Your ‘flawless’ resume should constantly evolve
Y ou spent a lot of time crafting the perfect resume, making sure every job listing included measures of quantifiable success and every experience had industry-applicable keywords. On paper and screen, you looked like recruiter’s dream. So why isn’t anyone calling you in for an interview?
“It doesn’t matter how perfect you think something is if it’s not applicable to the job at hand. Your resume might as well have the words to “Goodnight Moon” scribbled in crayon if you don’t take the time to customize it every time you send it out,” says David Campbell, a resume consultant in Little Rock, Arkansas. “You may think your resume is focused on getting a job in pharmaceutical marketing but unless you actually take a thorough look at the job application, the job description and the company’s website, you’re probably only hitting about 75 percent of their touchpoints. And when companies have precise programs that pinpoint the talents and characteristics they’re looking for in candidates, 75 percent isn’t going to cut it.”
Campbell’s point — that static resumes, no matter how strong, are often ignored because of a few missing items — is echoed by others in human resources. “I think sometimes the public and media perception of bots controlling today’s hiring is a little overstated but it would be hard to deny the impact that these programs have had on candidate selection,” says Joan Kohler, a Chicagobased career coach and former HR specialist for Wells Fargo & Co. in San Francisco. “If you think the same resume is going to get you on the short list for five different companies, you are mistaken.”
Think small
Campbell says the best advice he can give job seekers is to forget about large-scale and grandiose moments on their resumes. “Companies are looking for people to achieve great things so yes, they are definitely interested in your current and previous successes but what they’re mostly interested in is how those successes can be duplicated with their business,” he says. “If you were selling windows and doors for a home improvement company and had excellent sales, that’s certainly a desirable trait for a company that sells aluminum siding but it’s probably not as applicable to a company that’s selling health care plans or restaurant supplies.”
As an example, Campbell cites the old notion of successful salespeople being able to transfer their talents from one industry to another. “It’s no longer a given,” he says. “You may be a fantastic window sales rep but you won’t get the chance to prove you’re an excellent software sales rep unless you can convince the employer that you have both the sales skills and the technical knowledge to succeed. One isn’t enough. You need both.”
Campbell says that’s why it’s important to include training and industry-specific terms if you’re moving from one field to another. “People like to hire highly qualified individuals with strong skills but they also want that person to already be knowledgeable of their field,” he says. “No one wants to train someone for weeks on end before they start showing signs of success. If you’re not a recent college graduate, there’s no ramp-up to results. They want you to add to the company’s bottom line as quickly as possible.”
Take it out
Adding information on your resume isn’t the only way to improve your chances of getting a job. Sometimes, the delete button is your best friend. “Get someone else involved. It’s very hard to look at your own resume and see what should be taken out. People are so tied into their experiences and accomplishments that they can’t necessarily see the benefits of not including a play-by-play description of their job from 1996. A fresh, honest set of eyes will help you with that,” says Kohler.
“I have a client who was applying for a director-level job at a prominent insurance company and despite having incredible qualifications and an MBA, she didn’t even get a second look,” she says. “When we looked at her resume, the majority of it was filled with bullet points of operational tasks. Literally, at least 30 or 40 lines of things that she had done throughout her career that could be best described as ‘functionable.’
The problem, Kohler says, is that the company was looking for someone to work on large-scale projects and take a big-picture, analytical approach to the future. “Whether a program or a person picked up on the fact that her resume was dominated by specific day-to-day actions and not long-term planning really doesn’t matter. What does matter was that she spent so much time stressing all the little things she did in the past instead of how those little things taught her how to forecast the big things in the future.”
Kohler helped modify the resume in question into something that included small “forecast summaries” instead of “qualifications.” “We took the most important tasks and put them in paragraph form. We used them a springboard to showcase her strong yet untapped planning and development skills,” Kohler says. “Instead of coming across as someone applying for a job she wasn’t prepared for, the revised resume stressed how her experiences, her education and her forward thinking made her more than qualified for the job. In her original resume, her experiences might have made her an ideal candidate but the way she portrayed those experiences effectively minimized her readiness to take it to the next level.”