Resume-Writing Tips That Get the Interview
Spend any amount of time managing people and you’ll quickly realize that your odds of getting a job offer are directly proportionate to how well you interview. Managers are people, too, and they hire the person that they think will do the best job, not necessarily the one with the best statistics.
Regardless of how hard you may have worked to earn a prestigious degree or graduate with a high GPA, the hiring decision is going to come down to the interview and the personal impression you leave on the interviewers. Of course this means that even if you don’t have the greatest academic record, you can still earn the job with a memorable interview. But how do you even get an interview if your education or past work experience is not quite up to par? 4ere are three tips for giving your resume an edge even when you don’t have the most impressive credentials:
1) Be sure to use industry terms that are relevant to the job you are applying for. Many times, resumes will be first filtered through by Human Resources personnel that have little or no knowledge of the type of job you are applying for. They will be told certain skills to look for, and if you don’t have those specific terms on your resume, it may get discarded.
2) Try to include everything you have experience with, particularly unique skills. There are always elements of a job that you never know about until the interview process, so by including all the unique skills and experience you have, you may be uniquely skilled for the job you are applying for. Worked with a certain type of outdated legacy computers at your last job? You may find that the company you are applying to also has some of those that no one knows how to operate. You don’t have to be an expert at something to list that skill on your resume, if it’s important for the job, you can more clearly explain your knowledge level at the interview.
3) Focus on the benefits the company will realize if they hire you. There’s an old saying among copywriters, “focus on benefits, not features”. In other words, the person reading your resume is trying to gauge how much the company will benefit from hiring you, NOT how well educated, traveled or experienced you are. Hiring managers want to hire the person that will do the best job, so explain in your resume why you will be more beneficial to the company than any other applicant. If your resume focuses on the company and the benefits they will receive by hiring you, you will gain an advantage over a more qualified candidate that purely focuses on themselves and how skilled they are.
4) A well formatted resume can make a difference. Compared to the years of hard work it takes to develop the contents of your resume, time spent formatting gives an excellent return on investment. First impressions mean a lot, and in the job world your first impression is not usually you, it’s your resume. Invest the time to make a resume that not only presents you in the best possible light, but also reflects your writing skills as well as your ability to make professional documents.
As long as you’re qualified, you don’t have to be the most experienced or the most educated candidate to get a great job. The key is to be a little smarter about your resume in order to get past that initial cut, which is based on credentials. Then once you’ve got the interview, that’s your chance to really impress your future employer and earn that job.