Are you at one with your resume?

A question from a professional resume writer

Are you and your resume the one person? This almost the single most important question you need to ask before you send your resume. It’s a particularly important question to ask if you have used a professional resume writer. It pretty much means do you look, sound and appear like everything on your resume? And that’s important because? Over inflate your skills, and you’ll disappoint in the flesh. Don’t give enough of yourself, and you won’t make it that far.

This doesn’t mean you can’t write things on your resume to sell yourself up, or down, but if you do this, you need to be able to confidently back up the claims in your interview.

Here are a few questions to ask of your resume.

Have you oversold your responsibilities?

This is one of my favourite soap box topics. If you have a tendency to inflate your responsibilities, stop and give your recruiter some credit. They will have seen plenty of resumes. If they’re experienced in their market, they’ll know the responsibilities of most roles.

For example: in a role at as a cashier at Woolworths, you are serving customers not building client relationships.  As a junior project administrator, it’s unlikely that you are “managing relationships with key stakeholders.”

If you have more junior experience, the impressive things you may have done are more likely to be where you’ve gone above and beyond the job description, not what’s on your job description. So highlight your achievements on your resume.

Have you undersold your responsibilities?

The flip side of this is where people undersell their skills on their resume. I’ve seen resumes where senior executives describe their strengths as “excellent team players” or “strong communication”. While these are great qualities, executives are leaders of leaders, not necessarily team players.

Does your resume make you sound pompous?

I am not a big fan of managerial language. See this post on a previous rant on weasel words. The reason I don’t like weasel words on resumes, is when you use these words, you sound like a bureaucratic HR person with no imagination.

Instead of using words like :efficiencies” and “outcomes”, try to state what you have achieved, and what the outcome was. Try to find your own voice.

Does your resume clearly describe what you want to do?

You know what you want to do. You probably know what type of industry, company and working environment you’d like. You may even know your next career step. So why be so vague on your resume? Be proud and describe what you want. What you say you want provides the headline and influences the way the recruiter will perceive your skills.

If you’re fluffy on your resume, you may be overlooked.

Does the presentation on your resume send the right message?

This may sound strange, but even the font on your resume can say something about you. If you’re a serious candidate at a serious level, then you need a serious font. If you’re a graphic designer your visually boring resume won’t do you any favours.

 

Tagged as: Professional resume writer, resume, resume mistakes, resume tips