youthful qualities of enthusiasm and eagerness. If you are older than 40, however, it is better to omit your age. Someone may glance at the date and decide arbitrarily that you are too old to interview. Leaving out your birth date prevents this possibility. It allows your personal appearance to sell your youthfulness and energy.

Except in the case of the short chronological resume, do not worry about the length of your resume. Instead, concern yourself with content. Ignore those who say a resume should be no more than a page or a page and a half.

True, employers are busy people and they are bombarded with hundreds of resumes, especially if they have placed an advertisement soliciting resumes for a specific position. Because of this, your resume should be prepared with ease of reading in mind and should provide details that can be easily perceived the reader.

However, that does not mean keeping your resume to a page if you have a lot more to tell the employer about yourself. You want to communicate all of your accomplishments and why you are qualified for a job.

Neither your interests nor the employer's are served by the typically short resume, because it does not provide enough information for the employer to make a fair hiring decision. Most of your real competition looks just as you do on paper.

Just as there are many myths about what should be on a resume, there are many about how one should be used. Many individuals still believe sending a resume to an employer and then waiting for a phone call is a viable job search technique. It is not. It will just lull you into a false sense of security that you are doing something to get a job.

You need to talk face-to-face with as many people as you can to learn about job opportunities. Take your resume with you when you go for a job interview but only give it to the interviewer if asked. If the resume does not say exactly what the employer wants to read, he or she will assume you are not the person for the job.

However, if you talk to the person over the phone before seeing him or her, you may have the opportunity to revise your resume by emphasizing the points that are important to his or her company.

Talking to the employer first is always more advantageous than sending your resume blindly. Again, you do not know what the employer is looking for and most times your resume will screen you out of the process.

You have a much better chance of screening yourself in by talking to the employer and crafting your "verbal resume" to highlight accomplishments that are most relevant to the particular interviewer's needs.

Finally, do not let your resume speak for you. The resume will not get you a job; only you can do that. In the end, you can sell yourself better than any resume, no matter how brilliantly it is constructed.

John A. Challenger is chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. He may be one of the most oft-quoted business executives. His breadth of knowledge on corporate practices, workplace issues, the economy and societal trends is sought out by major broadcast and print media.