31 Days 2 Get You Started! January 6: Your Resume, Your Responsibility.
It’s January, and if you’re celebrating 2014 with the decision to start improving your resume and/or LinkedIn profile in order to improve your professional opportunities: god bless you people, you’ve made my two-sizes-too-small heart grow. But remember, that it’s your resume, so it’s your responsibility to hold the reader’s interest and give him/her a reason to keep reading. (Don’t fall into that trap of saying, smugly, “Well, whatever, my resume doesn’t even matter because I’m great in interviews.” You’re not going to get a ton of interviews, Sunshine, if nobody bothers to read your irrelevant resume.)
A great reason for someone to keep reading your resume/LinkedIn profile is because it’s concise, focused, intelligent and intelligible. Want me to read your resume and maybe even ask you to come in for an interview? Write from my POV and give me the information relevant to my industry.
I think that the biggest hurdle I come across is people listing all the daily minutiae of their work lives, using a ton of specific office jargon and/or Klingon, without ever making it clear to the reader why exactly he or she should give a damn about any of those jobs. A classic example would be listing on your resume that you answered the phone, and coordinated documents, and briefed CEOS. Have some empathy and think about that from HR’s POV: so, you know how to answer the phone, and file documents? Awesome. Next!
HR, and the people in your networks, want to know about your social skills and your actual, relevant experience. What kind of projects were you responsible for, and how many people did you manage? How big were your budgets? What were the goals of these projects, and were these goals achieved, and what role did you play in that process? What kind of issues did you have to brief the CEO on, and how did you resolve those issues to the company’s benefit? How did your day-to-day work positively effect your company’s fortunes? This is why, in interviews, people get asked moronic questions like, “Tell me about a time you failed and what it taught you.” People have to suffer through questions like this because, let’s be frank, 1) most interviewers couldn’t interview my cat and 2) these same people still are trying to figure out what you’ve done at your previous employers and how your experience will help/hurt them. String cheese, string along boys but when it comes to your resume and/or LinkedIn profile, put your money where your mouth is and give the reader a reason to commit!
Besos, C.