The resumé you create is your first impression with a potential employer. When you’re going on a first date, you make sure your shoes and hair are on point, so why not go the extra mile and create a perfect resumé?
Table of Contents
Step 1: Make It Brief
Don’t you just hate how some people can go on and on talking about themselves on a first date? Well, resumés need to be brief too. Keep your entire resume on a single page so that hiring managers can quickly scan it to get the essential info they need to decide to bring you in for an interview.
Hiring managers go through countless resumés, one after the other. Do you think they want a 9-page story of your life? For goodness sakes! Just be concise and to the point. Make use of every single word. Sometimes, you can say a lot more in one sentence than you can in a whole page of nonsense.
In a survey conducted by CareerBuilder, 68% of hiring managers spend less than 2 minutes looking at a resumé, 43% spend less than a minute, and 24% spend less than 30 seconds! Yikers.
Step 2: Highlight The Right Skills
Many job applicants highlight what are called “hard skills” first. These include things like programming, writing, typed words per minute, etc. But these skills aren’t necessarily what hiring managers are looking for.
Instead, focus on “soft skills” first. Here are some examples of soft skills employers look for:
- Do you excel at communications?
- Do you have good leadership skills?
- How is your work ethic?
- Do you have a positive attitude?
- Are you a self-driven, self-motivated individual?
- Do you do well in a team environment?
- Can you work well under pressure?
- Are you able to be organized with multiple priorities?
These skills are the ones that can really make a difference and will keep your resumé out of their trash can.
Step 3: Be Careful With Your Words
Words matter, and there are far too many job applications that utilize buzz-words they think will pack a punch. In reality, these words are overused and stale. Here are some examples:
Wrong: Expert
Correct: Authority
Wrong: Organizational
Correct: Administrative
Wrong: Responsible
Correct: Accountable
Wrong: Creative
Correct: Original
Wrong: Experienced
Correct: Proven
Wrong: Driven
Correct: Tenacious
Wrong: Motivated
Correct: Determined
Step 4: Monitor Your Social Media Accounts
According to the same CareerBuilder survey, 60% of employers research job candidates on social media, and 49% of them have actually found information that made them decide NOT to hire the job applicant.
Hiring managers aren’t just looking for red flags like hate speech on your social media accounts. They’re also looking for reasons you’d be a good candidate. Your Twitter account, for example, can convey the following things:
- Your personality fits within the companies’ culture.
- You convey a professional image.
- You display your creativity
- You show you’re a well-rounded person
- You display your communication skills
So what should you do? You can go back and clean up your social media accounts. But you can also create new ones, where you display a more professional image.
Crafting the perfect resumé isn’t going to guarantee that you land the job position you’re after, but it sure can help your resumé stand out from the rest.
