Competency-Based Resumes

Robin Kessler

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781601638809
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Millions of job hunters and employers are frustrated. Why aren't they working together more effectively? Because employers have changed the job-search playing field and too many candidates are using yesterday's strategies. Do you want the key to the best jobs with the best employers? It's time to play offense instead of defense.

Competency-Based Resumes shows today's job candidates a new, more targeted way to write resumes to get them back on the same playing field with the best employers and improve their odds of winning the job they want. The system an employer uses when filling jobs has changed significantly in the past few years, and it is still evolving. Rather than simply looking at an applicant's past jobs, companies are instead looking at candidate's experiences in certain key areas—including measurable work habits and the personal skills, known as competencies, used to achieve objectives at work.

Competency-Based Resumes offers you a new and effective way to create resumes that emphasizes the knowledge, skills, and abilities that you have and employers need. Many sophisticated U.S. and international organizations are using competency-based systems to recruit, interview, select, and promote. Corporations such as American Express, Coca-Cola, Sears, and MetLife are all looking for specific competencies. Creating your own competency-based resume will:

• — Confirm to the employer that you have the expertise—or competencies—they are looking for.
• — Improve your chances of being selected for interviews for the position you want.
• — Help you to be perceived as being more competitive.
• — Enable you to explain sticky areas in your background in a more positive way.

Most applicants do not know how to apply for jobs based on this new dynamic. Few candidates write their resumes so their critical competencies are obvious. Competency-Based Resumes will move your resume to the top of the pile, giving you the edge you need in any job market, no matter how competitive.

Chapter 1
Meet the New Competency-Based Strategy

If you ran for political office and won the majority of the popular vote, would you assume you’d won the election? Not if you expected to be the next president of the United States. Understanding that electoral college votes determine who wins the presidency is critical if you plan to run for—and win—that office.

Understanding the number of points you’ll need to win a tennis match is key in determining your strategy to beat your opponent.

If the wind changes, you’d better plan to tack and reset your sails, if you want to make it to the right dock.

Understanding how systems work can increase your ability to get what you want. But we need to realize that systems change and grow. We can expect the systems we work with to continue changing, and we can expect the pace of change to only get faster.

When systems change, we need to recognize what is happening as early as possible to help us develop the strategy to allow us to maneuver more effectively and reach our goal. We need to carefully watch for those changes. We have to be smarter than our competitors, anticipate change, and adjust our own approach if we want to be successful now and in the future—and perhaps even to survive!

The system behind finding a good job has changed. Employers have changed the system. If you want to be successful in today’s job market, you need every edge over your competition. You need to change.

Understanding the system when looking for a job has always given certain candidates the advantage with employers. But it is critical to realize and accept that the system that employers use when making the decision to fill jobs has changed significantly in the last few years and continues to change today.

Candidates need to tailor their approach to adjust to the employers’ changes—and target their candidacy to emphasize what the employers want.

Imagine getting ready to run a race and finding out that the race had changed from a 5k run to a half marathon. If you wanted to win the race badly enough, you’d change the way you train and develop a new strategy.

This book will give you the new strategy—the tools you need—to play the game more effectively and compete to win. If you use this approach, you will improve your chance to:

Win your ideal job in a new company.

Be selected for extremely competitive positions.

Get the promotion or new position within your organization.

Increase your salary by ensuring employers know how your competencies can improve their results.

Be more challenged and happier with your work.

You are what you have learned from the past, what you experience today, and what you dream for tomorrow.

What’s Changed?

Unemployment rates are significantly higher than they were in the late 1990s. Sophisticated employers are increasingly using competency-based systems to define jobs, and train, select, and promote employees. And we’re seeing more jobs posted on the Internet (and in advertisements) asking candidates about their experience in certain key areas, also known as competencies.

What are competencies? Paul Green, in his book Building Robust Competencies (Jossey-Bass, 1999), gives one definition used by many HR professionals: “An individual competency is a written description of measurable work habits and personal skills used to achieve a work objective.”

When competencies are used at the organization level to help achieve organization objectives or goals, they are typically referred to as core competencies. Many organizations develop their core competency list and then include the most relevant ones (with additional details) in the list of competencies being developed for job groups and individual positions.

The use of competencies in organizations has expanded significantly in the last decade. More and more organizations are using competency-based applications such as resume screening software, behavioral interviewing, competency-based training, and competency-based pay systems to help them more effectively manage their hiring, training, compensation, and promotion decisions. Many sophisticated companies screen resumes by using software looking for keywords, which are often based upon competencies defined for the position.

Companies such as American Express, IBM, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo, and BP have been among the leaders in using behavioral interviewing techniques, such as Targeted Selection Interviewing, to provide interviewers with better information, based on actual past experience, from candidates.

Effective behavioral interviewing is based on the theory that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. In other words, past success predicts future success.

Interviewers ask questions to assess how competent candidates are in several areas (or competencies) the employer has identified as critical to performance for that specific job. Organizations, in some cases, are trying to hire candidates to specifically build the competencies needed organization-wide. Many companies have trained interviewers to conduct interviews this way since the 1980s, and more organizations have adopted behavioral interviewing since then—even for interviews to be promoted or transferred to new positions within an organization.

Using behavioral interviewing techniques is now standard practice within most sophisticated organizations. But almost all candidates continue to write resumes and prepare for their interviews the same way they did in the past. They have not adapted to the change in how employers conduct their interviews.

Hint: If you want to improve your chance of winning positions at these top employers, you must take advantage of opportunities to emphasize your competencies in the key areas the employer needs during the interview—and on your resume. Your examples must be focused, powerful, and concise.

The U.S. Aviation Administration, Waste Management, and the engineering firm Fluor are just three of the organizations that recently posted jobs on Websites that include a listing of competencies (or dimensions) in the job description. The number of organizations listing their positions with clearly identified competencies increases every time we look at employment Websites.

On October 20, 2003, Monster.com (www.Monster.com) ran more than 2,000 advertisements asking for competencies. The ads asking for specific competencies came from organizations of all sizes that day and included:

Sears.

General Mills.

HCA.

Novartis.

Cummins.

MetLife.

Ingersoll-Rand.

Siemens.

Dole Food Company.

Federal Reserve System.

BP.

UMass Medical School.

Abbott Laboratories Employees Credit Union.

Perot Systems.

Other companies take a more subtle approach. They may include a list of things they are looking for from the ideal candidate in their postings and advertisements—without calling them competencies. If you analyze the more subtle postings, you can identify hidden competencies—and core competency groups—and make the decision to use this information to make your own job search more productive.

Hint: Take a few minutes and visit some of the Websites of your favorite organizations. Determine if they are using competencies. Type in your profession (for example, “Human Resources”) and “Competencies” in your favorite employment Website and see what you find. Notice that competency applications are becoming more and more prevalent in the workplace.

In this book, we will show you how to recognize the clues hidden in these advertisements that others miss. By analyzing the words the employer is using, you can determine what the employer’s real needs are. Then we will demonstrate how you can use these clues to write more effective resumes and cover letters that dram...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 1 Meet the New Competency-Based Strategy
• Chapter 2 Understand Competency-Based Systems
• Chapter 3 Identify Relevant Competencies
• Chapter 4 Create an Employer-Focused Competency-Based Resume
• Chapter 5 Develop Strong Competency-Based Accomplishment Statements
• Chapter 6 Choose the Most Effective Resume Style
• Chapter 7 Complete Other Key Resume Sections
• Chapter 8 Review, Revise, and Polish the Resume
• Chapter 9 Check to Make Sure Your Resume Is Complete
• Chapter 10 Look at Case Studies for Ideas to Make the Resume Stronger
• Chapter 11 Read Through More Competency-Based Resumes
• Chapter 12 Create Competency-Based Correspondence
• Chapter 13 Prepare for Competency-Based Networking and Interviewing
• Chapter 14 The Next Step: Actively Manage Your Career in a Competency-Based Organization
• Appendix A List of Core Competencies
• Appendix B Typical Competencies for Certain Professions
• Appendix C Competencies That Will Be Important in the Future
• Appendix D Quick Reference Competency-Based Cold Call Cover Letters
• Appendix E How to Write Competency-Based Thank You Letters
• Appendix F The Benefits of Using Competency-Based Filing Systems
• Appendix G Using the Competency-Based Approach to Answer Key Interview Questions
• Chapter Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors