Save a recruiter’s weary eyes. Write a fresh, unique, straightforward and easy to read resume, and you’re much more likely to get it read. Here are ten tips on how to keep your resume professional and effective.
Prove every word. Lots of resumes will claim that the candidate is “team oriented” or has “excellent communications skills.” So many that most readers don’t believe it anymore. If you want to make the claims, back them up with evidence. Write accomplishment statements that demonstrate your soft skills, like the fact that you’ve presented at industry conferences or facilitated team building events that produced business results. If you can’t prove it, you may want to skip mentioning it. Besides, they’ll judge your communications skills the minute they get you on the phone.
Put the reader on the scene. Help them taste the ripe, dripping orange or see the sunset, crimson fading into violet behind the silhouette of an Alpine forest. It’s how a fiction writer draws the reader into the scene, and you too can use detail to help the reader see, hear and experience the work you’ve done in the past. Offer enough concrete description that they can imagine themselves in your shoes.
Own your impact. If you delivered results, stand up and shout it. Words like “facilitated,” “coordinated,” “managed,” and “functioned” sound like you took a back seat while the rest of the team were at the wheel. Being part of a winning team is an accomplishment of itself. Talk about the teams results, share your part of the big win, and take credit where it’s due.
Keep it simple. What are the essentials to understanding the situation and your impact? Describe your work according to the CAR method (challenge, action, results) without getting into the minutiae. You can give additional context when you get to the interview.
Ditch the adverbs. Many adverbs dilute the power of your words. Look for any word ending in “-ly” and ask yourself if it’s necessary to maintain the meaning of the sentence. If not, use that red pen and mark it out.
Axe passive voice. An employer wants to know what you did, not what happened to you. Resume statements should start with an action verb (“delivered,” “developed,” “achieved”). Most of your work can be rephrased to show the action you took. One that is harder is “was promoted.” Good thing that’s the only time what happened to you is an accomplishment.
Pique their interest. If you can write an accomplishment that shows that you delivered impressive results, and leaves them with the question, “how did she do that?”, you just may get an interview so they can learn your solution to the problem. Think of what you can do to leave them wanting more.
Eliminate corporate speak. If it would show up on a Corporate Bingo game board, leave it off your resume.
Alright, you may not be able to avoid using “customer service” but other words, like “synergy” and “transparent” you should be able to skip. In fact, if you Keep it Simple like in rule XX, this one shouldn’t be a problem. If you find your resume sounding more like a technical manual and less like the engaging, successful person that you
are, corporate speak is often to blame.
Use white space. Ample white space–the margins and breaks around your text–makes your resume look more professional and polished, as well as easier to read. Many are tempted to try to jam in that extra sentence or two, and end up sacrificing the reader’s first impression for that content.
Use reader-friendly formatting. Bullets, indenting, bold, etc. all help the reader scan and process the information on the page. Use the tools available to you to make it easy on them, and highlight the areas of the document that you think are worthy of notice.
Kristi Daeda is a Success Coach and creator of Career Adventure, a blog which helps professionals in the pursuit of their inspiring work. To receive her free report, 51 Ordinary and Extraordinary Places to Find a Job, sign up for her free Career Kick Start newsletter.
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2 Comments
Good points and include testimonials too. If the resume makes it to the hiring manager then you will be more then likely taken to the next level.
As a UK professional CV writer, I’ve been saying all these things for years. A modern CV is not an autobiography or an opportunity for you to make exaggerated claims about how wonderful you are. Above all, you should avoid perceptions. By that I mean claims that are simply a matter of opinion and cannot be verified. They are simply a waste of space, an employer will not believe that you have these qualities simply because you say so. Demonstrate how you have used your skills to achieve success and your CV will have much more impact.