- Features
- Advantages
- Benefits
For example, the FAB paralegal resume filter will tell you that if you have only two lines available on your resume, and you are choosing from sorority membership or a job that you could expand upon with accounting skills, then there would be no question. The FAB formula says that sorority involvement may be a feature, but it has little advantage and benefit to the potential employer. The book balancing and accounting work is a very transferable skill and holds great potential benefit to the firm/legal setting (employer).
Features
Your mission in writing a resume is to decide exactly what about your background you want to include and what you will deemphasize (or not include at all). 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 towards 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
- Paralegal Education
- "Snapshots" of Your Background
- " Strongly Related Experiences
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:
- Avoid pushing titles, unless the job for which you are applying calls for exactly the same kinds of experience.
- 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.
- Pull out skills from past experience and frame them in the form of an advantage and benefit to the attorney.
Joe's Bar and Grill, Bartender and Supervisor: Hired waitresses and waiters, served drinks, maintained schedules, acted as bouncers.
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.
- 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.
