Posted under Resumes on August 27th, 2007
Last week, I had several clients bring in their professional resumes for a critique. For the most part, I thought their resumes were good. “So if my resume is good, how come I’m not getting interviews?” they asked. While this post won’t delve into that question, it will offer some questions you can ask yourself as you critique your own resume.
For starters, pretend that you are the Hiring Manager…so put on your Hiring Manager’s hat and start asking:
- Does your resume reveal a phone number or personal e-mail where you can easily be contacted?
- Does your resume clearly state your professional focus? In other words, what do you want to do?
- Does your resume contain a Qualifications Summary or a Profile (30-second sales pitch) that 1. aligns with your target goal and that 2. captures the best of your experience, education, and employee traits that are relevant, essential, and supportive to doing the job? In other words, why can you do what you say you’re interested in doing? And does your Profile prove it?
- Have you branded yourself as a professional who is competent, proficient, or expert at delivering something of value to the organization? In other words, have you convinced the reader to sample your brand?
- Does your resume sound like you? In other words, does the reader get a clear sense of who you are? And when they interview you, will the “real” you align with the “paper” you? Or, is there a cavern between the two?
- Does your resume state where you reside and where you’ve worked, or is that data missing from the document?
- Does your resume communicate a feel for how much you are worth?
- When the Hiring Manager reads your resume, do you honestly think it will evoke a WOW or a WASTEBASKET response?
In short, if you were the Hiring Manager, would you pick you out of the Resume Pile? Have you made it easy for the Hiring Manager to choose you? Have you thought about the who, what, when, where, why, how and how much of you as it relates to you and your resume story?
posted by: billie sucher
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Your Best Impression.com on 28 Aug 2007 at 9:48 pm #
Couldnt Have Said It Better Myself
I love group blogs such as CareerHub and CareerMastersTalk. They bring together smart people with good, very diverse ideas. These two blogs are all about career topics, so I read (and contribute) regularly.
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CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Career Counselors Blog on 05 Dec 2007 at 3:06 pm #
Want Different Results From Your Resume? …
Imagine that you’re the hiring manager going through a stack of 250 resumes, or 700, or 1,000, whatever the number; many of them, most of them, won’t catch your attention. And the reason your resume won’t capture a hiring manager’s……
Mel | Executive Search on 21 Aug 2009 at 4:00 am #
I supposed that it is always good to put yourself in a co worker shoes and see the difference in the jobs that you have and its also a great way to see if you yourself could ever do that certain job, maybe a career change, nice post thanks for the information