Resume Doctor: Remaking a Resume to Bridge Two Worlds

From the Wall Street Journal | July 10, 2010 | by Elizabeth Garone

Health care is one of the hottest sectors when it comes to job-growth
potential. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is projecting 26% growth
for jobs in the industry this decade. But there are often dozens of
applicants for each opening and employers have become more picky, making
it harder for someone break into the field.

In this installment
of The Résumé Doctor, three experts critique the résumé of a candidate
trying to make the jump from consumer marketing to health-care
marketing. She has held numerous marketing positions and works part-time
in private practice as a dietitian.

Denise Garbinski is looking for a job that makes
the most of her marketing and nutritional expertise.

•
The Job Seeker: Denise Garbinski, 42, was laid off in
January 2009 from her job as a director of product-management with a
nutritional-supplement company in the San Francisco Bay area. Nine
months later, she returned to the company as a freelance marketing
consultant. She also runs her own part-time private dietitian practice. A
career in health-care marketing would offer a "marriage" of her two
worlds: marketing and clinical work, she says.

Ms. Garbinski
estimates she has sent out more than 100 résumés since she was laid off
and has interviewed for six positions. Responding directly to job ads
hasn't yielded any callbacks or interviews.

• The
Objective: Ms. Garbinski is looking for a marketing position in
a health-care company or organization in which she can use her
extensive consumer-marketing experience and clinical expertise in
nutrition to "make a difference in people's lives." Ms. Garbinski says
she is finding it difficult to transition as employers want to see prior
experience in health-care marketing. And she says public-relations
firms with health-care practices have only been interested in her
marketing expertise.

• The Experts: Offering
feedback on Ms. Garbinski's résumé are Joanne Parnofiello, director of
employment for New York's Hospital for Special Surgery, who meets with
10 to 15 job candidates per week; Pamela Culpepper, vice president of
human resources for Quaker Foods and Snacks, a division of PepsiCo, in
Chicago; and Sally Cummins Healy, vice president, food and nutrition,
for public relations firm Edelman, in Chicago.

• The
Résumé: Ms. Garbinski's fairly traditional résumé is two
single-spaced pages. It leads with her contact information followed by a
summary of her qualifications. She then lists her marketing experience
followed by her clinical health-care experience. She finishes with a
section detailing her education.

The Doctor Is In

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• The
Positives: The experts especially like that Ms. Garbinski has
an M.B.A. and is a registered dietitian. "An R.D. with an M.B.A. is a
rarity and will really help position her well," says Ms. Cummins.

They
were impressed with her years of marketing experience. For Ms.
Parnofiello, Ms. Garbinski comes across as a serious candidate who would
bring creativity and high energy to any position she eventually lands.

•
The Advice: The biggest complaint among them was how
text heavy her résumé was; for each of the seven companies Ms. Garbinski
includes, she lists four to five detailed bullet points. "All of the
text made it a little challenging to get through," says Ms. Parnofiello.

One way to cut down is to limit the details from her earlier and
less relevant positions, says Ms. Cummins. She could simply list the
companies and the positions she held in the 1990s.

There was some
debate as to where Ms. Garbinksi should list her M.B.A. and her
credentials as a registered dietitian. All three experts felt a
combination this unique shouldn't be relegated to the second page. Ms.
Cummins's solution was for Ms. Garbinksi to include her credentials
(M.B.A. and R.D.) directly after her name. "Calling out her unique
background in the header will help … her résumé stand out in a crowd,"
she says.

Right below her name, Ms. Garbinski includes a bulleted
summary of qualifications. Ms. Cummins and Ms. Culpepper felt this
section was quite wordy and didn't do a good enough job of connecting
the dots between her clinical and marketing experience. The summary of
qualifications "should be the most compelling part," says Ms. Culpepper.

In listing her work experience, Ms. Garbinski separated her
marketing and clinical health-care experience into two sections. None of
the experts liked this approach, largely because a goal of her résumé
should be to show how the two complement each other.

"This is how
she will get over the obstacle of needing more health-care marketing
experience," says Ms. Cummins.

All three experts felt that they
needed a clearer understanding of the potential fields within health
care Ms. Garbinski wishes to pursue. If areas of interest aren't made
clear, the résumé can run the risk of coming across as "too vanilla
flavored" or generic, Ms. Parnofiello says.

Ms. Garbinski needs
"to do a better job of highlighting the fact that many of the companies
and industries she has worked in already have some connection to health
and wellness," says Ms. Culpepper. "This connection will increase the
confidence in the reader that she has experienced different facets of
the health and wellness agenda."

Write to
Elizabeth Garone at cjeditor@dowjones.com