Let me guess, you have a resume, but it's not landing you the job interviews you really want. Maybe you've submitted your resume to hundreds, or even dozens of positions.
In this article, I'm sharing a proven strategy that has helped my clients and students achieve things like landing a job making two times their current salary or landing a job instantly after looking for work for over a year. If you wanna see results like them, then keep reading.
So here I'm sharing five simple steps that you can use right now to write a resume that lands you more interviews and better job offers. So let's jump into it.
1. Create a stand-out summary.
This section needs to clearly identify who you are, and what you have to offer in terms of credentials, experience, results, and even personality. It needs to communicate some value proposition. These are the problems you solve, and the skills you bring to the table. Think of your summary as a movie trailer, you wanna give them a teaser into who you are, but don't give them the entire story. The summary section is like a sneak peek, it makes some promises, but then the rest of the resume is used as evidence to support the promises mentioned in the summary.
There are four main components that make up a stand-out summary. Let's take a closer look.
- The first one is your title, or what we call your identifier. This can be the job title that you, as the candidate, are seeking.
- The second component is your Skills or your tagline. I like to recommend that you use at least three skills here.
- The third component to a stand-out summary is a Paragraph of information that includes two to five sentences that go into greater detail about what it is that you do and how you can help the company solve their greatest problems.
- For example, you could include an adjective to start the sentences off. You could then have a title, now the title doesn't exactly have to be the same as the title that you listed above, you can include industry content, you could also include the result, or what the benefits are that you have to offer. And then of course do a recap of your key skills.
- Finally, the fourth component to a stand-out summary is the core competencies section. So the core competencies section are keywords, or keyword phrases, that explain your expertise more in detail. Now here is a point when it comes to listing your core competencies, make sure you're pulling keywords and keyword phrases from the job posting. Now you can place the word core competencies above this section, doing that actually gives a helpful cue for applicant tracking systems. Then, run your core competencies together with a vertical line surrounded by two spaces. This is the essential framework to build a strong summary section, and it address the needs of both the human and ATS reader. Master this framework, and then adapt it to tailor each resume for the job posting.
2. Add job description paragraphs
One way to make your resume stand out from all the others is by adding one to two sentences below the company name and job title that explains your main responsibilities, or your position at a glance.
Let's take a look at an example. In this example, you can see that it's a senior project management role. You can see that this candidate mentions in two sentences what their daily responsibilities look like. Now you'll also notice the keywords and keyword phrases that are us
ed within this paragraph. Now you can also use this introductory paragraph to mention the main objectives of the company you work for.
3. Include accomplishment-driven bullet points
Follow the paragraph under each job posting with accomplishment-driven bullet points. These bullet points become the backbone of your resume, and they tell the hiring official what your greatest accomplishments are. Let me quickly share with you the Three part formula to write a strong accomplishment-driven bullet point.
You'll wanna start with some type of action verb followed by the task that you performed, and then followed by the result.
Here's an example:
- "Increased base by 30% during the year 2018 due to the delivery of quick service."
- "Created and maintained office forms and procedures to assist with administrative tasks."
So, in both of these examples, we start with some sort of action verb, followed by the task, and then followed by the result of that task. Now, here is a tip when it comes to writing these accomplishment-driven bullet points, you can always switch the result and the task. So you could start the bullet point with a action verb, followed by the result, and then followed by the task.
Here's another tip when it comes to writing your achievement statements, hiring officials love quantifiable results. So, any time that you can add some sort of number to the bullet point is a bonus. So we wanna look at data, measurements, maybe there's a dollar amount associated with it, maybe there's a percentage, maybe there is time associated with that, so any time you can add an achievement-driven bullet point that is quantifiable.
4. Make it ATS optimized
So, ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. This is a system that companies use to send your resume through to see if you are a good match for the position. So to make sure your resume is ATS optimized, you need to, again, make sure that you are using keywords and keyword phrases from the job posting, exactly from the job posting, and placing them in your resume. So you wanna make sure that you're learning the company lingo. What types of words is the company using in their job posting, and then transfer those into your resume.
Here's an example, one company might use the word communication, another company might use the word communicator. You might even see one company using the word customer engagement, and another company using the word customer success. Make sure that you follow the company lingo in your resume so that you can get past the applicant tracking systems. This shows the company that you are literally speaking their language.
5. Format it for visibility.
When it comes to the visibility of your resume, you want to make sure that you're not using tables, text boxes, columns, or even graphics. Now I know that these things look great on a resume, the only problem is that they won't get your resume past any applicant tracking systems. So we wanna make sure that your resume is clean and sophisticated. So you wanna eliminate all the fluff and just include the data and the information that you need to get your foot in the door for the interview. Hiring managers, recruiters, and HR professionals wanna be able to find the information they're looking for in the exact spot that they expect it to be. This makes their job easier, so don't get too creative in the formatting, the design, and the layout. These resume best practices are sort of like shorthand, and they let hiring officials know where to find information quickly.
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