Many resumes has an almost zero chance of getting selected by a company for a job interview. There is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” resume. Hence, to write a resume that is persuasive to the hiring manager or interviewer(s), it must speak directly to its intended reader. The effectiveness depends on how well your resume answers the concerns of the interview. The most critical concern is: “What are the positive results of your work performance?” Simply saying: Why do your professional accomplishments matter? If your resume doesn’t answer this question, your interview might be harder to overcome. Take note that:
- It doesn’t matter if you led a team of 50 sales professionals but missed its sales goals.
- It doesn’t matter if you designed and built a website for a Fortune 500 client but it generated no additional site traffic or sales leads.
- It doesn’t matter if you wrote up many pages of business requirements when no one used them.
- It doesn’t matter if you trained new hires… if those new hires were unable to do their jobs properly.
How do you overcome this obstacle? Here is a solution:
Don’t Let Your Potential Employers Have Any Reason to Doubt Your Competence
You must emphasise the positiveness and accomplishments in your resume. Don’t just state it and move on to the next point. Here is a “before and after” example that demonstrates the importance of emphasizing the positive in your resume.
Example of a bullet point: “Oversaw purchase and organization-wide training/adoption of a client-management system.”
Impressive but it lacks presentation. Yes, you were responsible for purchasing the system and getting everyone to use it, but nothing in this bullet shows why it matters.
Instead, emphasize on why it matters. Here is an improved example:
“Oversaw purchase and organization-wide training/adoption of a client-management system that realized 90% adoption (from among 10,000 employees) and a full return-on-investment within nine months of procurement; system resulted in a 20% increase in repeat business and a 50% increase in productivity.”
This is the information your reader needs to see to properly evaluate your prowess. It shows them not only what you did, but how well you did it. Many people looking for jobs tend to overlook this and automatically assumes that the list will “fill in itself” by the hiring manager/interviewer, whom is the reader of your resume. Safe to say, assume that any hiring person you have in contact has the innocence of a young child. Pretending you’re relating a story and you’re its hero. Don’t just focus on the hero’s abilities but his actions also. This is an analogy you can give some thought on and further improve on your resume to get a higher chance of scoring the interview. Such a recounting will not only make your reader’s eyes light up, but will distinguish you from the hundreds of resumes sent from the masses.
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