Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Career Tools.
- [00:03]
B
This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
- [00:05]
A
Today's podcast, Systematic Career Documentation, Part 1 of 2.
- [00:11]
B
As always, our content has been crafted by humans and we are now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are what do I need to keep track of during my career? Why do I need to keep track of details during my career? And how do I use career details to create an effective resume?
- [00:31]
A
If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. You want to talk about an uncomfortable truth. Your natural communication style works great for you, but for roughly 75% of the people you work with, it's creating friction you don't even know is there. The Effective Communicator conference from Manager Tools teaches you how to read other people's styles and adapt your own so your message actually lands available for individuals, for teams, and for organizations. For more information, visit manager-tools.com ecc all right, folks, today we are talking about the career Management document, which those of you who've been listening for a while will know we abbreviate cmd, which we're going to do throughout this cast. We'll use the Charlie Mike Delta synonymously. Exactly. And the purpose of this one was to talk about the career Management document, which is something that over the years we've mentioned many, many times. And for those individuals who in our community have taken us up on it, the career management document, it has saved them many, many hours, a ton of stress, a bunch of heartache, the ability to apply quickly for roles. In fact, actually, Mark, the reason that I pulled this guy out of the archive this week is I was talking to John Basden when I was in St. Louis and we were talking about the resume workbook and we were talking about the career management document and things like that. So I thought to myself, today we would rerecord this one in honor of John Bathan. Hi, John.
- [02:08]
B
Yeah, I'll tell you, when Wendy and I first wrote this, we collaborated on it 20, 18 years ago or whatever. I remember being shocked at the number of people who didn't have any. They had scraps of paper in a manila folder about stuff they had done that they couldn't even read. And they were trying to pull together a resume. And you're like, this is your. It's literally your career. It's not the company's career. They're not managing it for you. And you've got third grade level stuff that you're going to use to put together a resume on short notice. And when you tell them that they're like, oh, I. Oh, oh, right. They get it, but nobody ever told them about it before.
- [02:53]
A
No, no, exactly. And the. The one that I think of as being really prominent that we're gonna. We're gonna talk about today, folks. We're gonna debunk, if you will, this idea that every time you revise your resume, all you do is add to the top your most recent role, and then the oldest one falls off the bottom and. Or it just keeps growing and growing and growing and growing. But there's no document that exists beyond the resume itself because it is the core. Which, folks, we're going to talk about today. That's not our guidance. We recommend more.
- [03:24]
B
It's an output. It's not the core. So, in essence, your cmd, your career management document, is where you keep your record of your career. Okay. And for the record, it's. Sorry, that's weird. For the record, it's a record. For the record, it is the document that. That shows your responsibilities and your accomplishments, and that is at the heart of what everyone looks at when they look at you on paper. What were you responsible for and how well did you accomplish things relative to it? And here's where people miss your point about the resume. The resume is my. My document, right? No, because your CMD is never seen by anyone but you. It's a repository. Your resume is not the repository. The CMD with a lot more stuff. I mean, I've seen CMDs that are six pages long.
- [04:16]
A
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
- [04:17]
B
Or more complete, Right?
- [04:19]
A
Yeah.
- [04:20]
B
And by the way, just having a CMD is not enough. But we'll explain that we need to use it as an entire system, as part of an entire system of career documentation, which ends up delivering for you an effective resume. And it does so fast. That's the key. Suddenly you have an opportunity to jump on, and then you're thinking, I got to put together a resume in eight hours, at eight, you know, on Friday or Saturday morning. And you have spelling errors, and you have our word, our guarantee, if you ever need to pull together an updated resume quickly, the CMD will save you. Yeah, no question.
- [04:56]
A
No question. All right, so our outline for today. We're going to start by talking about the. The initial creation of your career management document, followed by looking for accomplishments monthly, updating the document quarterly, and then ultimately creating your resume from the career management document.
- [05:15]
B
So creating your cmd, the center of the system, by the way, we didn't invent it, we're just trying to popularize it. The center of the system is The Career Management document cmd. Before we go on to tell you how to use the document as part of the whole system in terms of creating it, updating it, and then using it as a raw, as raw material for your resume, we're going to take a few minutes and describe it in a little bit more detail so you understand, you know, what it looks like and why it is the way it is.
- [05:50]
A
So, folks, your career management document is a document with, with a title for each role you've held, the dates you held it, and the company name. And under this short explanation of the role is a paragraph of all of your responsibilities. And underneath that is a bulleted list of all of your accomplishments. For those of you that have seen a sample manage your tools resume, you might be thinking the Career management document looks a lot like that. And it does. It really looks like, I'm going to say a really dense and kind of messy, if you will, resume. The difference is the career management document can be as long as you need and as thorough as you need. And you can make it to Mark's point earlier, six pages long, it's way more than you'd ever share with an individual. But it kind of looks similar in that you've got the job, the responsibilities, the accomplishments. It's kind of sorted that way. Right. So it's like a really, really big resume.
- [06:49]
B
Yeah. I'll tell you, I may be stealing our own thunder from later, but I just had an executive coaching call where one of the key directs of this executive that I'm working with has reached a point in his career where he really does have to decide management or technical expertise like he. And he's smart enough that he could be Othello.
- [07:12]
A
Okay.
- [07:13]
B
You know, like the highest level with no directs. But he's also liked enough and he's okay with doing one on ones. He has a small team of two now, so he could do one on ones and be a good manager. No question. I've met the guy, great guy, totally could do either one. Well, I, I'm actually not capable of telling you whether or not he's capable of becoming a fellow. I take it from his boss, you were pretty high level stuff. Yeah. Networking protocols and stuff like that. Over my head. Okay. And imagine that you're trying to make that decision. But the last resume you have, folks, is a resume for a promotion to team lead. But now you've decided after a couple years maybe. No, I really, I think I want to go back. I want to be an individual contributor. I want to be an expert. I want to get promoted on the, you know, the technical track, if you will. You've lost all that technical stuff.
- [08:09]
A
Yeah.
- [08:09]
B
You don't have it anymore. If all you've got is your resume, your latest resume, which was put together for a internal job.
- [08:15]
A
Yep. Leading people.
- [08:16]
B
Yeah, exactly. You don't have it and you won't remember it.
- [08:20]
A
I mean, we've all been there. No, Right. When you're trying to do your resume and you're like, wait a minute, what did I do?
- [08:26]
B
Well, even if you say, oh, I do remember this, I do remember this. Your ability to flush out a full accomplishment bullet and, and of course the next phase of this, which we'll have more guidance on this. If you're going to put a bullet down on your resume, on your cmd, which ultimately could get to your resume. And you only have the bullet as your knowledge. That bullet is not useful to verbalize a significant confidence or in a behavioral interview. And so you're kind of, you're, you're tying your hands. So the idea of the CMD is to be totally comprehensive, everything knowing full well that you'll whittle it down for the actual thing. So look, it can be as long as it needs to be. If you haven't created one before and if you're still listening, you probably haven't, just start with your current resume. Okay. There's. You don't need to go through a 17 step process to recreate it. Okay. You start with what you have. And for the record, don't burn yourself out. This is not a one sitting, get it all done in an hour or two or three job. You're going to need several hours and probably you're going to need some time rooting around in your filing system to find old information. In fact, if you're hearing this now and you're not under job interview pressure, spread it out over a couple of weeks. It's totally fine. I know too many people who say to their spouse, you know, I've got a chance for job interview on Tuesday, I'm unavailable this weekend, you've got the kids. I'm going to spend all weekend with my resume, which again is just raw material for typos and spelling errors or even worse. The thing that happens now is, yeah, Microsoft Word can correct your spelling, but it can't correct a missed word. Now there are occasions where copilot will find that, but not always. Not always because I compose podcasts now in Word and I have to reread them manually to scan it for stuff. And if you're doing that on short notice on a weekend when you're frustrated or nervous or this is the job of your dreams and you're pulling all nighter, that's a really, really bad idea. So you can spread it out over a week or two. And here's the thing we found. It's likely that once your brain is thinking about your career, it will give you more information at your fingertips than you'd forgotten at the various odd moments. It's a bit like the reticular activating system. If you tell yourself I'm looking for X, your brain knows what X looks like and will try to find it. That certainly happened to me when I got out of the army and I was selling toothpaste. To this day, if I'm driving through not a subdivision, but in a commercial slash mixed use area, I can spot every dental office. And the last time I had to drive around looking for a dental office was 1990. So that's what, 36 years ago. But I can still see them because my brain, that's all I did for like three years to some degree.
- [11:22]
A
Well, and we all, I mean, I think, I think everybody's had the experience where I mean you have your best ideas in the shower or when you're trying to go to sleep at night. Like it's just once your brain has relaxed and, and to your point, when, when you have resume on the brain, those things will fall out over the course of time. So trying to power through it is not, not going to be a good use of time or the most effective.
- [11:45]
B
Yeah. So we know we're asking you for a couple hours, a couple of nights a week, for a week or two. Okay. If you're early in your career, it won't take you that long. But if you're, if you have 15 years of experience, it's going to take you a little bit longer. But here's the thing. Once you get the base CMD created, you start now and we obviously assume you have a resume that includes up to your current job. You should be able to do your current job pretty easily. And then you're going to fill out some of the old stuff. Once you create that, then all you have to do going forward is stay current with the present role that you're in. And that means all you have to do is update it once a quarter, like an hour where you go through and capture your notes about what have I done in the last quarter, what should be on my resume and even in some cases less than 30 minutes each time. So not bad at all. It becomes a maintenance thing rather than a creation thing.
- [12:40]
A
Yep, exactly. So folks, again, take your, your initial resume and once you've got that kind of spread out in front of you, take each role in turn and consider first your responsibilities. And folks, instead of reducing your responsibilities, paragraph to what a resume would contain, right. Two or three or four lines, instead expand upon.
- [13:04]
B
Yes.
- [13:04]
A
Those responsibilities make it like a half a page long or more.
- [13:09]
B
It's kitchen sink time really when it comes to the cmd.
- [13:13]
A
Absolutely. And while you want your resume to be brief, like, like a one page resume, you're going to have to answer questions about the contents of it. So having that information to refresh yourself is useful. Right? Just, just only remembering the things about the job that you were on that resume isn't enough information. So make it as big as you, as you can. Right. And every report that you were responsible for it. Should you have been a manager in that role, every person you manage, everything that your manager ever held you accountable for, all of that goes in your career management document, folks. This is less about your resume and really, again, more about your memory. And since all our memories are fallible, we want to get everything onto the page so that when we do create our resume for a particular role in the future, remember we're doing this now. We might not even use it in large part for a year more. That way we'll have all the information we could possibly have right at our fingertips. And initially we're not even going to worry about spelling or grammar. We just want to get it all out or formatting. Exactly. You just want a big blob of words on a page. That's completely fine. If you want to add comments to your document, you can. No one besides you, unless you would like to show your family or your friends or your spouse, no one's going to see your career management document. All they're ever going to see is the resume you create from it. So this is just really the back of the house stuff.
- [14:47]
B
Yeah. Your resume essentially becomes an extraction from the cmd. We had a guy, after Wendy and I recorded this years ago, guy writes in about a month later, he says, I'm worried that my CMD is so long. And we said, don't you know, we're both, Wendy and I are talking about this saying that's not a worry. And the thing he said was, some of my bullets are two and three lines deep. Generally, when we recommend you do a resume, we recommend you be exceptionally brief. So that each bullet is only one line. You don't want a bullet to hang over a line and a half because that half line that's blank is space on your resume that is not selling. But in your cmd, you want to capture more detail because some of that detail might be useful for one job and different detail might be useful for another job. And what you'll discover is when you start doing this, you'll remember, oh, I was talking about systemic change orders. I was also doing it in my first job, but I don't have anything about systemic change orders in my first job. And so it causes you to go back, as you said about when you're thinking about it. If you struggle with remembering the responsibilities you had early in your career, by the way, you're totally normal. It's not like you're competing with somebody who has total recall of every single word they ever sent in an email. Here's a suggestion. Try logging onto a job board or an aggregator, indeed is a good example of one. Or asking your preferred AI engine. Inquire about jobs with your job title and come up with a list of that position's requirements. You'll realize two or three of the things on there you were responsible for, but you didn't have it on your original resume.
- [16:34]
A
You didn't even remember.
- [16:35]
B
Yes, then borrow liberally anything that is relevant and part of your previous duties. There's no such thing as plagiarism in resumes. And remember again, here we're creating like the dictionary from which you're going to create a one pager, okay? So don't be self censoring, don't be afraid to put it on there. If you think, I don't know, maybe I will, maybe I won't. Listen to yourself say, maybe I will. And it's way better to capture it one time and then you never have to do it again for that job.
- [17:07]
A
Absolutely. So once you've got that bit down, then for each role, consider your accomplishments. And folks, what we're looking for here is the quantified result of the work that you did. So it's not just a list of activities. So for example, managed Project X with 10 staff and a budget of $2 million. That's an activity.
- [17:31]
B
Can I just interrupt here real quick?
- [17:33]
A
Sure.
- [17:33]
B
I bet you 70% of the people who just heard what you said would say, oh, that sounds good. It's got a project name, it's got 10 staff budget of 2 million. That's not good for a resume, right?
- [17:47]
A
Correct. That is not good. For a resume, yeah, it's a good
- [17:50]
B
start on a cmd, but it's not.
- [17:52]
A
It's a really good start. Exactly. Whereas the result, the thing that we want for our accomplishment bullet here is whether you delivered it on time and on budget or another example created process for incoming mail, that one's a little bit more obvious, I think to folks, it's an activity, right? Whereas the result would be the time saved or the reduction in lost mail, what have you. Now folks, on your cmd, it doesn't matter how you write the accomplishment, but we will encourage you to write it in such a way that will save you time if you need a resume in a hurry. And therefore what that means is write them as accomplishments in the right format for your resume so that every time you want to build your resume from your cmd, you're not having to retake those activities and convert them to bullets and thus one slow you down, make it much harder.
- [18:51]
B
You want it written like it's a resume, but only 30% of it, if it's three pages long, only, only 30% of it is going to be on your resume. But you don't want to be rewriting that 30%. You're just going to be deleting the other 70% on the resume.
- [19:06]
A
That is exactly it. And folks, the format for that achievement bullet is result verb method. So for example, achieved $4 million additional revenue by selling follow on maintenance contract to customer A. So write the project name or customer or something identifiable and after the actual accomplishment on the page, that's going to help you with remembering. But you're going to need to remove it when you create your resume potentially. I mean that, that probably won't fit on a line. And customer A is something that the person reviewing your, your resume isn't going to know or care about. It's really just a little bitty reminder for you so that when you revisit that bullet, you're remind. Oh yeah, that's what that was. Customer A. And you don't have to again remind yourself every time.
- [19:58]
B
We have incredibly detailed guidance about how to create a resume that goes into annoying detail. It's I think our resume workbook for licensees. Sarah, it's like 60 pages long.
- [20:08]
A
Yes, that is accurate. That is accurate. And the resume or the, the podcast, sorry, I think is called how to prepare your resume and in brackets it says your resume stinks.
- [20:18]
B
We get resumes all the time and they're, they're terrible. Resumes are terrible and I throw them away. I'm Like, I'm sorry, this is a terrible resume, but I want to just share something with you folks. 90% of the resumes I get, the accomplishment bullets are verb, method and then result. You notice what Sarah said? She said result, verb, method she started with achieved $4 million in additional revenue. And boy, that makes me sit up and pay attention. Okay, but if you say helped customer a by follow on maintenance contract, I don't know where you're going yet. If you hit me right in the nose up front, achieved a $4 million additional revenue. Okay, now I'm paying attention and that's going to make me want to ask a question about that. But if you just talk about a maintenance contract and you leave at the end what the benefit was, you're missing the point. The result or the benefit needs to be right up front.
- [21:15]
A
Absolutely.
- [21:16]
B
Also, as you're thinking about this, include any courses you took, certificates or qualifications you gained in the accomplishments for the job you were in at the time. Now look, you want to be able to have all your certificates and accomplishments, although certificates and certifications. But I will tell you stuff that you studied the the one I think of immediately because they used to do a really good job of it is it you have to have a certification in know, netsuite or whatever or in Drupal or what, what have you. What I found is 20 years ago, none of those things matter. But you're able to build on those things. And those things may not go in your resume if they're from 20 years ago. I doubt seriously that you would have room for that. On the other hand, it will help you remember how much of a lifelong learner you've been. And believe me, companies don't like people who don't have any penchant or proclivity to learn. And then again, it helps you with chronology as well. And if your career's 10 years or longer, those kinds of certifications and so on will be anchors for you to help build what amounts to your memory palace, as Sherlock Holmes would call it. I think that's what he calls it.
- [22:27]
A
It is what he calls it.
- [22:28]
B
Right? So that he can have a structure in his head and he can go wander room to room and think about each job and so on. Yeah, so don't censor yourself on your CMD, folks. Don't do it if you have a doubt about whether or not it should be on there. It should be on there. Because when you go back to it in six months and you're trying to prepare a resume, there'll be two or three things you see on there that you don't think about week to week, but you'll go, oh, those things align well with what they're asking me to do in this new job. I have them, I can use them. So everything the kitchen sink needs to be in there.
- [23:00]
A
Yeah, you're absolutely right. In your career, you won't just be interviewed. Sometimes you'll be interviewing. And being involved in hiring is one of the most impactful and most stressful things a professional can do. The Effective Hiring Manager Conference teaches you structured interviewing from start to finish so you can walk into every interview with confidence and come out with real answers. Be an effective part of the hiring team to to make sure your organization hires the right people. Join us at our next Effective Hiring Manager conference in the Washington, D.C. area. Conferences start on June 16th or for more information you can visit us at manager-tools.comehmc thanks so much for joining us folks. Join us again next week as we finish this topic. Now. Help us help others and tell your friends. And of course follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only.
- [23:58]
B
Five stars only. Please.