What Meeting Professionals Need to Know About Their Resumés
By Dawn Rasmussen, CMP
With the meeting industry reeling from the current recession, companies across the globe are hastily trimming staff to cut costs. Many meeting professionals have either been handed pink slips or are worrying about them. It’s a sickening feeling, and you may feel powerless to outside forces beyond your control. But now is actually an ideal time to take stock of your career assets and your resumé. Don’t feel overwhelmed; use these essential tips to make your CV effective.
1. A resumé is not an obituary. It’s a living document. The biggest problem most people face when trying to write their resumé is that they haven’t done a good job of updating it, which should be done every six months. Have you ever gone through the exercise of trying to remember what you did five years ago? You know you’ve done a lot of major projects, but as time goes by, the details get fuzzier. By updating your resumé regularly, it becomes an accurate, vibrant and current record of your accomplishments.
2. Your resumé is your marketing collateral. Your resumé performs the same function as corporate marketing materials or branded events, but on an individual level. Select a title that is a fair and create an accurate summary of your background. Use that as your personal brand, instead of passive and weak objective statements. By using “meeting planner” or “hotel sales manager” as a job title headline on your resumé, you immediately call attention to your background, which relates directly to the positions for which you are applying.
3. Demonstrate initiative in your resumé. By showcasing current professional development, memberships and affiliations and continuing volunteer (and leadership) roles, you implicitly tell employers that you have initiative. Strategically, see your resumé as your career map. The three areas listed above clearly define a route to your desired career direction. Think about what kinds of classes will enhance your credentials. What memberships (such as MPI) should you retain to bolster your professionalism?
4. Don’t forget keywords. Prepare to be shocked: Many employers are using software to scan resumés, and there is a specified positive “hit” ratio of related terms that is required to graduate to the human-being review pile leading to an interview. Not enough keywords equals the computer garbage can. Like every industry, human resource managers are trying to be more efficient, and using this kind of software helps weed out people who simply aren’t qualified. Nailing down all of the essential keywords in your resumé will garner you a higher hit ratio and increase your chances for an interview. Keyword examples for a meeting planner might be: meeting operations, meetings, events, registration, contracts, negotiations, speakers, food and beverage and audiovisual.
5. Resumé length: the truth hurts. Keep in mind that there are two dimensions of resumé length—number of pages and years of employment. The general rule is that if you are under 35 years old, you should have a one page resumé, mainly because you haven’t been in the workforce long enough to have enough jobs/experience to merit two pages. Over 35? Two pages are fine. But don’t ever have 1-1/4 pages or 1-1/2 pages; either have one full or two full. Know that your “sweet spot” is between 15-20 years of work history. Providing anything additional reveals more about your age, and that can open you to age discrimination (which employers deny, but it takes place anyway).
6. Think Action. Employers don’t want laundry lists of your daily duties. Proactively state what you did and how it impacted the company. For example: Drove development of new online registration program, resulting in elimination of onsite staffing overhead costs and effectively reducing onsite name badge errors by 100 percent. Prospective employers actually evaluate previous work accomplishments in an attempt to understand what you might be able to do for them. Be sure to use proactive voice verbs to start each bullet/sentence and properly position your accomplishments.
7. Resumés are only part of the equation. Networking gets them into the right hands. Seventy percent of people find a job through someone they know. A successful job search entails a polished resumé, a targeted job search and networking, networking, networking. If you are teetering on the fence about whether to retain your MPI membership, consider this: Membership is an investment into your network and your field of expertise. You can’t afford not to be a part of that network when it could be the lifeline to your next job. As a professional resumé writer, I can attest to the fact that industry association memberships are critical to your networking and professional development success. And you never know who you are going to bump into. That person sitting next to you at the World Education Congress educational session could be the person who introduces you to your next job.
The new reality is that there is no such thing as job security in today’s workplace; instead, the focus is on employability. Make yourself as competitive as possible…and say it proactively on your resumé.
DAWN RASMUSSEN, CMP, is the president of Portland, Ore.-based Pathfinder Writing and Careers, which specializes in hospitality/meeting professional resumés. She has been a meeting planner for more than 15 years and an MPI member since 2001.