Resume Writing Tips for ERP Consultants Tips

What should be on an ERP resume? That will depend on your background, of course. For instance, an Oracle developer resume will be different from a PeopleSoft consultant resume, but here’s a rule of thumb on how to allocate physical space in the resume: 15 percent should be the heading, 50 percent ought to be the SAP body or Oracle body, 25 percent can your other professional qualifications, and 10 percent should be dedicated to training and education. The heading is where you present yourself: your name, e-mail, contact information, etc. (by the way, if your resume runs to two pages, make sure your name and contact information also appear on the second page, which may get separated from the first). The ERP body is the place to discuss your experience. The space for other professional qualifications is exactly what it sounds like. Depending on how much or how little ERP implementation experience you have, the size of this section may need to be tweaked to take up more or less space. Finally, training is the place to talk about certifications and other training. If you have SAP training but no implementation experience, move training to the front of the resume. Remember, always put what’s more relevant to an SAP or other ERP hiring manager closer to the top. Finally, if you’ve been on ERP projects, get references, and list them (along with phone numbers) in the ERP body.

You should not assume that putting your resume on the Web is going to replace a standard paper resume that you fax and mail out (including e-mail). Sure, a hiring manager can always take the trouble to print out your SAP resume or Oracle resume from a Web location, but why would you want to make them do extra work to get to your credentials? The customer is king. Also, Web resumes can backfire because, if they’re hosted on a personal site, they might be sitting side-by-side with your vacation pictures, blog rants and other personal data that isn’t of interest to hiring managers and may even alienate them. Therefore, for now, you should avoid having a Web-only version of your resume. This advice also extends to other media: don’t send out DVDs or PowerPoint presentations!

It’s easy to get lost in the forest of SAP and Oracle module names and technical details. Of course, you can’t write a resume without them, but you should balance out the technical with the business-related. If you were involved in an SAP project, list how much money the company saved as a result of the implementation, or how the implementation addressed a strategic business need. Then dig into the business details. How many users got to use the product? Were the SAP projects with which you were involved on time and under budget? Naturally, there’s some discretion involved here; if your project came in four years overdue, you might want to focus on how much money it saved the company rather than how long it took to deliver. This advice isn’t about cultivating dishonesty on your SAP resume or Oracle resume, but about affiliating yourself with business success. You want your name and experience to appear adjacent to stories of business success when you begin applying to SAP and Oracle job postings.

There is a standard visual format for resumes that your ERP resume should follow. Use white paper and black ink. Use standard margins and fonts. Remember that your SAP resume or Oracle resume is going to be photocopied, faxed and possibly have coffee spilled on it. When you send your resume out into the world, it needs to be visually armed against the disasters that can occur. Black ink and white paper insures that repeated photocopying and faxing won’t degrade the legibility of your resume. Standard margins and fonts enhance readability. The exhausted hiring manager might shred something he or she can’t read. Some people get creative with SAP resumes because, frankly, they’re covering up for a lack of substance. Rest assured that you won’t fool anyone by trying to camouflage what’s missing from your experience or education; instead, you’ll annoy them. If you have little SAP experience, be honest about it and use your resume to explain why you can overcome this handicap. If you have SAP experience, don’t let a badly designed resume get in the way of it; make it easy for SAP hiring managers to get to know you. Check out SAP sample resumes and Oracle sample resumes from reputable books if you want to learn more.

Let’s say you started out as a C+ programmer but become versed in SAP ABAP and ended up with experience in a specific module like FI. Technically, the resume only has to explain that you were an FI consultant with ABAP expertise; but, if you manage to put in information about how you started out as a lowly programmer, you will have emphasized your advancement. Hiring managers, like college admissions counselors, love candidates whose skills have developed. That’s a general principle you can adapt to other parts of your SAP resume. For example, maybe you started out as the lowest member of a project team but took on greater responsibilities during the course of a project. You definitely want to capture the advance in responsibility on your resume. If you do so, you may be more attractive than someone who did the exact same thing, but didn’t capture a sense of advancement in their resume. Remember, someone who’s on the way up is always more attractive, especially for an SAP job opening!

English might not be your first language, or you might not be a humanities person. That’s all right; you don’t need super-advanced language skills to be a consultant. However, you do need to appear professional at all times. Resumes filled with bad grammar, spelling mistakes and typos make a bad impression that can get in the way of an otherwise good candidate. For that reason, carefully proofread your own resume, and then have someone else proofread it for you. Make sure that, in addition to the spelling of common words, you spell the names of clients and references correctly. Don’t use all capitals for anything except the names of SAP modules or Oracle modules that are officially in capitals. Also, make sure to look out for run-on sentences. Everyone has a friend or acquaintance who is sharp with grammar, and who will gladly help you out by vetting your SAP resume or Oracle resume. If you’re not confident in your own ability to scrub a resume for mechanical errors, use these people’s skills to complement yours.

The best resume in the world is useless if you encounter someone with SAP or Oracle hiring authority and you can’t produce it for them. Not all resume distribution opportunities are formal; sometimes, particularly at conferences, you will run into unplanned opportunities for getting your resume out there. This doesn’t mean you should go around hanging your resume like a car wash flyer, but it should be on your person—for example, in your briefcase or laptop bag, or on your Blackberry and ready to be emailed out—so you can easily retrieve it at the right opportunity. Conferences are a good example of such an opportunity, but there are plenty of cases of SAP consultants who’ve run into hiring managers at airports and other random places. Exchanging business cards is great, but you want to close the deal as soon as possible and impress a hirer with your readiness. Someone who has a clean, unfolded resume handy, or an electronic copy that can be sent immediately, will impress a hirer as a can-do, prepared person—which is exactly the profile of someone who'll fit into an SAP job opening.

You may assume that, because something is mentioned on your resume, the hiring manager should absorb the information. However, that’s not always the case. Your resume can create a good impression and get you an interview, but at the interview the hiring manager might not recall every detail of your SAP resume or Oracle resume. More importantly, at the interview stage, a hiring manager wants you—not your resume—to talk. That said, if you are being interviewed over the phone (by far the most likely method of a first interview), you do want to have your resume in front of you, so you have a visual reminder of what the hiring manager knows about you. For that reason, if you’re in the job market, you should carry a copy of your resume with you at all times so that you can refer to it whenever a possible employer calls. Sometimes, just having your resume in front of you can give you confidence and make you feel more at ease on the telephone.

An ERP consultant resume should be no longer than two pages, and that means two full pages. If your resume only supports one page of content and you spin it just to get on to a second page, you won’t impress anyone. You might think there’s a lot to you that doesn’t fit on one page, and you’re right! But the recruiter doesn’t have time to meet the multifaceted you; that’ll happen during the interview, which will only take place if your resume gets an ERP hiring manager’s attention in the first place. Therefore, your task in the SAP resume or Oracle resume is to present the concise, interesting, relevant version of you. For a lot of SAP consultants, that isn’t an easy task, because they might not have enough perspective on their careers to know what to exclude. So, to guide you, think of the resume as the document that explains: A) what makes you qualified; and B) what you have done. Cut right to the chase, focus on those two goals, and you should be able to stick to the one-page recommended length. This will set you up for success at converting those Oracle job posting and SAP job openings into work.

At minimum, your SAP resume or Oracle resume heading should contain your address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address. Twitter, URL and other social networking information is not necessary, unless you want to recruit the hiring manager into your buddy list. Instant messenger (IM) handles are optional; they can’t really do much harm. If you don’t have a fax machine, spring for eFax or another online fax service. Try to have the same area code for your telephone and fax number. In an age of voice-over IP services and e-faxing, you can pick and choose area codes, but matched codes look more professional. If you have a standard land line, of course, that’s out of your control. Finally, pay attention to your e-mail address. It’s okay to use public domain emails such as Yahoo, Live, etc., but the e-mail format should be as close as possible to your name. Remember, BigSAPdominator@yahoo.com or some other hokey e-mail address won’t be as professional as an e-mail address that incorporates your name.