Resumes have been around for quite some time, but tend to change from periods of relative job abundance to periods of relative job scarcity.
What is a resume?
Generally speaking, a resume bridges the divide between the needs of an employer, and the skills of a job applicant. Think about these two concepts as circles – ideally, a resume can show where those two areas overlap, as in a venn diagram. This is the larger concept of a resume, and hopefully it will help resume authors think in terms of an employer’s need – this skill transfers as well to the job interview. A job applicant cannot sell anything until s/he understands the employer’s need. A job applicant has to listen and be ready.
Read the job posting!
I was originally going to put this section last, but information hierarchy dictates that most people won’t get that far, and even if they did would consider this paragraph unimportant, since it’s at the bottom of the article.Read the whole job posting! Take notes.
Employer need in a resume
What used to be known as the ‘objective’ is now known as the ‘summary’. In periods of job abundance, job seekers could dedicate a section of their resume to what skills they wanted to learn from their employer, what intangible benefits they hoped to gain from employment, etc. Those days are long gone. The summary has replaced the objective. A summary is a paragraph summarizing the job applicant’s skills using the terminology and tone of the job posting. Think about the summary as the place where the job posting shows up strongly in the resume. The summary should be near the top of the resume (just below the name/contact info) and should be two-three sentences long at most.
Employee skill in a resume
The job history, skill and education sections of the resume should show the specific, detailed overlap of employee skill and employer need. These sections are proving the generalities laid out in the summary, using the terminology and tone of the job listing sparingly.
How to write for emotional impact
A resume should sell a story, and should create a vivid picture in a hiring manager’s mind. This happens by writing resumes in a specific way, call Situation, Action, Result, and comes in handy particularly for describing previous employment. The situation is what situation the employee found themselves in. Usually this is implied. Action is what action was taken, and result is the positive benefit of the employee’s action. Result is extremely important, and a well-written result allows a potential employer to see a vivid picture of the employee working successfully in a new job.
Example of Situation, Action, Result
“Created and implemented online marketing program, increasing device sales by 20% in 03Q2010″
“Redesigned process flow of manufacturing line. Detailed analysis showed electricity savings of $300/day in addition to shaving 2 minutes off the production time per item, saving company over $6,000 per day of operation.”
The idea is to not use “I” and instead go right into the verb action to start the sentence. Be sure to use details. Notice how the “Redesigned process flow” never stated explicitly that the process flow needed to be redesigned, yet implied that it did. That is the situation.
Keep employer’s need in mind – always
An employer doesn’t need to know that ‘references available upon request’ – of course they are. Employers don’t need to know about unrelated hobbies, personal idiosyncrasies or anything unrelated to the job at hand. Hiring managers are busy people, and they will give any one resume 8-10 seconds at first glance. So be brief, and to-the-point.