Are you sick of not landing job interviews?
Are you applying for jobs you feel you are more than qualified for, but not having any success?
More than likely, the problem has more to do with the way your resume is written than not having the right skill sets for the job.
Resume writing is an art form and in order to be successful your resume needs to pass four major rules:
- Skills and qualifications are highlighted in order to make your resume instantly stand out. Reports suggest once a hiring manager or recruiter opens your resume you have between 10-20 seconds to make an impact. No impact, no interview, no job!
- Strategic keywords to highlight your achievements and pass online screening software tools that are used to reduce the amount of candidate resumes that a business may receive for a certain role.
- Formatted, structured and presented specifically to target your experience and industry
- Presented in a professional manner using the correct font, bullet points, headings, length and most importantly error-free!
How can I make my resume stand out from the crowd?
Using numbers and quantitative evidence to highlight your achievements is key to standing out from the competition and presenting value added evidence about the type of behaviour a hiring manager can expect from you. If your position involves business development, for example, rather than including a generic description such as “Excellent communicator and relationship manager,” you can spice up this sentence and turn it into an “Accomplishment Statement” that will aid your resume in being noticed.
(Don’t forget to use strategic keywords!)
Example 1: Successful business development and account management helped to exceed annual sales target of $X by 15% for the full financial year.
Example 2: Managed a team of 6 Sales Representatives in conducting product launches to increase new product penetration into the market leading to an overall increase of $5 million over a 12 month period
Example 3: Part of the Project Management Team involved in the rollout of a 200 networks leading to a 10% increase in revenue and a further 20% in cost savings.
Proof and Evidence
Using numbers and evidence to back up your statements will aid your resume application and make your resume shine against other candidates. In the current economy where jobs are tough to get, you need to prove to the hiring manager you are the best candidate for the job and the best way to do this is to use numbers to back up your achievement statements.
During the last decade, RedStarResume has successfully written hundreds of professional resumes for candidates across the globe. From the student or entry level position to the CEO, their resume writing service generates unique job search documents to match the goals and desires of their clients and to help them land jobs.
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It also helps to “front load” accomplishments; get the numbers as close to the front of the sentence as possible, rather than make the reader find it at the end.
Great article and advice – but if a resume has 10-20 seconds to make a positive impact, a blog headline has even less. Your headline should be “more numbers, FEWER words”. Yikes – I wouldn’t expect this kind of grammar error from a resume writer.