Be All That You Can Be

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Investors and bankers require projected or pro forma financial statements as predictors of how well a company will perform if the company receives the funding it requests. Once funding is approved, companies work hard to meet the expectations set by the pro forma statements. Just as pro forma financial statements set performance expectations for businesses, a pro forma resume can help you set your personal expectations. The pro forma resume can help you qualify yourself for your Target Position Description, the reference that captures your expectation of all that you can be.

Your pro forma resume is the resume that you want to submit when you apply for or want to be considered for hiring into your target position. Using a legal analogy, your target position description defines the charges. Your pro forma resume will help you present your case by defining the evidence you need to accumulate to win your case.

Another view of the role of the pro forma resume can be related to the process that companies or organizations utilize to implement change or transformation. This process includes the following steps.

Establish the Desired State (What does the organization want to be or can be?).
Assess the Current State. (Where is the organization now relative to the Desired State?)
Determine what is keeping the organization from being what it can be (problems, challenges, inhibitors, roadblocks, etc.).
Determine actions to solve the problems and eliminate and/or overcome the challenges, inhibitors or roadblocks (what needs to be accomplished).

Your pro forma resume will help you apply this process to your personal development as you make the migration to your Desired State, what you can be.

I recommend the following components for your pro forma resume.

Career Summary
Career Highlights
Professional Experience
Education
Certifications
Professional Awards and Recognitions
Professional Memberships and Affiliations

Career Summary should be a brief narrative of your qualifications and capabilities. It is your summary statement of what you will achieve to place you in the position of being strongly considered for hiring into your target position. It should also include the traits and attributes that you included in your target position description, the ones you plan to demonstrate as you migrate to what you can be. (You can review suggestions for developing your Target Position Description in the July 28 edition of From the Field. See About From the Field section below to access the From the Field archive.)

How do you know that a person can do something? You know it because they have done it.

Career Highlights
should include the things that you will accomplish to demonstrate your qualifications. I recommend that you determine 5-7 high impact or signature things that you believe that you will need to accomplish to qualify you for your target position. Make sure that your career summary serves as an overview of your career highlights. Think of your career summary as your opening statement in a trial and your career highlights as your evidence.

Professional Experience should include the positions that will provide opportunities to qualify you for your target position. Responsibilities, role of the position in the organization, scope of responsibilities and to whom the position will report are components in your target position description that will serve as references for developing the professional experience component of your pro forma resume.

I recommend that you address Education and Certifications simultaneously. A career counselor once provided valuable advice to me. She recommended that I view work as a problem to be solved. People hire individuals to fulfill the needs of their organizations. For example, companies seeking significant process improvements may prefer candidates with Six Sigma certifications versus those with a master's degree in Operations Management. Your target position description projects the problems that you will prepare yourself to solve.

Seek Professional Awards and Recognitions that will make you stand out. A good way to determine what will make you stand out is to check the profiles of persons who have attained the level that you are seeking. Check bios of these individuals or seek advice from people who are knowledgeable of your profession or of the requirements of your target position.

Relate Professional Awards and Recognitions to Professional Memberships and Affiliations. Your chances of receiving awards can be enhanced if you belong to the organizations that grant the awards or have a history of granting the awards to members of certain organizations. I also recommend that you check the bios of individuals who have attained the level that you are seeking. To what organizations did they belong?

As an aid to preparing yourself for all that you can be, your pro forma resume will serve as a filter or reference for making personal development or career decisions such as:

Which assignments should I pursue or accept?
In what training should I invest?
Who should I approach to be my mentor or a member of my personal board of directors? (Visit the From the Field archive for the January 28, 2009 edition that covered establishing your personal board of directors. See About From the Field below to access the archive.)

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved. (William Jennings Bryan)

Fields of Success helps individuals achieve what they can be. Visit the Fields of Success website to schedule a free introductory coaching session to help you shift from operating by chance to operating by choice.

Click here to visit Fields of Success website.

Linwood Bailey
Principal
Fields of Success
Career Management Partners