Resume Writing 101
‘What’s wrong with my resume and how come I’m not getting interviews?’ clients have asked time and again. While this post won’t delve into interview-related strategies, it will offer some questions you can ask yourself as you critique your own professional résumé. For starters, pretend that you are the decision-maker – put on your Hiring Manager’s hat and start asking:
- Does the name that appears on your résumé show up in a Google or Bing search and is it you, or is it another Jane Doe – the one that embezzled $2.8 million? Make it easy for the employer to find you, and only you, within seconds. What this means for you, specifically, is that you may need to state your entire full name to avoid confusion with another party. For consistency purposes, brand all of your career marketing documents with the same name. And, if by chance, you do not appear in a Google or Bing search, you will want to establish a professional online presence, pronto.
- Does your résumé reveal one telephone number where you can be contacted? Along with that, does your voice message sound professional or does it say ‘You know what to do, so do it.’ Try to avoid words that annoy people when you craft your voice mail message. Also, do not list three different telephone numbers on your résumé; if the Hiring Manager has 300 résumés with three phone numbers each, that’s triple the work.
- Does your résumé include an appropriate personal email address or is it weird, obnoxious, or just plain inappropriate? (iamawesomedude@xlt.com will not score you points.)
- Does your résumé reveal website addresses to your LinkedIn and/or Twitter accounts? If you are a job seeker and unfamiliar with LinkedIn or Twitter, now is the time to sign up and bolster your knowledge of both. At interviews, networking events and in general conversation, you will be asked time and again if you are on LinkedIn or Twitter, among others.
- Does your résumé clearly state your professional focus or target goal? In a matter of seconds, will your reader know what you want to do? If your answer is ‘no’ upon self-evaluation of your résumé, you are doing yourself (and your reader) a disservice that will, most likely, eliminate you from the competition.
- Does your résumé contain a Profile or Qualifications Summary (30-second sales pitch) that 1. aligns with your target goal and 2. captures the best of your experience, education, and employee traits that are relevant, essential, and supportive to doing the job? In other words, why can you do what you say you’re interested in doing? And does your Profile or Qualifications Summary prove it?
- Have you presented yourself as a professional who is competent, proficient, or expert at delivering something of value to the organization? Have you convinced the reader to sample your brand?
- Is your résumé energy-driven with a strong mix of action-oriented verbs, or will your reader scan a document loaded with ‘responsibilities’ and ‘additional responsibilities’?
- Does your résumé sound like you? Or is it burdened with buzzwords that detract from you and your story? In other words, does the reader get a clear sense of who you are? And when they interview you, will the ‘real’ you align with the ‘paper’ you or is there a disconnect between the two?
- Does your résumé state where you’ve worked with corresponding dates of employment, or is that data missing from the document?
- Does your résumé include current and past employers’ city and state, or have you not included that information? Hiring Managers are not mind readers – whatever word ammunition you give them is exactly what will be used in the screening process. Help make their job easier, more efficient and ultimately, you may help yourself.
- Does your résumé reveal bottom-line results, achievements, and successes, or is it an exhaustive recitation of your duties copied and pasted from an old job description?
- Does your résumé communicate a sense of how much you are worth? (If you don’t know your current market value, do some research and investigation prior to going to the interview.)
- Have you stated your highest level of education first in the education section, or will your reader have to wade through lines of text to discern that you have a college degree?
Does your résumé reflect what you do when you’re not working or going to school? Will the reader be able to determine what you do in your spare time to support and give back to your community or profession? - Have you included a testimonial from one or two professionals in your network who can provide supporting evidence of your ability to do the job to which you’re applying? (Note: do not copy/paste recommendations from LinkedIn – secure new recommendations that align with your specific target goal.) It takes extra effort, and it’s worth it if it helps get you noticed. For example, if you are applying for an Accounting Supervisor position, invite your references to highlight your supervisory skills in their endorsement of you, as that provides direct evidence to support your target goal.
- Does your résumé look professional, sharp and crisp or does it look crowded, cluttered, disorganized, and in need of a makeover?
- Does your résumé appear to be drafted from a template, or does it give the appearance of an original, unique and distinct creation?
- If you are submitting hard copy, have you selected a high-quality paper? Upon printing, have you checked to see if the watermark is headed in the right direction, or is it upside down and backwards? Details, details.
When the Hiring Manager reads your professional résumé, do you believe that it will evoke a WOW or a wastebasket response?
Be brutally honest with yourself – if you were the Hiring Manager, would you pick you out of the Résumé Pile? Have you made it easy for the Hiring Manager to choose you? Have you thought about the who, what, when, where, why, how and how much as it relates to you and your résumé story? If you don’t love, or at least like, your résumé, there’s no better time than now to start over with Résumé Writing 101.
Guest Expert:
Billie Sucher is a nationally-known career transition expert, outplacement consultant, professional résumé writer, speaker, author, and prolific blogger for Career Hub. (She also loves to write poetry!) Since 1985, she has provided career management services to individuals, entry to executive-level, coast-to-coast. Billie holds a Master’s degree in Counseling, numerous industry certifications, and her résumé/cover letter work is featured in 28 national best-selling books. The author of Between Jobs: Recover, Rethink, Rebuild and Baseball for Life™, she invites you to visit her website at www.billiesucher.com or follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/billiesucher
(Via Career Rocketeer – Career Search and Personal Branding Blog.)
You only look for a job a few times in your life. Compared with the amount of time you spend actually doing it, investing time and energy in an effective job search repays the effort many times over. Studies show that people who understand and do well at the job search process enjoy substantially more job satisfaction and higher earnings over the course of their careers.
Those who put extra effort into the job search can bring not just a more satisfying life but extra salary.
We are here to help. ItsNotYouItsYourResume.com has compiled an impressive list of contributors including writers from 10BiggestInterviewMistakes, 10BiggestResumeMistakes, MyOnlineCareerCoach and MyOnlineCareerSpace, who have written the following:
Job and Career Books:
101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know
Ultimate Online Job Search EBook
Top 10 Interview Mistakes
10 Biggest Resume Mistakes
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