Upgrade 2: What's Your Price! or Getting your Resume across

Yesterday I was updating my resume for a part-time job which is scheduled for early next year when i thought about writing this post (I'm planning to go freelance next year, part of my plan to retire 'makan gaji' before my 30th birthday insyaAllah).

There are many online articles and even books on how to effectively write a resume. Just 'Google" it. However I would like to share my personal thoughts on making your resume stand out & what should you write as your 'Expected Salary'.

I couldn't stress enough on how important is a resume as a 'door opener', especially when you apply for jobs based on adverts from JobStreet, JobsDB, et cetera. Your resume needs to be selected among thousands of other applications, literally!

During the numerous interviews that I have attended, the first thing I noticed was that the interviewers have actually NOT READ my resume! These people are usually very busy (management team) and prefer to ask the interviewees themselves to save more time. They might take a glance or two but that's it. This even includes the guy from HR!

I realized that the people selecting the resumes are totally different than the one's interviewing. These people are usually the lower working levels or at most an executive, never the manager. Though your resume may have impressive words, detailed project experience and what not but all this would not even matter if your resume is not selected in the first place.

Though I already have a standardized resume,the first thing I would do is customize my resume according to the advert. I will make sure that my skills/ experience & qualification matches the requirements stated in the resume line by line, in the exact same order they are listed. The idea is to tell the selecting guy "Hey look. My resume exactly matches your requirement. Pick Me! Pick Me!".

Next would be the 'Expected Salary'. I find that  some applicants tend to not include this important info on the basis of "P & C". Rubbish I say! You're just delaying the process and making things more complicated (I personally know this as I also need to recruit people for my business). By including my expected salary in my resume, I am actually SELECTING the employers! I'm making a statement "This is how much I'm worth. If you can't afford me then by all means please, reject my resume!". However, you don't need to include how much are you making during each job as this might actually backfire.

So how much should I put as my expected salary? After asking around, the favourite response I got was "Ask for DOUBLE"? I was skeptical so I asked again and it seems that no one knows of anyone who knows of anyone who actually has had a 100% increment. It was all based on speculations & exagerration. 

Now I'm not saying it's not possible just that it's not fit for a resume (unless of course if you're submitting it direct because someone highly recommended you or you have a strong "cable" inside). My general guideline would be ask for 50% higher as most employers will try to haggle and settle at 30%. In some cases you can actually go higher. For my latest & current job I actually asked for a 60% increase and got a 50% increase for my basic salary. However, when I include the fixed monthly allowances, my monthly paycheck is actually 58% higher, almost as much as I requested in the first place.

How did I do it? Well that's for me to know and for you to find out
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of course in a later post :)


added on 04 Nov '09
You can download this Malaysia Salary Handbook for 2008/2009 as a guide, from Kelly Services.