Earlier this year, I shared my opinions on SAP BusinessObjects branding and said that there were steps that “BusinessObjects professionals [should] take to update their resume (known as a Curriculum Vitae or CV in other parts of the world) and their own personal brands” (see related article, Whistling Past the Brand Graveyard with BusinessObjects). I shared these steps recently for an internal company seminar on resume building and interviewing. Much resume advice is subjective, but here are five tips that I believe can improve your resume.

1. SAP-ify your resume

Prior to SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects in 2008, “Business Objects” with a space was the name of the company and “BusinessObjects” (no space) was the name of the (then) flagship reporting tool. After SAP’s acquisition, the brand became “SAP BusinessObjects”. The proper way (circa 2011) to refer to the business intelligence platform is:

SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI R2
SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0
SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.1
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.2

A similar change has taken place with Crystal Reports, which is now called SAP Crystal Reports.

Making this change has the added benefit of increasing the SAPS rating of your resume. You’ll benefit from having the “SAP” keyword on your resume even if you’ve never touched an SAP ERP application. See Dave Rathbun’s related article entitled SAP + Business Objects Skills – Do They Exist?

2. Avoid abbreviations

In a resume (or even a presentation), avoid the use of abbreviations. A pet peeve of mine is the usage of “Deski” and “Webi”. An insider knows what these terms are, but in my opinion it is better to spell them out as “Desktop Intelligence” and “Web Intelligence”. If you’re not comfortable going cold turkey on abbreviations, feel free to use the abbreviation in parenthesis the first time you use the full product name. For example:

John Doe has over twelve years of experience creating reports with Desktop Intelligence (Deski).

Used the Central Management Console (CMC) and Central Configuration Manager (CCM) to do super neato administrator stuff.

A benefit to using both the full product name and its abbreviation is that many resumes are electronically scanned and screened for keywords. Using both terms increases your resume’s chances of making the first cut.

3. Use new product names when possible

This year, several products or components were renamed as part of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence 4.0 release. Similar to my approach with abbreviations, I like to use the new name first then add the old name in parenthesis. Here are some examples:

For the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator project, Marvin created three universes using the Universe Design Tool (Designer) and 32 reports using Web Intelligence (Webi).

Created six dashboards using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 (Xcelsius)

Created three dashboards using SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.0 (formerly Xcelsius)

4. Consider dropping unsupported or obsolete products

As time goes on, products are pruned from the SAP BusinessObjects product suite. You might want to consider editing your resume to remove obsolete product references from your job descriptions.  For example:

Configured Broadcast Agent 5.5 for nightly and monthly report scheduling.

might become

Configured nightly and monthly report schedules using administrator tool.

Some obsolete products that you might want to consider eliminating are Broadcast Agent, Crystal Reports Explorer, Desktop Intelligence, Performance Manager, and Supervisor.

5. Stress the business value of your business intelligence

Whenever possible, mention the value of your contributions to the business. Sometimes the value is elusive, but if your universe increased self-service reporting, say so. Perhaps your efforts automate what used to take several hours or days of tedious manual activity. Be realistic and honest – not everybody can quantify that they saved the company billions of dollars. But some of you can. And should. Check out this helpful blog article by Patrick McKenzie, Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, for inspiration.

For Additional Reading

• Whistling Past the Brand Graveyard with BusinessObjects
• SAP + Business Objects Skills – Do They Exist? by Dave Rathbun
• Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer by Patrick McKenzie
• How to Make it in Consulting by John Appleby
• Curriculum Vitae on Wikipedia

What resume/curriculum vitae (CV) guidelines have you found helpful?  Please share your thoughts below.