Rate this article:
Average rating:
Total votes: 21
When your resume is focused, you hold your reader. And when you offer clear benefits to your next employer, your resume becomes a true selling document. Check your resume to see if you've included these four critical marketing elements that can help motivate the reader to call you for an interview.
Focused Objective
Does your resume include a clear, focused objective? Does it identify one clear job title you’re seeking? Leave out all that nonsense about wanting a "challenging opportunity with a dynamic company."
Try this: Simply lead with a clear statement of your desired position’s title under the Objective heading, e.g., Chief Financial Officer.
Your Resume’s Keyword Section
Everyone pays lip service to having keywords in the resume, but few act on it. If you don't, you're missing the boat in two major ways:
- Your Resume Needs to Be Able to Be Flagged by a Computer: To better your odds, you need every potential keyword working for you. Make sure to add all your appropriate industry buzzwords as well as your biggest soft skills. Did you know that some of the most-searched keywords include terms we often overlook, such as "problem-solving," "leadership" and "oral/written communication"?
- You Need to Appeal to the Human Who Reads Your Resume: A reader will scan a great keyword summary section within the first 20 seconds of looking at your resume. When added to your personal branding statement, you increase your chances of hooking the reader and getting a more in-depth reading.
Personal Branding Statement
What makes you a unique applicant? Don't think great skill sets or years of experience alone will give you an edge. Many other candidates have the same or better skills. The solution is to create a brand for yourself.
Review your resume. Does it have a clear statement that describes who you are and what you offer? This is called a branding statement, also known as a value add or unique selling proposition. Don't confuse this with the Summary of Qualifications sections many candidates include. These are merely laundry lists of core competencies and do nothing to make you stand out.
A true branding statement is a one-sentence description of who you are and what critical benefits you offer. It should describe your biggest strength and the resulting benefit to your previous employer. The best branding statements usually incorporate figures in dollars or percentages of money or time that was gained or saved over a specific time period. Here is an example for a CFO:
Seasoned Chief Financial Officer strong in optimizing organizations to achieve maximum growth and market share who has produced new revenues or savings of over $65 million for my employers over the past eight years.
Does your resume have this strong a branding statement? If not, think about adding one. It'll take some time to develop a really good statement. Once done, however, you will have moved that much further ahead of your competitors.
Now you need one more element for the close: Your achievements.
Achievements on Your Resume
Companies hire employees to be an asset to their balance sheet. That means your work helps a company either make or save money. Think beyond your skill sets and job duties to discover ways you do this.
For example, suppose you're a video photographer taping and editing weddings and special events. You take the extra step of performing all of your postproduction work before submitting your final results. Your extra effort has saved your employer several hundred hours of extra work. This translates into dollars saved by the employer.
It's just these sorts of achievements that must be on your resume. When you can, try to monetize, or put a dollar value, on them. Our photographer example might look like this:
Saved my employer over $6K in additional labor costs over the past 2 years by performing postproduction work before submitting my final results.
By including several specific achievements where you've helped your employer make or save money, you separate yourself from your competitors and quickly gain your reader’s attention.
If you make the effort to add these four crucial elements to your resume, you’ll quickly stand out. More importantly, you'll move a long way toward getting more phone screens and a step closer to the job you really want.
[As a recruiter, Joe Turner has spent the past 15 years finding and placing top candidates in some of the best jobs of their careers. Author of Job Search Secrets Unlocked, Turner has been interviewed on several radio talk shows. Discover more insider job search secrets by visiting Job Change Secrets.]
