How Your Resume Can Sell You

How Your Resume Can Sell You

How Your Resume Can Sell YouThough you should often customize your resume to a posted position, this doesn’t mean trying to package yourself differently for different employers. Be straight-forward; show your achievements, rationale behind them, and impact. Telling the truth openly, voluntarily, and impressively is the key. The more you tell, the more you sell! Here are some things to keep in mind:

Consider tight paragraphs.

  • The two common approaches to presenting your work history are paragraphs, with each job written up as a mini-essay; or bullets, sentence fragments preceded by a raised dot. The latter is often used by advertising copywriters to make every point seem a highlight.
  • While either style is acceptable, I like tight, specifically-written paragraphs to tell a story. Sentences in a paragraph are easier to comprehend and believe, because they closely resemble what we see in books, memos, and other informational writing. Bullets resemble advertising copy.
  • Sentences in paragraphs also enable you to use transition phrases and conjunctions that connect the various statements in ways that serve you better than a series of unrelated exclamations. It’s helpful to say, “In recognition of my leadership on that project, was promoted to …” or “After consolidating these three acquisitions …” You get the gist.
  • I do think that bullets can serve as short testimony to successes that came out of the story in paragraph.

Make your resume factual and concrete.

  • Familiarize your reader with specifics. For each leadership position or collaborative contribution, orient your reader to the size, nature, and trend of (1) the larger unit in which you participated and (2) the part of it you were responsible for. What was the size of your operation in people, sales, and profit? What was its directive? The general business climate around it? The problems and opportunities you identified? The strategies you came up with? And the results you achieved?
  • Use numbers whenever possible. Focus on quantifiable data. Give dollar figures for sales, profits, ROI, costs, inventories, etc. before and after your initiatives were implemented. When you use percentages, try to give the base plus any comparative figures on the rest of the industry or another part of your company that will show your numbers are exceptional.
  • Avoid empty words and statements. Omit self-praising adjectives like “major,” “substantial,” and others. Wherever a word is justified, a number will be far more persuasive. Avoid over-generalized statements like, “Responsible for managing the strategic technical issues impacting the company’s ongoing core business.” What do you do all day? What’s your budget? Whom do you report to and who reports to you? How has your employer benefited from having you around?
  • Create a mosaic. Think of those pictures that are comprised of tiny colored stones. Imagine that each promotion to a new job, each numerical improvement, each specific point of analysis and strategy is a stone. When assembled together in the right order, these fragments will be connected by your reader into an image of you. Don’t assert what the shape of it is. Just lay out enough specific facts – stone by stone – so your reader will see his or her picture in his or her own mind.

The most important ingredients of a resume are time and thought. Decide what facts will prove you get great results, and state those facts in a distilled, clear way. You’ll face competing candidates. There are naysayers who profess that resumes don’t really matter anymore. That’s true of generic, kitchen-sink, this-could-be-anyone-in-the-industry resumes. But a resume that truthfully shows your past performance and shares your success stories in outperforming others does matter!

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