June 4, 2020 | by David March.
Resumes: everyone’s got one! Some are…less than stellar, some are done well, and still others have graphics, charts, or bedazzling. There are even people who get certified using the Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) Test.
Pull out your standard, fallback resume, and take a look at it. It’s a single page, right? Dates on the left? A job description for each position, just written in the past tense?
That pretty much sums up the only job-search training or support you get if you get a degree.
All this focus on resumes, but not on their connection to the job search itself and how to tailor it to your needs.
The job search, luckily, can be summed up quite simply: understanding the job description and aligning your resume with it.
If your resume looks like the one that I just described, I can tell you exactly where it will go.
The Life of a Resume
When you apply directly to a company, you go through that company’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS scans your resume for the relevant job skills and abilities.
Sometimes a human will manually scan the resumes, but this isn’t the opportunity you might think it is. The human is still scanning the resumes because they have hundreds or thousands of resumes to review.
If you don’t have the right keywords, your resume will be filtered out. If your resume doesn’t match the job requirements, it will be filtered out. If the formatting is tricky or your font is too unique, your resume will not make it to the next stage.
If it does move on, an HR specialist may read and score it. Oftentimes the HR department is siloed, or the leader who makes the final decision could be in a separate or centralized location. Your resume will likely go through many rounds of this thinning so that the interviewing manager has a smaller, selective pool to draw from.
At this point, you may be thinking that your resume essentially goes into a blackhole whenever you apply to a job. These last few paragraphs may have you wanting to take a rapid-fire approach, indiscriminately applying to every single job out there with no pre-thought because “ain’t nobody got time for that.”
While that’s tempting, your time is better spent sending out quality submittals to select companies instead of every company under the sun.
You’re not entirely wrong, so it’s vital that you make resume adjustments and forget about the one-page rule.
What Makes a Great Resume?
There are really only a few keys to making your resume perfect for the job, regardless of your experience level.
- Apply as close to the beginning of the job posting as possible. Getting to the front of the line is one of the best ways you can stand out, for obvious reasons.
- Applicant Tracking Systems are everywhere, and you need to learn how they work. They don’t just scan your resume; they serve as a platform for organizing resumes and ranking them. Formatting and font choice matter.
- Research, research, research. Make sure you meet the job requirements and highlight that in your resume. Match your keywords to those used in the job description. What is the company looking for? What is their culture like? How can you highlight your skills effectively?
- Highlight your accomplishments, not the tasks you completed daily. What did you do? What did you learn? What were you able to implement or improve?
But let’s go back to what happens after your resume gets to a person. It goes through more rounds of elimination!
How To Stand Out in a Sea of Applicants
This is why the job search strategy is important, perhaps even more so than the resume itself.
An effective job search strategy brings the attention of the hiring manager directly to your resume.
This is what recruiters do: they establish relationships with the hiring manager and serve resumes to them on a silver platter – with the kale garnish and all!
However, working with a recruiter isn’t the be-all end-all. You may get a leg up on landing the interview, but then you also have to win the approval of the hiring manager and their supervisor.
You must make a personal connection. This comes down to your people skills and the way you communicate with others. These are the soft skills that are usually not listed in your resume (though they absolutely can be) and, in this day and age, are in high demand.
Soft Skills – and How to Improve Yours
Not all of us have the gift of gab. We all have special skills that make us unique, especially when applying for a job. The most important thing you can do for your career, current or future, is to find a way to marry your existing hard skills with the soft skills that are so in demand.
According to LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 80% of companies say that soft skills are vital for their company’s success. 92% of talent professionals say that “soft skills matter as much or more than hard skills.”
Maybe you’re nervous about public speaking or find it difficult to come up with the right words to say on the spot. In an interview, you need to communicate your technical prowess and great analytical ability, yet also show you have a winning personality.
You need both the technical ability to do the job, accomplishing any objective skill standards, while also building a personal connection with the interviewer, then your boss and colleagues.
So how do you develop these skills? Maybe you’re an experienced, highly analytical programmer, a technical engineer or a data scientist; how can you make sure you’re ready to shine in an interview…and beyond?
You could pick up a mountain of self-help books and work through it on your own. You could “fake it ‘til you make it.” But let’s face it – you don’t have time to struggle through the process by yourself.
Working with a career coach can help you fast-track your improvement and give you a personalized experience. Having someone coach you can help develop your skills more quickly and guide you through the job search process from top to bottom.
As a career coach who has experience in the recruiting and staffing industry, I have inside knowledge on how the process works. If you are ready to work with a career coach, I can help you stream-line your job search and land your dream job.
To take the next step, schedule a call with me at https://calendly.com/coachdavemarch
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