Your resume is one of your most important marketing tools. But remember, no matter how good it is, your resume will NOT get you a job. However, if it’s spelled correctly, the chances are much higher that you’ll be able to get a recruiter’s interest and be invited for an interview.
As a senior recruiter for both small businesses and large corporations, I have reviewed thousands of resumes during my more than 15 years of recruiting and human resources experience. My experience is that applicants often tend to overlook these most important aspects that could make your resume more effective in attracting the attention and interest of recruiters and hiring managers.
Brief purpose: Market and sell your background, skills, achievements, and experience to those who need your expertise or a problem that you can solve.
resume role: to create interest, to show that you really have the necessary skills and experience, and to get a recruiter and/or hiring manager interested enough to invite you for an interview.
Top Ten Tips for Writing an Effective Resume (From a Recruiter’s Point of View):
1. You can (and should) have more than one resume! Create a separate resume for the top two or three main areas of your expertise. (For example, one resume for marketing, one for sales, one for engineering.) Each resume should highlight specific examples of your accomplishments, skills, and experience from your current and previous roles that directly relate to that particular area of expertise.
2. Two pages in length, max. Condense, condense, condense! Imagine each word costs you $100 and you’ll write less, allowing you to fit your most important information on two pages. (Exception: Physicians and other published professionals often need a few more pages to list their credentials and published work. But even these should be as short as possible.) Ask someone whose opinion you trust to proofread your resume and edit it where necessary before submitting it.
3. Choose an appropriate format. The best and easiest resume format to review is chronological (starting with the most recent job and date and working backward through your work history). However, a functional resume format is often suggested as an option, especially for those who have been out of the job market for a while or want to change careers. But it can raise red flags that could prevent your resume from being reviewed further. Recruiters know that a functional format is often used to hide gaps in employment dates. Additionally, details of skills and experience are grouped into separate functional areas, rather than under each individual job held in the past. In many cases, due to the time and difficulty involved in reading a functional resume, recruiters often skip over them and move on to the next one.
4. Focus your attention on the most important “real estate” on your resume: top half of cover. Why? Because today’s recruiters are inundated with resumes, especially in these tough economic times when so many are out of work. Recruiters often manage anywhere from as many as 50+ jobs at a time, each with hundreds and hundreds of resume submissions. The average time an experienced recruiter initially spends scanning a resume to determine if it’s relevant to the position is about 7-15 seconds. If the top half of her resume doesn’t quickly differentiate and sell you as a viable candidate with recent skills and experience relevant to the specific job he’s applying for, the recruiter will simply move on.
5. Develop a keyword-rich resume. Be sure to add the main keywords for your skills and experience, as well as keywords for your industry and organization throughout your resume. Recruiters use various types of search tools in ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) where they type the top keywords for the specific job and position qualifications to search for related resumes. They also do similar keyword searches online on major job boards and even on some social networking sites. Only resumes that contain those keywords will appear in their review box, and those are the only resumes they’ll review for consideration. If your main keywords aren’t on your resume, chances are good that your resume won’t get reviewed, even though it ranks highly.
6. Create a short bulleted summary. At the top of the first page of your resume, list 5-7 bulleted sentences that highlight your most compelling skills, experience, achievements, training, and education. This summary should be located somewhere within the top third section of the resume below, but near, your name and contact information. Critical: Avoid “fluff” or hackneyed phrases like “good at multitasking” or “detail oriented” etc. The reader’s eye should be able to quickly scan the summary section and determine at a glance that your resume is worth continuing to read to the end.
7. Quantify and qualify your experience. Recruiters and hiring managers place a high value on proven achievements and results. The more you can quantify or qualify your bullet statements in each of your job listings, the more strongly you will be perceived as a person of action and results. After each statement, ask yourself: “What did I accomplish?” or “What was the result?” Try to tie a quantifiable result to the end of each statement if possible, such as “and as a result, the company saved X $” or “increased revenue by X%”, or “sold the most widgets in the team and was selected as employee of the year.
8. Focus on your most recent and relevant employment information. Recruiters and hiring managers want to know what you’ve done most recently that’s relevant to the role they’re hiring for. Write most of the information on your resume about your skills, experience, and accomplishments over the last 5 to 7 years of your employment history. Unless your experience beyond that point is unusually helpful in making your case, minimize that information to save valuable resume space. Beyond 7-10 years of employment history, you can list one or two line entries for each position held. Save the rest of the details of those positions for the application form and interviews.
9. Post the Key sections for credentials, certifications, and educational experience in a conspicuous location.Typically, a bachelor’s degree should be located near the end of the resume in the educational section heading. However, do you have an advanced job-related degree, such as an MBA, Ph.D., or other certifications or credentials that you want to make sure a recruiter or hiring manager sees? Place them at the top front of your resume, just before or after the summary section. Why? If you bury them at the bottom of your resume, they may never be seen. (See Tip #4)
10. List of Organizations, Associations and Affiliations of which you are a volunteer or member. This information, which is often overlooked, can be a great way to show an employer that you keep up to date with information and contacts in your industry. If you are volunteering for positions, especially leadership roles, be sure to include those as well. This information is especially important for those applying for positions with financial services and sales and marketing companies who need to demonstrate that they already have an established network. Place this information section near the end of your resume.
This last tip is a bonus. However, it is THE most important tip of all for writing an effective resume.
Always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on your resume… always! Never misrepresent what you did or be tempted to tell a “little white lie” on your resume or to a recruiter, period! Be especially careful about the job titles and job responsibilities you list. Make sure the job title and responsibilities you put on your resume can be verified if someone calls your current or former employer or colleagues and asks for you. False and misrepresented statements, no matter how innocent they may seem, are a breach of integrity and can come back to haunt you many years later. You could even get fired as a consequence! It’s just not worth it.
Use these ten tips to tweak and refine your resume and then you can send it off with confidence!
(c) Copyright 2009 Dresser Search and Consulting, Inc.