Larry Wilson, MSW, LSW, Career Counselor, Social Worker
October 18, 2021
In my experience, three things need to be true for a resume to be successful:
1) It must provide the information necessary for a recruiter or hiring manager to determine if you have the desired education and experience for the position.
2) It must highlight what differentiates you from other candidates with similar education and experience, so that the recruiter or hiring manager will want to talk to you.
3) You have to believe what your resume says, and be able to effectively tell the stories it outlines.
Let’s discuss each of these criteria.
1) Does it show that you have the desired education and experience for the position?
Most job announcements include required and/or preferred education and experience requirements. Experience is a broad category that may include level of position held, supervisory responsibility, span of control (production, sales, recovery, etc.) expressed in terms of dollars, and experience with particular software systems, hardware, machinery, or business category.
Not having every element of the required experience should not necessarily cause you to pass on applying. However, if the announcement states that candidates without a particular experience or education set will not be considered, it’s probably best to spend your effort elsewhere.
Larger employers may use software to screen for relevant keywords. A well-composed resume will have the necessary keywords in job titles, experience summaries, and specific accomplishment bullets. Using different personal summaries targeted at the specific areas you are searching in will bring in more specific keywords. Candidates for technical positions frequently also include a bulleted or comma-delimited list of programming languages, software packages, software types and process expertise to complete their keyword coverage.
Most folks I work with already have resumes that accomplish #1 reasonably well. Also, we use a cover letter approach that highlights the match between job requirements and the candidate’s qualifications. So, we don’t work on resumes right away, other than to bring them into line with current norms (delete months from employment date ranges; remove mailing address).
2) Does it effectively highlight what differentiates you from other candidates?
This is the crucial goal of the resume: Make the recruiter want to meet with you and learn more. To do that, you want to show what you have done that makes you a truly desirable candidate.
Accomplishment statements have been the bedrock of resume advice for a long time. They are explained and recommended in resume builder software, YouTube tutorials, books and articles. At minimum, they include what you accomplished and what the business benefit to the organization was. So, if you were responsible for a sales group with $10 million in annual sales, your accomplishment might be increasing sales by 20% overall, and increasing average sales from the top 50 customers by an average of 23%. Candidates are urged to quantify accomplishments where possible.
What a standard accomplishment statement often does not get across is what is behind the numbers. In the example above, was it working with individual sales personnel on their areas for improvement? Was it realigning territories? Was it developing strategies for key customers? Also, was this accomplished in market conditions that were challenging? Were there other difficulties in production or fulfillment that had to be overcome? What was the turnover rate in the sales group?
To be truly effective in differentiating you, an accomplishment statement (a resume bullet) needs to frame the whole story, not just hype the outcome. This is why I work with job seekers on their key stories – the things they most want to talk about with a recruiter from their work, volunteer and educational history. Recruiters are more likely to notice resume items that better capture what a job seeker has truly contributed. And, a job seeker’s best chance to tell the stories they want to in an interview is to highlight those stories in well-crafted resume bullets – ones that make the recruiter want to know more.
3) Do you believe what your resume says about you? Can you tell its stories (your stories) authentically and convincingly?
It may seem out of place to talk about your belief in what you claim in your resume. But how can you call a resume successful if that belief isn’t there?
Some time ago, I worked with a job seeker who paid a lot of money to a firm to develop them a professional resume. The firm did that. But even though it followed a successful formula, the resume made claims the job seeker could not back up. The career development firm did not address whether the job seeker believed, or could effectively talk about, the claims in the resume. The firm did this job seeker a great disservice.
The easiest example of this to understand is a technical resume. IT, telecom and engineering/scientific firms tend to see resumes that list programming languages, methodologies, development environments, and technologies. A recruiter can check the box off as to whether a required technical competency is claimed on a resume. But a technical specialist (and/or an online skills questionnaire) is needed to determine whether the job seeker’s depth of understanding and experience are sufficient for them to actually be able to do the job.
But the same is really true of every resume! A keyholder at a retail establishment, a shift supervisor at a café, an intake specialist at a law firm – all have specific competencies that are necessary for success. And their resume will be more successful if it encapsulates stories that demonstrate these competencies.
The other crucial element of this is whether the job seeker believes in their abilities, believes that they are as competent as the stories indicate, and believe that they have been and will be a valuable employee. Some people, because of the trauma of being fired, the damage from being in a toxic work environment, and/or depression and anxiety, have strong records but have lost confidence. Working with a therapist can help. Regardless, the task of identifying and crafting stories about the accomplishments they are proudest of is a powerful way for the job seeker to reclaim their stories, their professional self-confidence, and ultimately their belief in themselves.
Finally, it is important to consider what things are not important or helpful with respect to a resume:
Hobbies and personal interests, unless they relate directly to the position you are applying for
A picture/head shot, unless you are trying to convey something with it that is relevant to the job requirements
Fancy color patterns, heavy paper or card stock, or multi-column designs with text boxes, unless you are in the design/artistic sector.
Statements about personal characteristics, such as “self-starter”, “team player”, “excellent communicator”, or “hard worker”. Not unlike certain technical competencies, these are claims than anyone can make. It is better to demonstrate these characteristics through your stories/accomplishment statements. An exception may be in sales jobs, where language like “proven closer” may be expected.
Keeping the resume to a one-page limit. Use the amount of space necessary to say what needs to be said. Do not shrink fonts and margins to cram 1.5 pages worth of material onto a single page. A readable font size and ample white space are welcomed by those who have to review many resumes. Scanners and AI don’t care, but if you make the cut, the human that looks at the resume next will. NOTE: Academic and certain quasi-academic or scientific resumes, known in the USA as curriculum vitae, are exempt from any page limits and are expected to be all inclusive.
Work experience that is more than 10-15 years old, unless it is something extraordinary or crucial to making your case. If you are over 45, you are making it easier for someone to screen you out due to age. For similar reasons, graduation dates from formal education should be omitted if you are over 10-15 years out of school. Again, this does not apply to academic or quasi-academic/scientific resumes.