The Don't's and Do's of Resume Writing

Once upon a time, I wasn’t a resume writer. After 15 years getting jobs in all business areas by networking, I discovered that a resume that was good enough to submit after the hiring manager knew me, didn’t get results when it came to making interviews happen with mangers who didn’t know me. ...Once upon a time, I wasn’t a resume writer. After 15 years getting jobs in all business areas by networking, I discovered that a resume that was good enough to submit after the hiring manager knew me, didn’t get results when it came to making interviews happen with mangers who didn’t know me. After spending a summer waiting by a silent phone, I went out to discover why my resume wasn’t working and I learned how to improve it. While I was doing that, I also found out why 95% of the resumes job seekers write don’t lead to interviews.

Crafting resumes that make interviews happen is not rocket science. When I followed this list of don’t’s and do’s, my phone started ringing with employers on the other end.

1) Don’t be like the others.
HR experts repeatedly tell us that about 80-95% of all resumes submitted by job seekers contain only contact information, a previous jobs list and descriptions of tasks the applicant carried out at each job. Such resumes give an employer no reason to select us over the other 10 – 200 resumes written by people who have been in similar jobs and carried out similar responsibilities. We must give employers a reason to hire us rather than someone else. If we don’t, someone else will; and they will get hired not us.

2) Don’t overuse keywords.
In the last few years, some big organizations have started to ask job applicants to submit their resumes online. When this happens, resumes are stored in a database. From time to time, an opening happens and that database is searched for resumes containing words that the employer thinks are relevant to the open job. Reacting to this situation, some people overload their resumes with up to 60 words of technical jargon. While using keywords can help our resume be selected, a too heavy use of jargon often leads to human readers rejecting the resume because they can’t understand what it says. Today’s scanners are sophisticated enough that they can identify a solid candidate even when fewer keywords are used.

3) Copy edit thoroughly: don't rely on spell and grammar checkers.
We are at a disadvantage when we reread our own resumes. Because we know what we wanted to say, we tend to read the resume in our head instead of the resume on the page before us. Spell and grammar checkers are not telepathic editors but computer programs with limited capacities. They do not know what we intended to write, and if we typed “or” instead of “of” many grammar checkers will not alert us to our error. Using a good dictionary saves us from much grief, but not all. So read your resume aloud and in reverse. This way of reading what is actually there is a great way to catch errors you might otherwise miss. And if possible, have someone else, whose writing skills we respect, review your work.

4) Don’t rely on free online resume templates.
Most resume templates are really layout programs enabling a user to lay out his or her contact information, job history and responsibility lists. They often have no place for focusing on accomplishments, so using them means that we can do nothing to separate ourselves from our competition.

5) Choose one job target and focus on it.
What kind of work do we want to do? We must answer this question before we do anything else if we want our resume to work. In an effective resume, everything must be focused on showing that we are an ideal candidate for one type of job. The accomplishments that someone hiring a purchasing manager is looking for are not the same ones that identify a sales star.

6) Write short.
Resume writing must be concise: today’s managers often spend less than 10 seconds skimming your resume. If we want to attract and hold our reader's attention, every position description must have no unnecessary sentences and every accomplishment statement no unnecessary words.

7) Show our skills and effectiveness by focusing on results.
This one tip can turn an ineffective resume into a great one. Employers won’t decide to interview us based on the responsibilities we carried: what causes them to call us is when our resume gives them a sense of how we helped our previous employers achieve important goals. If, as a salesman, we consistently broke quotas, added new customers to our territory and improved service to old customers, mentioning these facts tells a sales manager that we will be an effective addition to her sales staff.

Following these tips lead me to a ringing phone and job interviews. Follow them and the same thing will happen to you.