Career Guide Tips

In this very competitive job environment, you really need an edge. You really need a resume that can communicate to your potential employer effectively your skills and the advantages of hiring you over other people. The two questions potential employers ask themselves while they evaluate your resume or job application are: Can you do the job? Can you do the job now?

So as easy as it seems to make the resume about yourself, take time to look at it from an employer’s perspective. What do the things on my resume tell the potential employer about me? How does each line on the resume show that I can do the job?

Because so much depends on matching what you do or can do with what the employer needs, it pays to spend time with the job description that the employer puts out. I would suggest a Qualifications main heading in your resume that touches on every point in the job description. Keep each line as succinct as possible, but make sure that you point out your successes or accomplishments around each line in the job description. Try to use as much language as you can from the job description itself. Your potential employer wrote those lines on purpose, you may be able to use his own language to persuade him that your are the right candidate for the job.

Each line that you adapt from the job description that powerfully shows what you have done in the past that relates directly to what he wants you to do now, is a “headline” on your resume flashing to get your potential employer’s attention.

Put some punch in these headlines with numbers, figures, and percentages. For example, if the job description says “Handles inside sales”, the corresponding line in your resume would read, Handled inside sales, gaining 23 percent in sales revenue for the year. Or Handled inside sales, improving profit margins in four out of five areas. Using figures shows potential employers that not only did you do the job, but that you knew the score and you knew whether you were improving or not.

The headlines that you create using the potential employers own words from the job description, punctuated with real numbers, figures, and percentages will grab the attention of potential employers, and keep the resume speaking to the real focus of the document, the person that is reading the resume.

If you have been involved in a job search for any amount of time, you will already know that most online job applications end up without employer responses. Learn how to get job application responses every time. Stop spinning your wheels just applying for jobs, and start getting responses. Even if you have never gotten a response in the past, your resume can bubble to the top.

By Dean Giles