6 seconds. That's how much time your resume has to make an impression on a recruiter or hiring manager. Why only 6 seconds you ask? Well, to put yourself in their shoes, imagine you're swiping through one of those online dating apps to find a potential partner. After a while, the profiles start to blur together and you spend less and less time on each profile until you finally come across the one that stands out. If you think of the job search as finding a partner via online dating apps, your resume is essentially your dating bio/profile.
In order to get noticed among all the other profiles out there, you have to curate your best self just as you would on your Hinge, Bumble, or Tinder profile.
Start with the basics
Include your full name, phone number, email, and a website/portfolio if required for the industry. This one is pretty self explanatory. You want to make it as easy as possible for the employer to know who you are and how to contact you for an interview.
Highlight your accomplishments. Your work experience should be more than just a list of your job responsibilities. For each bullet illustrating your role, describe the action you took, why you took that action, and the result of that action.
Keep it under one page, please. Again, only six seconds are spent on your resume, so anything longer than a page may not even get looked at. Quality over quantity, so make that one page count.
Make it scannable and easy to read. Use section headers to separate work experience from academic projects or extracurricular activities. Summarize your work experience in three to five bullet points per role. Use bold or italicized font styles to distinguish the company name and your role. However, don't go overboard because that makes it harder to identify what is important. If you're looking for a role in a non-design field, limit your use of color to just plain black text and maybe one accent color.
Save as a PDF. You've probably spent a long time perfecting your resume, so the last thing you want is for it to get all jumbled up when you upload it and send it off to the employer. Word documents have a likelihood of not keeping the formatting you intended it to, so you want to make sure that hard work is preserved all the way down into the employer's hands.
Edit, edit, edit. Just like the wrong form of "your" and "you're" is a major turn off in someone's dating profile, so is having a typo in your resume. Make sure your resume is free of typos by editing and asking someone else to review it. If you don't have that luxury or just feel nervous asking, reading your resume backwards helps you look through it with a new set of eyes.
Don't name your resume file name resume_final_final_FINAL_official.pdf or resume.pdf. You want to be professional and make it easier for employers to be able to find your resume when they save it to their computer. Something like firstname_lastname_resume_month2022_field.pdf is ideal.
Don't put a photo of yourself. I know I compared this to online dating where your photos are essential, but employers really just want to find a match with your accomplishments (and personality too, but let's save that for the interview). Human eyes naturally gravitate towards faces, so adding a photo means less of that 6 seconds is reading your actual qualifications and more time is spent staring at your face.
How to stand out
Tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. When you submit your resume online, it gets saved to the employer's Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS essentially looks for keywords and determines if your resume will be reviewed by an actual human. Use the job description to pull out keywords to add to your resume. The more keywords you include, the higher the likelihood that it will get pulled in for consideration.
Use action verbs. Leveraging action words in your resume creates a stronger impact by illustrating your unique experience to employers. Generic verbs like "managed," "assisted," and "led" are commonly used in resumes, so recruiters may just skim over it. Action verbs like "directed," "supervised," or "developed" provide more insight into your accomplishments and keep your resume more engaging.
Avoid passive voice. We often use passive voice without realizing it because, let's be honest, we all looked for ways to boost our word count on school writing assignments. One way to identify passive voice is if the verbs you are using comprises two words instead of one. For example, "revenue was generated" is passive voice. Instead, write "generated revenue." It also makes your resume easier to read.
Add metrics to quantify your impact. Metrics make your actions more tangible. Less abstract. By listing measurable achievements, you are able to effectively demonstrate the scope of your accomplishments to employers.
Experiment and monitor your progress. As you continue to apply to jobs, keep a record of what resumes are getting you interviews and which ones are not. If you notice that there are commonalities between versions of your resume that are getting responses, use those experiences to continue improving your resume. Using this method of trial and error can help you hone in on what employers in your industry are looking for, and hopefully, increase your chances of getting interviews.
Extra credit: Network!
As much as writing your resume may seem like the first step to applying for a job, networking is an important pre-step towards creating a more impactful resume. As mentioned in my last post about finding a job, networking is a way to infiltrate the hidden job market. Someone you network with may allow you to bypass the ATS system and get your resume to an actual person, increasing your chances of getting an interview. It can also provide insight on what skills are needed for a particular position, which you can then add as additional key words and skills to your resume.
Resume writing is an art, so if you need a little extra help, check out our free resume template.
Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor!