Job Functions with Best Prospects for Executives in 2007

ExecuNet's projections for job functions that will be in most demand at the executive level for 2007 are out. According to their 15th annual Executive Job Market Intelligence Report, results from 121 employers indicate that demand will be high for executives with strong operations, business development, and finance experience and will most likely outstrip supply.

This is good news for executives with strengths in these areas and is a wake-up call to make sure your executive resume effectively highlights them. Functional expertise in sales, marketing, and general management is also expected to comprise a large share of management hires made in the coming year.

Here are the details regarding job functions that will drive the most growth in executive hiring this year, as cited by ExecuNet:

Operations: 16.4%
Business Development: 13.6%
Finance: 10.5%
Marketing: 9.8%
Sales: 9.4%
General Management: 9.1%
MIS/IT: 7.7%
Engineering Management: 6.3%
Research and Development: 5.9%
Consulting: 5.2%

*****

Clean Up Your Digital Dirt!

To all my executive resume writing clients: The problem of digital dirt (unfavorable information about you on the Internet) is not something to be ignored if you want to ensure the long-term health of your career.

You may want to check out this site where you can verify your online reputation and also clean it up: www.reputationdefender.com. The site points out that according to a study conducted by Purdue University counselors, one third of employers screen job candidates using Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and 11.5% search social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga. It was recently mentioned favorably on Good Morning America as a provider that helps people to clean up their digital dirt to help ensure no negative effects are exerted on their "hireability."

Since the majority of companies and recruiters do "Google" prospective candidates' names, proactive action to ensure what they find is not damaging is only prudent. If you do not wish to use a paid service such as the one mentioned here, I strongly encourage you to search on your own and remove any items you have placed on the Web yourself that you would not want a potential employer to read (entries on a personal blog, for example). You'll also want to contact sites that may have inaccurate or unflattering information about you and request that it be removed or modified.

In What File Format Should I Send My Resume?

As I discussed strategy for his employment search with one of my executive clients today, he posed a question I frequently hear: Should I send my resume to recruiters and companies as a Word file, text document, or PDF? Coincidentally, this was also the subject of a recent thread in a career professionals forum in which I participate.

From my research on the subject, my colleagues' opinions, and surveys of hiring professionals, I would say that both text and Word formats win out over PDF files, despite the clear advantage that PDF's have in terms of WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get). A colleague in Maryland indicates that his survey of HR professionals at a recent SHRM meeting indicated a nearly unanimous opinion: 90% did not accept PDF files.

Several of my colleagues indicated that recruiters seem to prefer Word format for ease of editing and tweaking for the particular job order they are working on, which confirms my experience. A neatly formatted text document is also welcomed by most recruiters, but this does not mean doing a "save as" of your Word document to text and sending it as is! Your format will be a terrible mess and, besides making a bad impression, will be very difficult for the recruiter to manipulate. Typically, I recommend sending your executive resume in both text and Word formats when dispatching an e-mail. The text version can be placed inline (in the body of the e-mail below your message) or attached as a .txt file.

If you are sending your resume in Word format, beware that word processor files are notoriously subject to format damage when brought up on a system other than the originating one, due to differences in word processor settings, fonts, etc. That resume you so carefully and nicely fit into two pages may now carry over an awkward 2 or 3 lines on a third page. Or a comical or difficult-to-read font may be substituted for the attractive, conservative font you used.

So take care to use relatively simple but attractive formatting that will tend to translate smoothly on other systems, avoiding complex tables, columns, etc. Use fonts that are fairly universal on Windows systems (some are Verdana, Tahoma, Garamond, Futura, Palatino, New Century Schoolbook, Times New Roman, Arial). I personally balk at using Times and Arial because they are so "ho-hum," but sometimes it is necessary in order to have reasonable assurance that your resume is going to look anything like you intended it to when your recipient views it.

***********