Does Your Resumé Properly Demonstrate Your Professional Highest and Best Use?

 

Does your resumé stand out? Does it properly demonstrate your professional highest and best use? Will employers quickly see you are the one to do the job?

Your resumé has less than 15 seconds to capture an employer’s attention, according to our national survey of 600 hiring managers. You must also incorporate effective keywords or the electronic search tools will never put you on the hiring manager’s screen.

5 Tips to Ensure Your Resumé Highlights Your Professional Highest & Best Use

1. Highlight Results

Highlighting results was #1 with all surveyed employers. Accomplishments get attention, not just job descriptions!

State the action you performed, then note the achieved results. Include details about what you increased or decreased. Use numbers to reflect, how much, how many, and percentage of gain or reduction. Stress money earned or time savings.

For example, “Managed the project implementing a new tracking system that resulted in a 17% decrease in cost overruns, saving $200,000.”

2. Be a Category Killer

Vague, general resumés don’t cut it. Target each resumé to the job sought. Incorporate only the information pertinent to doing that specific job title in the resumé.

This will alleviate the tendency to crowd your resumé with too much non-related information or too much detail on jobs more than 10 years in your past.

Start each sentence with a descriptive action verb, such as “directed,” “organized,” “established,” “created,” “planned,” etc., as they add powerful impact to your sentences.

3. Never Lie

A survey of executives stated that over 50% tried to exaggerate their skills on their resumé, which was almost always uncovered during interviews and reference checks.

Lying resulted in candidates not getting the job, or worse, being fired once the fraud was revealed. Employers are on the lookout for this misrepresentation so be as positive as possible without exaggerating or misstating the truth.

4. Avoid Big Mistakes

The TOP mistake annoying every manager and HR person in our survey was spelling mistakes and typos. Many said, “I stop reading when I find spelling mistakes.”

Typos scream, “Don’t hire me!” Proofread!!! You cannot trust computer spell checkers.

Cramming too much into a resumé and using microscopic fonts can result in it never being read. Make your resumé visually appealing on paper with fonts sizes in 11 or 12 points.

Use concise sentences and adequate white space between points. Many online resumé-posting programs incorrectly read boxes and graphic designs causing unintentional page breaks, so be sure to avoid using these.

Also, many home computers use a mini-word processing program called WORKS, which is not compatible and can’t be read by many employers’ business computers that use MS WORD. Be certain you only use WORD in any communications you send on to employers.

5. THE FINAL TEST—Is your Resumé Getting Results?

The well developed resumé is designed to get your foot in the door. Are employers or recruiters calling you for appropriate jobs that you are qualified for (not over or under) to perform? If not, rework your resumé OR get professional help to improve it, since a great resumé is the prelude to landing a terrific job.