I just read an article in Shine, Yahoo’s women’s portal about “What NOT to do: 7 Ways to Ruin Your Resume.” I thought I would tag onto that and write some of the things you should do, especially since they were just focusing on things you shouldn’t. While some of the tips are really good, and some are great reminders, I thought others were just too obvious. So here you are: 3 Must Have Things For Your Resume so you can get ahead and land that next great job.
1. Relevant Keywords Describing Your Skills: The first thing to note is that HR and recruiters scan through these resumes really quickly. Sometimes, they even have the computer automatically scan the resumes. This means that there is a high likelihood that they will never even look at your resume. Instead, they will use quick searches to find the resumes with keywords that match the criteria they are looking for. For example, if they are recruiting for a Marketing Manager, they may look for people with SEO experience. If you have that relevant experience, make sure it is clearly listed on your resume. Additionally, make sure you have other marketing keywords listed on there as well in case they are scanning for multiple keywords. Therefore, you should not only have “SEO knowledge,” but also have such keywords as “customer acquisition campaign, agency account management” and so on. A quick way to check for specific keywords that the company might like is to look through the job description. Don’t just look through that company’s job description, look through many job descriptions of the same job and try to pull out all of the relevant keywords that stand out. Use those words to describe your own experience on your resume in order to stand out more.
2. Keep it to 1 page: Have you ever sat down to a 4 page restaurant menu, flipped through it, and at the end, didn’t have any idea what to order? Those big, large menus are oftentimes really overwhelming. At the end of it, you haven’t remembered a single thing. This holds trueyou’re your resume. Unless you’ve worked for more than 20 years or unless you’ve had a lot of different jobs that are all relevant to the job you are applying for, keep your resume to 1 page. Again, you have less than a minute to impress the hiring manager so don’t try to expand your resume beyond 1 page. If you can’t state all of the main points in 1 page, then you are being too descriptive and using too many words. Be succinct and be clear. State your experience, but don’t go on and on about it. Don’t let the HR manager get so overwhelmed with all of your flowery words that s/he forgets what is actually on your resume.
3. Give clear examples: One problem people often have is that lots of skills are stated, but there are no relevant examples. Everyone can say that they balanced a budget or released a new product, but the question is – how did that affect your company’s bottom line? Did you increase the customer base by 10%, did you grow revenues by 15%, what were the results of your efforts? For a great resume, try to give clear examples of the results of your effort so people can see how your work helped the company you were at. It does no good to say you have all of these skills when the skills have not translated to clear results. Hiring managers want to see results, not just statements of skills.
Finally, people often debate whether or not they should put other interests and skills such as running, cooking, etc. In my opinion, this doesn’t hurt if you have the space. If this takes up a line and you have to remove the part about one of your accomplishments, do not put this on. But, if you find yourself at the end of the resume and still have one line to spare, why not add it to your resume? A friend of mine went to one interview which started out about her recent triathlon. It turns out that the hiring manager was preparing for his first triathlon and the two spent the first 10 minutes talking about this. My friend gave the manager a few pointers and was very clear in her process. The manager liked her approach and the two of them got along really well after that. In the end, my friend got the interview. One reason that the HR department cited was her “communication skills” and how social she was. I bet this had a lot to do with that first 10 minutes where she and the manager discussed the triathlon training. So, if you have the room, go ahead and put it in. It never hurts to tell your prospective employers a bit about you and your interests.
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