Keep up to date on articles and news and subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
How Do I Write the Killer Resume?
It seems that on a weekly basis someone is asking me for help with their resume. I don’t mind helping but the truth is that I simply run out of hours every day to do so. I’ll continue to suggest that there is no perfect way to write a resume but there are definitely better and worse ways to display your skills and background.
Today I spoke with a candidate who definitely has the skills that more than one of our clients is looking for. We’ll be speaking again but in the mean-time, he has a great road map from which to create a Killer resume.
I’ve just written two very detailed job descriptions that fully describe my client needs. All the candidate has to do is turn the job descriptions inside out and make his resume speak to the needs of each client. In this case, my client needs are so similar that one resume will do the trick for both jobs.
Anytime you have inside information on the needs of a company or better yet, a well written detailed job description to use as a road map, take the time to make your resume speak to the job if you’re really serious about becoming a contender for the job.
Think of it this way. When you’re engaged in a job search, you are for a brief period of time, a sales person. What are you selling?
YOURSELF
Nobody should be better qualified to sell you than you!
Think of your project as a marketing and packaging project. I’m not suggesting that you falsify your resume in any way. What I am suggesting is that having one resume that you expect to match up to every job in your field is probably not the best strategy. Take the time to make your resume speak to the requirements of the job and you’ll get more attention from the person who reviews your resume. Think of it as a packaging project every time you need to make minor changes to your resume to better match a job.
I have read resumes nearly every day for the past 17.5 years. I don’t have time to fully read every resume that crosses my desk but I do skim hundreds of resumes each month. A resume that catches my attention quickly is one the makes it very easy for me to match to one of my client needs by simply skimming the surface.
It isn’t feasible to rewrite your resume every time you see an interesting job description and want to be considered as a candidate. However, you can build several different flavors of your resume. If you do this, it should only take a few minutes to tweak your resume to better match any attractive position that might surface in the future.