Your Paralegal Resume: How to Get Noticed

What Is the Purpose of a Resume? --Opening a lecture with a question like this has an arresting quality. I waited for a response as classmates looked around at each other. Finally, wanting to end the silence, a few volunteered some responses.

"To get a job “said one. "To get hired” posed another. "To get work so I can pay my school loans." This got a laugh.

 

"The purpose of a resume is to get an interview!” I declared. "And when you understand that, you will understand virtually every rule and guiding principle regarding resumes."

These typical responses reveal a common misunderstanding concerning the resume and its purpose. It's not hard to understand, but many do not think about it. When someone is impressed with your resume, they do not hire you sight unseen-they call you in for an interview.

This should lead us to think about the overall "look" of the resume.

The resume must first draw interest before it can impress. Drawing up a resume is a perceptual challenge! The initial impression of the resume, upon a three-second scan, is extremely important. If you try to impress with overlong descriptions and unnecessary and redundant elements, creating dense text without "white space," you risk losing your reader's interest before there is interest. So let's understand these two basic concepts:

Your resume must be interesting before it can be impressive.

Your resume should be crafted to get an interview.

If you are looking for an interview, then the resume need not "tell everything." It is allowed to be intriguing. Those who want to include too much are missing a real point. When you tell everything and in doing so make it hard to read, you are defeating your purposes. Think of the resume as an advertisement. Why? Today's resume must attain a high basic quality and be edited and crafted visually so that it will gain immediate attention. It cannot be a document that is hard on the eyes, exhaustive, thorough, yet accurate. If that were ever permissible at any time in the past, it certainly isn't now in the more competitive job market. All of these factors derive from a rule that sums up these challenges all at once-The 30-Second Rule!

The 30-Second Rule-"Love at First Glance"

The 30-Second Rule can be stated as follows: The first time anyone reads your resume they will probably give it no longer than 30 seconds.

That is not long to make a positive impression. A quick cursory look is what every resume gets the first time around. An impression is made; the reader puts it in one of maybe three probable stacks (Interested, Maybe, Absolutely Not) or, even worse, two stacks (Maybe and No). Consider today's "short-attention-span" American culture and the pace of professional life. It will confirm that you have a very short amount of time within which to create a good impression.

The challenge in writing a resume is that you must sum up your professional life, initially, in 30 seconds. Once you get someone's attention, then of course, they read it over more thoroughly. But if you score negatively in the first 30 seconds, you are in trouble. Imagine a hiring manager sitting at his or her desk reading resumes. The mahogany desk is covered with pieces of paper in various shades of off-white, gray, beige, light yellows, or pale blues. Your resume is in this group. The first impressions your resume makes are visual and tactile. High-quality paper with a well-chosen color is the first mandate.

Since the legal profession is conservative, serious-minded, and intense, flashy and shocking colors and graphic techniques should be avoided. Yes, there is room for individuality, but only within conservative parameters. If you employ blue, green, brown, or red, make the color very close to white. In some fields, an eye-catching color can be an advantage; in the legal field, it is considered unprofessional. Choose the highest quality paper you feel you can afford, and select an attractive and legible typeface (font). You may need to adjust the font's point size and the space between lines of text so that your resume fits on one page. These will create the overall look that governs the initial impression of the reader.

After briefly checking the color and texture, the eyes go over the resume as a whole. White space becomes very important. Anyone who has had training in marketing or advertising has learned that the eye needs rest and will move toward white space. If the document makes the reader squint and furrow the brow to get into it, rather than letting the reader's eye flow easily from one section to the next, then the "graphic look" of this all-important document has been neglected. Billions of dollars are spent on advertising-don't ignore those lessons. The level of competition in the professional paralegal marketplace dictates that you approach your resume in this way. We are creatures who respond to subtle visual cues and impressions all day long. That many of these elements of modern life escape our conscious awareness is a testament to their power and influence.

That which affects you subconsciously can be just as powerful as that which affects you consciously.

The following elements are employed in creating an effective resume:

Paper quality (Bond, Linen)

Paper color

Choice of font (style)

Choice of point size

Layout

White space

Use of graphics (bullets, lines)

Printer (commercial or laser quality)

Ink (some inks smudge on certain kinds of paper)

Before we discuss how the 30-Second Rule influences design and content, proper attention should be paid to the above basic elements.

Many people are aware of these required state-of-the-art standards and yet think they can take short cuts. Those who grab a ream of copy paper and grind out 50 resumes on a photocopy machine are truly missing the boat.

Love at first glance

Remember, the people reading your resume have handled hundreds of others. They have minimum standards.

Editorial content and style: The 30-Second Rule has many repercussions. Editorial content and style are affected by the basic mission: Get your message across in a visually appealing manner with a highly readable and fast-paced style. Because of the 30-Second Rule, you must write in a style that moves the eye along quickly.

Don't say: "... I was given a promotion after two years in the Shipping Department. I received awards for productivity and punctuality and eventually I was made Supervisor ..." Instead say: "... Promoted to Shipping Department Supervisor after receiving awards for productivity and punctuality over a two- year period ..."

Beginning your sentences with a past-tense power verb (the "I" is understood) immediately shortens the phrase and gets to the point. The power verb forces you to be specific and keeps the style dynamic. The modern state-of-the-art resume should be pointed, direct, and substantive. If you find yourself explaining a lot and saying little, check your construction. Are you using the "past-tense, power verb construction"?

The kiss of death

Perhaps we should pause amidst the talk of style and format and talk about the kiss of death--spelling and other grammatical errors. The most attractive, well-written resume, hailing the virtues of the most qualified paralegal, can fail the applicant if it contains a spelling error. Typos and other errors get you disqualified. The solution is to proofread, get others to proofread, and then proofread again. Remember also to check your address and phone number.

The One-Page Rule

Certainly there is room for individual style; distinctive resumes that have a special flare are highly desirable within limits of acceptability. However, there is a quick-moving, to-the-point quality about all effective resumes, which is forced upon us by the One-Page Rule. The One-Page Rule, which grows logically from the 30-Second Rule, is simply, "Keep the resume from going over one page in length."

"I have done too much in my life to contain it on one page," protested one student. To which I responded: "The President of the United States could have a one-page resume!" A well-written, highly edited resume goes through several phases. At its best, a resume is analyzed word by word. Each word should be essential to the particular description and the whole image. Is there another word that would fit better? Is this phrase too long? Could these two phrases be blended? Does that detail need to be in at all? Am I missing a crucial element to this description? Do all of these descriptions work to picture me as a viable paralegal candidate? As you go through this process, you will discover that your resume will likely get shorter.

Many two-page resumes are simply overwritten. They labor too long on past experiences that are only mildly relevant. Four-line descriptions can often be reduced to one. Some two-page resumes make too much use of white space and margins and thus waste space. Many techniques can be used to take the air out of two-page resumes. It is all a matter of editing to focus and bring out the key points. The sheer act of having to condense your background to one page automatically accomplishes for people what they could not have done without that discipline. The One-Page Rule is an automatic editor; Keep to it and you will see how quickly you develop the clarity and focus you need.

The 10-Year Rule and the Short/Long Rule

To fit in with the mandates of the 30-Second Rule and the One-Page Rule, the 10-Year Rule and the Short/Long Rule must exist. For the older paralegal applicant who has been in the working world for longer than 10 years, take heart in the fact that you are under no special hidden requirement to cover more than the most recent 10 years. Some want to reach back farther than 10 years to include some meaningful past experience.

But general reaction will be: "If you have to go back that far, is it really- relevant experience?"

The Short/Long Rule is a corollary to the 10-Year Rule. Try to get at least three jobs on your resume (try not to fall short of that), but you need not go any longer than six jobs. There are obvious exceptional circumstances which might dictate violating these guidelines, but if you have only one page to work with, it is not advisable to go longer than six jobs for sheer lack of space. If you have fewer than three jobs, you certainly cannot invent past employment. However, there are volunteer experiences and educational endeavors which can add weight to the resume of a young person.

Your mission in writing a resume is to decide exactly what about your background you want to include and what you will de-emphasize. Once you have decided this, you have established the features. Some people find it helpful to obtain counsel from a job placement advisor about their background. The challenge in selecting your features is described in the above example, namely, choosing between emotional or sentimental attachment to a part of our lives and education or work background that provides transferable and professionally valuable experiences. You must become dispassionate about the features on your resume.

One female graduate from 1986 had 10 years experience counseling the disabled, along with five years of proofreading work. Knowing that the editing experience offered much transferable material that could be advantageous to a potential employer, she deemphasized the counseling and only devoted a single line in her resume to this part of her life, while devoting five lines to the editing experience. This is where the honing and creativity come into play. A feature might be difficult to omit, but the question becomes: How do we treat that feature to draw out advantage and benefit?

Once you have determined exactly what elements are going to be included in your resume and how much space you are going to give each element, then you need to determine layout and placement. The 30-Second Rule looms large at this point in determining what comes first, at the top of the resume. Another corollary of the 30-Second Rule will help: the "Sell the Sizzle, Then the Steak" Rule.

A winning approach to layout and design is to put the most prominent paralegal qualifiers at the top of your resume. As the resume proceeds, those elements that are substantial, but not as eye-catching, are included ("the steak"). If you have chosen your features well, there will be few irrelevant or unimportant elements on your resume. Still, you must determine-which comes first? What comes next? What goes last?

Summations, Listings, Profiles, Summaries of Qualifications, and Special Skills are all essentially snapshots of your skills and background that should go on the top- to middle-third of your resume. If you are going to employ any kind of summation section, then it should go toward the top.

The theory behind the "Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak" Rule is that you are putting the most appealing and instantly comprehensible and persuasive elements of your background at the top-third of the resume.

The most persuasive elements will probably include technical/computer skills. This is the Computer Age, and everything from typing skills to kinds of software and hardware need to be prominently displayed in the top-third of your resume. These skills can be listed in a visually appealing way and don't take up too much space. They are ideal for the top half of the resume.

Paralegal Education: Unless you have some kind of previous legal experience that is more important than your paralegal education, the paralegal training you have received should be prominently displayed at the top third also. We'll go into more detail concerning how to present your educational background on the resume later in this chapter.

Snapshots of your background: In the next chapter, you will find a list of paralegal buzz words that are powerful to include in resumes. Snapshots of your background give a quick visual readout of who you think you are. For example, "computer literate paralegal with strong customer service and business background seeks a position in a busy bankruptcy practice."

Strongly Related Experiences: Strongly related experiences such as legal internships, work with legislatures as a volunteer, or activity allied to legal should all be worked into the top third of the resume. It is advisable to create a "Legal Experience" section if it is substantial enough to warrant such treatment.

Advantages

When it comes to describing your features as advantages, you must think like the person reading your resume. We are after advantages described for the reader, not the writer. The natural resume written as a chronological document without any concern for a paralegal placement will emphasize only titles. Do not talk only about your past titles; talk about your skills. Supervisor, Manager, Administrator, Assistant Manager, Director, Vice President-these are used in descriptions of past experiences. If you only describe these features without mentioning the skills needed to attain these positions, you are not describing your background with the needed advantages. In creating your resume, remember to:

1) Avoid pushing titles, unless the job for which you are applying calls for exactly the same kinds of experience.

2) Elaborate on the skills that you developed in order to get promoted. These skills are the important advantages. Sometimes it is easy to forget the basic responsibilities that we grew into.

3) Pull out skills from past experience and frame them in the form of an advantage and benefit to the attorney.

Here's an example of a basic description: Joe's Bar and Grill, Bartender and Supervisor: Hired waitresses and waiters, served drinks, maintained schedules, acted as bouncer.

This is an elaborated description: Joe's Bar and Grill, Manager: Balanced books, made bank deposits, controlled and monitored inventory, dealt with outside vendors and developed strong interpersonal skills in occasionally stressful situations.

This is the kind of skill analysis that many people fail to do when creating their resume. They may say to themselves, "It was just a bar tender job!" Instead, you need to realize how many varied organizational skills you have developed and how many interpersonal experiences went into your growth and maturity.

Benefits

Skill analysis is invaluable to the effective paralegal job search. The people who have done this necessary work can, after a thoughtful pause, deliver a one-to-two minute description of their transferable skills. The answer to the question --Why would you make a good paralegal?-- is answered by the person who has worked through this self-analysis so that they can deliver an effective sales pitch.

The benefit that you bring to an employer in many cases is implicit. "Organizational Skills" is a common skill with an immediate connection for an attorney. You may need to elaborate on how you built those skills in order to demonstrate that you can handle the pressure and tension that might have come along with your organizational tasks. Many people claim to have this skill, so the challenge is to stand out when you describe "organizational skills."

Some other skills and advantages are less implicit. In these cases, it is incumbent upon you to truly show how that skill is a benefit in a legal setting or law office environment. For example, an editorial background shows that a paralegal applicant has a keen eye for detail and can keep things from falling through the cracks. A restaurant background shows that a paralegal applicant can handle high stress and deal with demanding situations. It is this kind of transferring that you need to do for the resume (and interview) phase of the effective paralegal job search.

Self analysis and skill transference

Below, we will discuss how you can analyze your skills and present them as benefits to your potential employer.

A paralegal applicant with five past jobs is faced with a genuine challenge in writing a resume; in fact, with concentration, this exercise can be accomplished in 15 minutes. The first task is just to analyze all the activities that were involved in each job. As an example, a restaurant background, though seemingly simple, is actually multifaceted. There is the public component, the memory component, physical activity, inventory, balancing, handling numbers and orders, dealing with vendors, handling irate customers, and the developing of diplomatic and personable qualities. A job can be broken down in terms of activities, which in turn evolve into skills. Then, a benefit can be highlighted for the attorney: "This is a hard working person who can handle stress and won't fly off the handle the first time things get tense."

Grouping activities and skills occurs naturally as you analyze activities and skills from the different jobs. To help you with this task, take 15 minutes and do the following: Describe all of your past employment and experience on the basis of the raw descriptions. After describing them, analyze them for skills and group them. Create a picture of the image that is developing. Emphasize skills and talents that would be particularly beneficial to a legal office or setting. As you do this, you will discover a picture of yourself that you might not have perceived before.

This process can be enlightening. After this kind of exercise, you will conclude that you have a viability you might not have realized before in quite the same way. This exercise not only helps you with your skill analysis, but it also helps you with your self-image. Most of us need to stop minimizing ourselves.

Parts of the Resume

In this section we will explore the various parts of a resume: Education, Professional or Work Experience, Skill Assessment Sections (Profiles and Objectives), Special/Technical sections. While these do not cover all possible titles you might assign to parts of your resume, they do cover the territory in terms of topics.

You will note that we did not mention a Personal section, which would describe your personal interests and hobbies. Resumes used to routinely include a personal section in the 1970s and before, but a Personal section is no longer considered germane to the hiring process. Including such information may make you seem out of touch.

An entry paralegal should include formal paralegal training at or near the top of the resume. Following your paralegal training, in reverse chronological order, insert your other educational experiences. Include four-year degrees, associate degrees, certificates, seminars, or programs attended. No matter how you lead (whether with the degree, the school, or the date), make sure it is a consistent presentation that includes the following information: school, city, state, date, degrees or level attained, kind of program, curriculum description.

Take for instance Sarah Kennedy’s Resume. In this resume, the education section is a full one-third of the page because the paralegal is young and lacks a long work history. She has fully described not only her paralegal curriculum, but also a special educational qualification (Child Development), followed by her substantial four-year degree program. Note that she has described her education in such a full and detailed way because all of it relates to the practice area she is seeking. Her Employment Objective is a "challenging career in a Juvenile/Family Law practice." In this case she is not only establishing her educational credentials in general, but she is also making a case for being a well-trained entry juvenile/family law paralegal. She is definitely putting the "sizzle" at the top by following her Education with a Special Skills section.

If you are older and have quite a bit of educational and professional experience, you may want to treat some older educational background lightly or not at all. Some people who have bachelor's degrees simply leave off an older associate's degree to make room for something else they deem more important. You need not mention every certificate you gained or refer to seminar attended, if they go back too far or have questionable benefit to you.

If you do not want to emphasize previous educational experience by placing it at the top of the resume (for example, if you have an incomplete degree or a degree that does not seem relevant to the paralegal position), there is the technique of separating your "Legal Education" from your "Previous Education." This is highly subjective and may not be a problem to some. But truly, "One man's sizzle is another man's fizzle.

A Word about Omitting Dates: Often people are trying to hide their age when they omit dates. However, omissions will be noticeable and bring people's attention to the spot that the applicant is ostensibly attempting to conceal. This is not to say that you are committing an unpardonable sin by omitting a date on an early educational experience, but at the same time, one should consider the irony that someone, upon viewing the absence of a date, just might assume you are older than you are!

The Hard Chronology

You must add a "Hard Chronology" somewhere to your resume. A resume without dates and job listings is not recommended. There should be a part of your resume in which a mildly interested person can discover the basics of your background. The entry should contain at least these elements: Company, title, city, state, date, and description.

The way these elements are handled should be consistent with all of the employment experiences listed.

Lead with the most impressive, substantial element first and then follow with the less imposing element. For example Aaron Friedland was leading with his computer and word-processing systems experience. He described certain jobs in great detail and fully embellished them to show a level of responsibility and technical skill. The customer service and account executive positions he only listed, figuring that the nature of those jobs was self-evident and less significant than his technical background.

Beware of redundancy and repetition! One of the most common mistakes made in the work experience section is to mindlessly describe the same type of job three or four different times. This is stupefying, unless it relates directly to the job you are seeking. If you have jobs that are basically the same, take advantage of that and line the jobs up and describe them with one short paragraph. In this situation, you may want to make more of your education or special skills; use white space artfully and make the look more appealing. The worst thing you can do is make the descriptions dense, repetitive, and crowded.

Gaps and other problems

If you have potential problems in your background, such as gaps or jobs that you do not wish to draw attention to, then grapple with these issues in the "hard chronology." Each should be dealt with independently so that different approaches can be utilized. Some choose to avoid explanation. This approach lets the interviewer "discover" the gap or other problem. Some choose to cover the period with volunteer experience or part-time jobs or a combination of such. After assisting with the creation of thousands of resumes, I recommend that these problems be dealt with creatively and with a number of different approaches. Each person must assess these questions:

1) How big is this gap? How bad is it, really? 2) Am I just overly sensitive about this period? 3) Can it be subordinated for the purposes of the resume? Will this hurt my chances of getting an interview? 4) Will I be able to feel comfortable with this explanation in my interview? 5) When I explain this in the interview, will it soothe doubts or create suspicion?

In every case of doubt or question, consult a counselor or knowledge able friend for advice. The two crucial questions are: Will this keep me from getting an interview? When I get the interview, will this explanation help me?
 

• See 6 Things Attorneys and Law Students Need to Remove from Their Resumes ASAP If They Want to Get Jobs with the Most Prestigious Law Firms for more information.