The Most Valuable Resume Trick
It is critical to always remember one important factor about resume writing. This issue is so absolutely important that all other resume criteria fail into insignificance beside it. If you leave this out, you will regret the oversight and wonder why your resumes are not getting any responses.
When trying to write their own resumes, many people assume the employer will mainly be interested in hearing a list of their different duties. However, that is not at all what the typical employer wants to know about your background. Most employers are very busy, and your resume should be written in a way that it does not lose their attention. Picture yourself as a busy personnel director, and honestly ask yourself how much empty fluff you can stomach reading in the resumes I come across your desk in a single day.
Throughout the 19 years I have been writing resumes for a myriad of customers in every conceivable profession, I have also enjoyed access to many personnel directors and hiring managers, those folks on the receiving end of a veritable deluge of resumes every day. You might be interested to learn what they are really interested in reading in your resume, particularly in the context of today’s highly competitive job market.
The essential thing to tell the employer about your past work history, is specific achievements, not your duties. For example, instead of saying “I went to meetings and filled-out reports,” you will get a lot more interview requests if you write: “I achieved 3% sales growth by implementing an aggressive direct marketing campaign.”
Alternately, you could state: “achieved $1 million annual sales (2009).” Note how short the sentence is.. Yet, it is a punchy, bottom-line type of resume statement that is exactly the kind of attention-getting item we want throughout your whole resume. It focuses on results, ignores duties for the most part, and demands attention. Just like any good advertisement headline, it is rarely very long. Short advertisement headlines which produce an emotional response in the reader always work best.
Do you know what bottom-line” orientation means? In the context of resume writing and the hiring process, it refers to the focus of the employer’s attention as he reads your resume and tries to discern if hiring you would be a good business decision. As an employer, he typically is concerned with the bottom line or financial viability of his company as a whole. While you are looking at your little segment of responsibility, he is looking at the big picture. Therefore he wants to see on your resume how you can improve his profitability in one way or another.
The point I wish to make here, is that when writing a resume it is critical to always emphasize measurable specific accomplishments rather than duties. There will be sufficient time for the employer to expand upon your duties later in the interview process. However, we want to avoid cluttering your resume with an endless list of the duties at this point, at the risk of losing the interviewers interest.
The lesson, therefore, is when writing your resume to perpetually emphasize results, achievements, and measurements of performance, instead of mundane tasks and administrative duties. This does not mean you do not include any responsibilities, but merely that you emphasize accomplishments over those. To the extent that you emphasize accomplishments and achievements, you will reap the benefits of a much higher interview is one. And the more interviews you succeed in obtaining, the greater the chances you will land your dream job.