Confidential Resume Tips

Oct 8, 2015
3 min read

Imagine you had to write an exam and only had 5 hours to prepare, in those five hours you needed to read 1000 pages of a book, would you read every single page of the book? Except if you were an exceptionally fast reader you wouldn’t be able to as you just don’t have enough time. Below are the 5 things that you would do in this position and oddly enough this is what a lot of hiring managers with 100’s of resumes to review do

Know the key points – If you didn’t have time to read an entire document then you would most likely skim through each page and focus on certain key things that you knew would come out in the exam. The exact same rationale applies to a Hiring manager, they have specific qualifications and words that they are looking for on each page of every resume. If they skim through your resume and do not see qualifications that were stated in the job description they will move to the next candidate. Ensure you know the words they are looking for and include them in the resume.

Highlighting of the key points – A hiring manager won’t have time to read through all the details in your resume and will therefore be looking for what is highlighted or stands out to see if it has any correlation to the key requirements they are looking for. You must be selective in what you choose to emphasize in your resume to ensure that it is aligned with what the recruiter wants to see. If you put the most non-related information at the top of the page and save the relevant information for last your resume will be tossed in the trash.

Billboard – Your resume must be seen as a billboard, I always ask people who are not sure what their resume is communicating to take the 6 second test. Hand your resume to a friend for 6 seconds and when the 6 seconds are up take it from him and ask him what he remembers from the resume. If he cannot remember anything that is in the job description then you haven’t highlighted the right information.

Trim irrelevant data –Fluff and irrelevant information in a resume just take away from the core message of the document. Any padding or nice to have information should be placed later on in the document but not at the top as this is just a distraction which takes away from the real message you are trying to pass across.

Invest the time and effort in finding out what a recruiter will be looking for on your resume e.g. Read the job description before even starting to craft your resume and ensure you are aware of the key words and experiences the recruiter will be looking for. Once you are aware of them then focus on highlighting them as much as you can in your resume so that in 6 seconds the person reviewing your document is forced to not just browse but actually invest more time in your resume because you have piqued their attention with your relevant qualifications. You need to bait readers with the proper words and headlines before you have the opportunity to convince them you are the right person for the job.