After The Webinar You’ll Know
- Why youre having so much trouble getting job interviews.
- Exactly how reviewers scan your resume so you can entice them to read it.
- A proven, impactful layout including the most ideal sections and content.
- 8 steps to take to get your resume noticed.
- 8 keys that give your resume power and attraction.
- 8 worst resume blunders to avoid.
Rewards For Keyword Repetition In Context
The first half page of your resume is built to make your resume discoverable in database searches and pass the six-second scan test. The balance of your resume needs to support these claims and put them in context for a discerning hiring manager.
A step that most resume writers forget is to repeat the skills employers see as critical within the context of all the jobs in which you have applied them. Repeating your relevant professional skills like this helps you in two ways:
Keep Your Resume Lean And Mean
Resumes should be kept one to two pages long. With such limited space, you are only allowed to include the most relevant details of your career. When it comes to how a resume should look, most employers really dont care about information outside of your skills, work history, and important accomplishments, so avoid making your resume overly lengthy with unnecessary particulars such as religion, ethnicity, date of birth, etc. Remember that every inch of your resume is valuable real estate, so make sure every piece of information adds to the potential value you bring to a company.
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Make A Strong First Impression
The typical resume is one to two pages, but a recruiter might not make it past the top of the first page when they are quickly scanning through hundreds of applications. Thats why its so important that the top half of your resume is chock-full of relevant and impressive information.
The key to standing out among the competition is to ensure you set the tone in the first top half of the resume with what you want and what you offer, any key buzzwords that speak to your abilities to transition into those new roles seamlessly, and any transferable skills and accomplishments that directly relate to this new role, said Matthew Warzel, certified professional resume writer and president of MJW Careers, LLC.
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Formatting also matters when it comes to making a first impression.
The average recruiter looks at a resume for six seconds, so make your resume stand out by making your strongest assets jump off the page use white space, bolding, bullet points and concise language to draw the readers eye to exactly what you want them to see, said Amy Feind Reeves, founder of JobCoachAmy.
When a resume looks appealing and makes you want to read it, you now stand a chance, even if you arent the most qualified, added Bergin Sullivan of the recruiting company JCSI.
Develop Your Personal Brand
Aside from getting rid of online content that could jeopardize your application, you also have to take steps to build so-called proofs of your hireable personality. This is called personal brandinganother important way for how to get your resume noticed. Managing an online reputation isnt just for celebrities anymore, and the better you develop your personal brand, the better your chances of getting hired will be.
To boost your personal branding, you need to build credibility with content. Think before you post, and post with intention. If its not engaging, then its not worth posting. Choose posts related to your industry and profession that will pique the interest of recruiters and hiring managers to entice them to learn more about you.
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Show The Employer That You’re Qualified
Customize your resume.;Dont send the same generic resume in for every job. Take the time to customize it by including the qualifications and skills the company is looking for;so the employer knows you have the right stuff. As well as writing your resume to match the job, take a few minutes to;update your job descriptions so they make the best impression.
Focus on your accomplishments.;The employer wants to know what you accomplished, not just what you did. Focus your resume upon what you achieved in each job, not your job responsibilities. Review these;tips for including accomplishments on a resume, and make sure you’ve;included your most current achievements.
Include your most relevant skills.;The screening system that employers use matches your resume to a designated set of qualifications. Include keywords on your resume that match the;job-specific skills;the employer is seeking.
Add a cover letter.;A;cover letter, even if its not required, is the best way to highlight the specific qualifications you have for the job. CareerBuilder reports that sending a cover letter is 40% more likely to get your resume noticed. You can use your cover letter to focus on the experience that best suits you for the job. Heres;how to write a cover letter;for a resume.
Include A Branding Statement
The key to presenting yourself as the best fit for the job that you want and standing out in all the right ways to recruiters is quickly demonstrating that you understand and can meet or exceed the goals of the role youre applying for, said Steph Cartwright, certified professional resume writer and founder of Off The Clock Resumes. Replacing a boring and redundant Resume Summary with a concise Branding Statement that introduces your top job-related qualifications and skills and really showcases the results you can produce will make you a must-interview candidate.
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How To Create A Killer Brand Positioning
lisaperry
Your brand positioning statement is a strategic document that will help define the direction of your innovation, marketing, commercialization, and sales strategies. Here are four steps to consider when creating your brand positioning.
- Evaluate Current Standing: Evaluate your current brand positioning. Is it working? Does it reach your target audience? Is it helping to achieve your business goals? If not, you may need to look at repositioning your brand.
- Research Your Competitors: You can’t stand out from the crowd if you don’t know what the crowd is doing. More importantly, you don’t want to have the same brand position as your competitors. Conduct a competitive analysis to evaluate your competitor’s brand position by looking at their social media feeds, company websites, marketing & advertising materials, and customer service. Look for what your competitor’s mission, vision, and value statements are, who they’re targeting, what their messaging is, their unique selling proposition, and their positioning strategies. For more information on how to gather competitive research, check out my article.
- Identify Your Target Audience: Understanding your target audience is critical as this information will define every strategy you execute. Your goal is to define your target audience into a simple statement: Our target market is aged , who live in and like to . For more information on how to develop your target audience, check out my article.
Q What’s The Best Way To Get My Resume Noticed
A.;Hiring managers only take a few seconds to check out your resume. When I was a recruiter, I literally only needed three seconds to assess a resume. So the best way to get hiring managers to look at your resume involves leveraging keywords.
Keywords help you speak the hiring managers language. For example, if youre pursuing a job in human resources, but the job description refers to the role as human capital management, tweak your resume so that includes the keywords human capital management.
Other things I was looking for on a candidates resume included direct experience and skills that reflected the job description; and clearly indicated education degrees. When I recruited Ph.D. candidates in economics, if anyone didnt have that specific credential, they were immediately dismissed.
Here are some other ways to get your resume noticed. In your summary at the top of your resume, highlight any unique skills you have, such as your ability to speak a second language. If you work for a competitor or used to work for a competitor, be sure to highlight that.
Before you apply to jobs, take a few moments to review the job descriptions thoroughly. When you list your skills and experiences, make sure they appear in the same order as they do in the job descriptionthe order tends to indicate their level of importance from the top to the bottom. The few minutes you spend fixing your resume will be well worth your time.
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Be Mindful Of The Hard Requirements
I would never tell people to stop applying to positions where you dont meet 100% of the qualifications, however, be aware that many companies will review your resume based on the hard requirements of the role. This also includes the number of years of experience required. The ATS is designed to weed out applicants who do not have such things as a clearance, a certain clearance level, specific licenses, certifications or education. So, if you do not meet these requirements, you may be in for an uphill battle. We can debate the merits of this all day. In full disclosure, I have seen resumes make it to the hiring manager when all requirements are not met. However, the odds may not be in your favor. Im not saying this to dampen anyones spirit, but rather to explain why you may not be contacted for interviews.
On a final note, the most important tip here is about keywords. Make it a point to identify the keywords before applying. If youve done it and they ask for it, your resume should spell that out. Otherwise, nobody will ever know.
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Rewards For Keyword Frequency
A resume database search first finds all resumes with even just one of the requested keywords.
The search engine next prioritizes those key search terms based on their proximity to the top of the document and then on their frequency of use throughout the document.
A Professional Skills section near the top of your resume, as we recommend at KnockemDead.com, delivers this, though there are also other benefits.
NOTE: We are not recommending that you stuff your resume full of keywords. That usually results in the resume being ignored.
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Be Proactive About Fitting In At Work
Many companies have incorporated the buddy system into their onboarding process as a way to be more efficient in getting new employees familiar with the company.
If your company doesn’t have such a system, be proactive about finding a buddy and make an effort to fit in with co-workers.
Fitting into the company’s culture can be just as important as learning job responsibilities. One of the reasons why you were hired is because your employer thought you’d be a good cultural. Now, it’s your job to prove them right. A work buddy can help.
At every company you end up working for, make sure you have a work buddy. Not only will they help you learn the ropes at your new job, but they’ll also be a valuable friend and connectionsomeone you’ll be able to count on as you grow in your career.
Need help as you start your new job?
To get your customers to think of your brand first when they are ready to buy, the difference may come down to how you position your brand to them. Let’s begin by outlining what brand positioning is, how to successfully position your brand, and provide you with a brand positioning example.
What Employers Look For In A Resume
Your resume is often your first and best chance to get noticed by recruiters and hiring managers. Your goal is to make it easy for them to see that you have the qualifications they seek in an ideal candidate. Because they may be reading through hundreds of applications, a recruiter or hiring manager might quickly scan your resume to see if those qualifications jump out.
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Add Your Linkedin Profile
In its place, add a link to your LinkedIn profile, as well as any other relevant social media handles . Caveat: Never include Facebook, no matter how clean you keep it.
Dont want to drop your whole ugly LinkedIn URL onto your resume? Create a custom URL to your public profile using simply /yourname . .
Struggling To Write Your Resume
We’ve got your back!
Why 7 seconds? Because thats typically how long recruiters will scan your resume before they accept or reject your application. Want to know how you grab their attention? It all comes down to understanding how they read your resume
More…
Every day, recruiters are faced with two problems too many resumes to thoroughly review and not enough hours in the day to do it.
When I first started recruiting many years ago, this wasnt the case.
Once a week we used to advertise our jobs in the local paper and then respond as they came in over the next few days.
Then job boards came along and changed the whole nature of recruiting.
It was the birth of volume applications.
It was so much easier for recruiters to advertise their jobs to the masses immediately.
And it was so much easier for applicants to apply for many positions at once with just the click of their mouse.
However, this new way of recruiting meant that new processes had to be put in place to handle the rise in volume of applicants.
And that was the birth of Applicant Tracking Systems.
So, if you want to get your resume noticed, your first challenge is to get it past ATS, otherwise a human wont get to see it at all.
If you want to get your resume noticed, your first challenge is to get it past ATS, otherwise a human wont get to see it at all.
If you are not sure whether your resume will do this, here is a free course to make sure you wont be a victim of those on online bots.
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Write A Brief Resume Summary
Beginning your resume with a headline or resume summary statement is one way to clearly callout your most relevant qualifications. This short description should quickly advertise your skillset and professional goals to any reader.
A headline is the shortest version: sum up your achievements in one line. In a summary or objective statement, you can get a little longer: one or two sentences is typically a good length.
To get started, think back on your proudest career accomplishments and what defines who you are in the workplace. Carefully read the job descriptions that youre considering. Do they require a specific certification or years of experience? Your headline is the place to let the employer know you meet these requirements.
For example, a customer service representative with a track record of customer satisfaction might write: Customer success professional with 3+ years experience delighting clients in the retail industry.
Similarly, an experienced dental assistant could write: Certified dental assistant with 12+ years in direct patient care.
The above are both great examples of engaging and descriptive headlines. If you want, you can pair that with a slightly longer summary of your skills and career goals.
Resume summary and headline examples
Headline:Graphic designer with strong experience as a creative lead in an agency setting.Summary:Mastery of Adobe Creative Cloud and familiarity with Sketch, InVision, HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Leave History In The Past
As a rule, you should only show the most recent 10 to 15 years of your career history and only include the experience relevant to the positions to which you are applying. So if you have anything really dated or random, remove it and use the space to bulk up other sections or add something more relevant.
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Tailor It To Your Industry And The Job Youre Applying For
Be sure to include prioritize employment experience that showcases applicable qualifications. If youre applying for a job as a newspaper reporter, the hiring manager would benefit more from knowing about your skills as a college reporter than as a babysitter. Include only relevant positions that let your future employer know you understand what theyre looking for in an employee.;
Have Your Cover Letter On Hand But
Statistically, about half the hiring managers read a cover letter and the other 50% do not. Some research shows even less than 50% bother reading a cover letter. Go figure! No wonder its maddening for a job seeker. The rule of thumb is that if one is specifically requested, upload it. Otherwise, dont stress about whether you should put one together if not required. Spend your time creating a stellar resume.
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How To Write Your First Resume
Weve all got to start somewhere. And at some point in all of our careers, weve written our first resume.
Writing your first resume is a good bit of work. As people advance in their career, they often have old resumes they can gather information from. If youre writing your first resume, youre starting from scratch.
One of the best pieces of advice for first-time resume writers is to assemble everything you could potentially include in your resume. Then, once youve assembled the most compelling lists of past experiences, references, and so forth, you can begin to exclude the pieces of information that dont fit.
For those recently graduating from school , entry-level job descriptions can be daunting. Job listings often include a range of requirements that are actually more of a wish list of what a candidate will be able to provide.
If youre applying for an entry-level job, employers know that you may not have much traditional experience for that job. That doesnt mean that you cant present a compelling case for why you can grow into the job.
Particularly on your first resume, you dont have to limit your experiences listed to traditional jobs. Some ideas on what can be included on a first resume include the following:
- Volunteer Experience
- Athletic, Musical, Church Experiences
- Other Extracuriccular Experience
Seek out references that can provide the following types of information about you: