Making a “Hire Me” Resume
Clients come to us with a variety of needs: they need a resume fast — like yesterday, they need a resume coach, they want a certified professional resume writer, etc. Our challenge is to understand each client’s uniqueness and create a “hire me resume” that relates their past experience to their future career goals. We aren’t looking to create a biography for clients, we create effective documents (resumes, cover letters, LinkedIn Profiles, etc.) that market candidates to hiring managers. Our goal is to create documents (resumes and cover letters) that get our clients interviews and ultimately get them hired with follow-on documents (thank you letters and follow-up letters).
- Format Your Resume Wisely.
Make it easy for the Hiring Managers to quickly review. Generally, a resume gets scanned for 25 seconds or less. Scanning is more difficult if it is hard to read, poorly organized or exceeds proper length.
- Always use a logical format with wide margins, clean type and clear headings
- Appropriately apply bold and italic typeface that helps guide the reader’s eye
- Use bullets to call attention to important points (i.e. accomplishments)
As a professional resume writing service that reviews thousands of resumes annually, this first point, which is easiest, is usually not done well. Resume designs for Best Price Resume were originally created by a graphic designer. We use good design principles to get as much as possible on a page while still maintaining readability.
- Responsibilities versus Accomplishments
You should avoid listing just duties you had in your previous jobs. As certified professional resume writers, we look to blend duties that are keyword rich and supplement them with uniqueness of your accomplishments.
- Focus on what you did (accomplishments) in the job, NOT what your job was
- Include a few keyword-rich job duty bullets first, then list your accomplishments
- For each point ask yourself, what was the benefit of having done what I did? Did it increase sales, reduce cost, improve morale, etc. How can you use the accomplishment to highlight your experience towards the new position(s) you are seeking
- Accomplishments should be unique to you, District Employee of the Year, etc.
- Avoid using the generic descriptions of the jobs you originally applied for or held. Instead, transform your descriptions into keyword-rich content that gets flagged by computer systems and/or aligns with the new positions you are seeking.
- Be Selective
It’s tempting to list every job, accomplishment, volunteer assignment, skill, and degree you’ve ever had. But don’t. A resume is a very selective body of content. It’s not meant to be comprehensive. Details are not helpful, if they doesn’t contribute to convincing the hiring manager to talk to you. As a professional resume writing service, we know the task of trimming your resume to a few pages can be challenging. Many of our clients, have discovered, they really don’t like to cut anything. When they realize their resumes are running long, they will try to force content in the existing format rather than making cuts. This all defeats the whole purpose of putting together a resume, which is to get an interview.
Editing for length is never easy. It takes a certain ruthlessness and a degree of confidence. But as resume writers, we know it is necessary. Often, it is easier to have another person assess what is the best mix of content for your resume.
- Use a Summary instead of an Objective
A Summary is designed to give a brief overview of who you are and what you do for the company. Whereas, the Objective is very dated and the reverse. It is all about what you want the company to do for you.
- Grab a hiring manager’s attention right from the beginning, remembering you only have a few seconds to make a good impression
- Spend time developing a summary that immediately gets attention. Write a summary that accurately and powerfully describes you as a solution to their problems. Finally, and we realize as resume creators, it is important to align your past experience to your future career goals.
If you do the above, you will quickly increase the number of invitations for interviews. It is a lot of work. If you consider paying someone to write your resume, please contact us Best Price Resume at 888-215-1159.
