5 Things People Reading Your Resume

Wish You Knew

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2014/10/31/5-things-people-reading-your-resume-

wish-you-knew/

Resumes are very personal documents. In fact, whenever I’m reviewing a resume, I always ask permission before I mark it up. Who am I to edit your life’s work?

That said, I can almost guarantee you that the way your career counselor handles your resume

is not the way it will be handled once you submit your job applications. After speaking with many, many recruiters, here are some hard truths I’ve learned.

1. If your relevant experience, education, or skills are hard to find at a glance, your

resume might as well be blank.

It’s understandable to want to make your resume stand out a bit from the typical resume, but getting creative in InDesign isn’t the way to do it. As the head of Google’s HR states, “Unless you’re applying for a job such as a designer or artist, your focus should be on making

your resume clean and legible.”

In other words, no funky formats. You’re far better off spending your time trying to maximize the top half of your resume. This could mean writing a resume summary with your

most relevant qualifications or maybe pulling all your most relevant experiences into a separate section at the top of your resume and relegating the rest into an “Additional Experiences” section. As long as you’re trying to maximize traditional resume formatting

rather than do something entirely different, you should be safe.

2. If it’s not immediately clear from your experience why you’re applying, no one will

connect the dots for you.

Whether you’re a career changer or just applying for a reach position, if a recruiter’s initial

reaction to your resume is confusion, you’re not going to get very far.

So, make sure you connect the dots for the reader. It’s likely that you have an idea of how your skills can be transferred or why you’re more skilled than your years of experience might

let on. But, unless you spell it out on your resume, the recruiter probably won’t be able to put the pieces together—and you’ll never have the chance to explain in person.

One way to solve it? Using a simple objective statement. While you should definitely not use an objective statement if you’re applying for a position that makes perfect sense—or if it’s a

clichéd “I’d like to use my skills at an innovative, fast-growing organization”—if your background is a little unusual for the job you’re targeting, a brief explanation might just be

what gets you to the interview.

3. If your resume is difficult to skim, it probably won’t be read at all.

There’s some debate over how much time a recruiter will spend looking over a resume, but everyone agrees that it’s less than 20 seconds. What does that mean for job seekers? It means

your resume needs to be as easy to read—really, skim—as possible.

Read: Don’t make your font so small that it’s barely legible. It doesn’t matter how much more you’re able to fit on your one-pager if no one is reading it. And don’t let your bullet

points drag on to that third line. Two is all you get and, more likely than not, one is all that will get read.

4. If you expect to get your resume in front of a hiring manger, you need to first make

sure you get through HR.

That means making sure a layperson can understand what you’re talking about in your resume. It doesn’t matter if you’re managing complicated supply chains, coding complex algorithms, or conducting cutting-edge research on nanolasers—none of your impressive

feats will reach the appropriate hiring manager if you can’t at least explain it in a way that a nontechnical human resources representative can understand well enough to put you in the

right pile.

This means cutting the jargon, giving proper context, and focusing on results. Use the job posting to your advantage here—find the keywords and present your work the same way they do. I know, jargon can be pretty fun to use and starts to get instinctive when you’re around it

for long enough, but step outside of your industry bubble for a bit and try to approach your resume as an industry outsider. The easier you make things for HR, the more smoothly your

application process will go.

5. If your contact info isn’t correct, nothing else matters.

Finally, don’t be that person who has everything a recruiter is looking for but is just impossible to contact. Check, double check, and test your contact information. Typos are

always bad, but a typo in your contact information is probably as bad as it gets. It’s a really crummy feeling to notice an incorrect email address a couple months into your job search. Don’t let that be you.

RELATED: The Only Piece Of Resume Advice That Really Matters

Did I miss anything? What are some hard truths you’ve learned about resumes?

This post was originally published on The Daily Muse.

Lily Zhang serves as a Career Development Specialist at MIT. Follow her musings on Twitter @lzhng.

The Resume Summary Statement: When

You Need One and How to Do It

By Lily Zhang, August 19, 2014

It’s been well established that the good ol’ objective statement has gone out of fashion in the world of resumes. But what’s all this about its replacement—the summary statement?

Depending on who you ask and how you’re using it, summary statements can either be a

complete waste of space or a total game changer. For those of you who don’t know, a summary statement (also known as “Summary of Qualifications” or just “Competencies”)

essentially consists of a few pithy and strong statements at the beginning of your resume that help summarize your skills and experience in order for a prospective employer to quickly get a sense of the value you could offer. Here’s a sample:

Summary

Expert communicator with 10+ years of experience dedicated to community development and advocacy within the field of education

Strong public speaking, teaching, and facilitating skills for diverse student, professional, and general audiences

Extensive involvement in all levels of relationship building, marketing, and program development

Proven ability to manage multiple projects while meeting challenging deadlines

Sounds great, right? Minus the part where you have to give up valuable resume space for information that’s already on your resume. So, the big question is: Do you really need one?

The short answer is, it depends. Summary statements are usually best for more experienced professionals with years of experiences to tie together with a common theme (read: brand).

Or, alternatively, they can be used to tie together disparate experiences with a set of key transferable skills. On the other hand, if you have a pretty linear or straightforward career

path, the space is probably better used for additional bullet points in each role.

If you do decide that a summary statement is right for you, get ready to do some digging and some introspection. You only have a limited amount of space for your summary statement (think four to six bullets, give or take a couple), and you don’t want to a) regurgitate your

resume bullets or b) sound like a list of buzzwords.

Once you have these two cardinal rules down, the real fun begins. Here’s a three-step plan to help you craft the perfect summary.

Step 1: Figure Out Where You’re Going

Since you need to be concise, it’s important to figure out what you want in your next position, so you know exactly what skills and experiences to highlight. If you are not absolutely clear about what you want, envision an ideal position that will value you for the

main characteristics and experiences you want to be hired for.

Ask Yourself

What skills do you most enjoy using? What accomplishments are you most proud of and can best illustrate your abilities?

What issues, topics, or areas are you most passionate about?

Step 2: Analyze Your Target Industry

Once you know what you want to do, your next step is identifying where you want to be—think industry, city, and companies. Then, research your industry and key trends affecting it now: Read relevant industry news articles, research companies, and analyze job descriptions

you’re interested in.

Ask Yourself

What is most valued in your target industry? What experiences, skills, and characteristics matter in your target jobs? What would you look for if you were the hiring manager?

Step 3: Find Your Fit and Condense

With your knowledge of your target industry, it’s time to figure out how you fit in (or want to). Identify, describe, and refine your key selling points with your end goal in mind. Then,

craft them into 4-6 bullets, shooting for statements that are vivid and that clearly illustrate what you bring to the table over anyone else.

Ask Yourself

What are your most impactful selling points? What critical problems are you well positioned to solve? What is the intersection of you want and what your target industry needs?

A summary statement can be a powerful branding tool the helps send the message that you’re the right one for the job. The best thing about taking the time to put one together (whether

you decide to actually use it or not) is that it not only helps hiring managers get a clear sense of what you have to offer, but also helps you better understand what you bring to the table. So, you get the added benefit of knowing exactly how to sell your skills the next time you’re

networking, interviewing, or presenting yourself online.

Final Cut: Words to Strike from Your

Resume

By Elizabeth Lowman, October 19, 2011

If you’ve applied for a job recently, you’ve probably looked over that 8½ x 11” summary of your career more times than you can count—and tweaked it just as often—in pursuit of the

perfect resume.

But before you add another bullet point, consider this: It’s not always about what you add in—the best changes you can make may lie in what you take out.

The average resume is chock-full of sorely outdated, essentially meaningless phrases that

take up valuable space on the page. Eliminate them, and you’ll come off as a better, more substantial candidate—and your resume won’t smack of that same generic, mind-numbing

quality found on everyone else’s.

Every word—yes, every word—on that page should be working hard to highlight your talents and skills. If it’s not, it shouldn’t be on there. So grab a red pen, and banish these words from your resume for good.

Career Objective

My first few resumes had a statement like this emblazoned top and center: “Career objective: To obtain a position as a [insert job title here] that leverages my skills and experience as well as provides a challenging environment that promotes growth.”

Yawn. This is not only boring, it’s ineffective (and sounds a little juvenile, to boot). The top

of your resume is prime real estate, and it needs to grab a hiring manager’s attention with a list of your top accomplishments, not a summary of what you hope to get out of your next

position.

Experienced

You can be “experienced” in something after you’ve done it once—or every day for the past 10 years. So drop this nebulous term and be specific. If, for example, you’re a Client Report

Specialist, using a phrase such as “Experienced in developing client reports” is both vague and redundant. But sharing that you “Created five customized weekly reports to analyze repeat client sales activity”—now that gives the reader a better idea of where exactly this so-

called experience lies, with some actual results attached.

Also eliminate: seasoned, well-versed

Team Player

If you’ve ever created an online dating profile, you know that you don’t just say that you’re nice and funny—you craft a fun, witty profile that shows it. Same goes for your resume: It’s

much more effective to list activities or accomplishments that portray your good qualities in action than to simply claim to have them.

Instead of “team player,” say “Led project team of 10 to develop a new system for distributing reports that reduced the time for managers to receive reports by 25%.” Using a

specific example, you show what you can actually accomplish. But simply labeling yourself with a quality? Not so much.

Also eliminate: people person, customer-focused

Dynamic

While resumes are meant to highlight your best attributes, some personality traits are better left to the hiring manager to decide upon for herself. There is a difference between appropriately and accurately describing your work skills and just tooting your own horn.

Plus, even the most introverted wallflower will claim to be “dynamic” on a piece of paper because, well, why not? When it comes to resumes, keep the content quantifiable, show tangible results and successes, and wait until the interview to show off your “dynamism,”

“enthusiasm,” or “energy.”

Also eliminate: energetic, enthusiastic

References Available Upon Request

All this phrase really does is take up valuable space. If a company wants to hire you, they will ask you for references—and they will assume that you have them. There’s no need to address

the obvious (and doing so might even make you look a little presumptuous!). Use the space to give more details about your talents and accomplishments instead.

In a crummy job market with a record number of people applying for the same positions, it

takes more than a list of desirable-sounding qualities to warrant an interview. Specific examples pack a punch, whereas anything too dependent on a list of buzzwords will sound just like everyone else’s cookie-cutter resume. So, give your resume a good once-over, and

make sure every word on that page is working hard for you

12 Tiny Changes That Make Your Resume

Easy for Recruiters to Skim

By Lily Zhang, July 25, 2014

There’s some debate about how many seconds a recruiter spends looking over a resume, but

we can all agree that it’s not a lot. With such limited time to get important information across, anything you can do to make your resume easier to skim could mean the difference between

the forward or toss piles.

So, after you’ve spent some time perfecting the content of those sections and bullet points, it’s time to make sure they’re as easy (and appealing!) to read as possible. Here are 12 little formatting tricks you can use to help recruiters and hiring managers get the most from your

resume during their six to 18 second scan.

1. Don’t Center Any of Your Text

Even your section headings should be aligned to the left. This improves readability because the eye naturally returns to the left margin once it’s ready to move on to the next line of text.

2. Align Your Dates and Locations to the Right

You can only fit so much different information (company name, job title, location, dates of employment) on one line of text before it gets unwieldy. To help separate out your information, make a separate column for dates and locations that is right adjusted. On most

word processors, you should be able to just create a right-tab.

3. Don’t Justify Your Resume

Overall, using a justified setting for your bullets may make your resume look tidier, but it does nothing for readability. This setting leaves uneven gaps between words that ultimately

make text harder to read, so for your bullets and resume overall, stick with regular ol’ left alignment.

4. Keep Everything the Same Size Font

Aside from your name, which should be a little bigger, the font size throughout your resume should be the same size to ensure readability. Rather than using font size for emphasis throughout your resume, use bolding, italics, and all-caps—sparingly, of course.

5. Pick Either Your Roles or Your Companies to Bold

Bolding of select words and phrases helps with scanning, but you don’t want to go overboard. So choose what to bold wisely, depending on the message you want to send. If your job titles effectively illustrate your path to management-level roles, bolding those might make the most

sense. On the other hand, if you’re a new grad and most of your experiences are internships, you might benefit more from emphasizing the companies on your resume.

6. Use ALL-CAPS Very Sparingly

While it is an option for creating emphasis, all-caps is a lot harder to read and therefore harder to skim than text that isn’t capitalized. Save your all-caps option for section headings

or your name.

7. Maximize the First 5 Words of Your Bullets

When skimming a resume, a recruiter is very likely going to be reading the first few words of a bullet, then moving on to the next line unless his or her interest is piqued. This means those

first few words of your bullets are much more important than the rest. Make sure the first five words of each line make the reader want to keep reading. (Need help? These power verbs will

make your resume awesome.)

8. Keep Bullets Under 2 Lines

Even if your first few words are the most interesting thing your recruiter has ever read, going over two lines per bullet is pushing it a bit. Try to keep your bullets short and sweet. (And

yes, you should always use bullets, not paragraphs, to describe your experiences.)

9. Use Digits When Writing About Numbers

Using numbers in your bullet points quantifies results and helps recruiters better understand the scope of your work. (Here’s how to do it well.) Make these numbers easy to read by using

digits (i.e., 30% versus thirty percent). It improves readability and—bonus—saves space.

10. Have a Separate “Skills” Section

Just to really drive the point home, piling up all your relevant skills into one section helps ensure that the recruiter sees them. You should still highlight your skills in the context of your work, but pulling them out into their own section doesn’t hurt.

11. Keep Your Formatting Consistent

People can get pretty creative when they’re trying to fit all their relevant work experience into one page. That’s fine, but make sure that however you decide to do it, you keep your formatting the same throughout the document. Consistency helps with skimming, and if the

recruiter wants to refer back to something, he or she will know where to look.

12. Try to Have Some White Space Left Over

Lastly, having some breathing room on your resume also helps with skimming. Different amounts of white space can signal to the reader that this is a different section or help

emphasize the importance of something, such as your name or skills. And overall, it just makes the whole document less overwhelming.

Having your resume skimmed is a fact of life as you apply for jobs. So, make sure you

maximize the experience and make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to find the right information—and send you along to the next step of the process.

185 Powerful Verbs That Will Make Your

Resume Awesome

By The Daily Muse Editor, January 07, 2014

Led…

Handled…

Managed…

Responsible for…

Most resume bullet points start with the same words. Frankly, the same tired old words hiring managers have heard over and over—to the point where they’ve lost a lot of their meaning

and don’t do much to show off your awesome accomplishments.

So, let’s get a little more creative, shall we? Next time you update your resume, switch up a few of those common words and phrases with strong, compelling action verbs that will catch

hiring managers’ eyes.

No matter what duty or accomplishment you’re trying to show off, we’ve got just the verb for you. Check out the list below, and get ready to make your resume way more exciting.

You Led a Project

If you were in charge of a project or initiative from start to finish, skip “led” and instead try:

1. Chaired

2. Controlled

3. Coordinated

4. Executed

5. Headed

6. Operated

7. Orchestrated

8. Organized

9. Oversaw

10. Planned

11. Produced

12. Programmed

You Envisioned and Brought to Life a Project

And if you actually developed, created, or introduced that project into your company? Try:

13. Administered

14. Built

15. Charted

16. Created

17. Designed

18. Developed

19. Devised

20. Founded

21. Engineered

22. Established

23. Formalized

24. Formed

25. Formulated

26. Implemented

27. Incorporated

28. Initiated

29. Instituted

30. Introduced

31. Launched

32. Pioneered

33. Spearheaded

You Saved the Company Time or Money

Hiring managers love candidates who’ve helped a team operate more efficiently or cost-effectively. To show just how much you saved, try:

34. Conserved

35. Consolidated

36. Decreased

37. Deducted

38. Diagnosed

39. Lessened

40. Reconciled

41. Reduced

42. Yielded

You Increased Efficiency, Sales, Revenue, or Customer Satisfaction

Along similar lines, if you can show that your work boosted the company’s numbers in some way, you’re bound to impress. In these cases, consider:

43. Accelerated

44. Achieved

45. Advanced

46. Amplified

47. Boosted

48. Capitalized

49. Delivered

50. Enhanced

51. Expanded

52. Expedited

53. Furthered

54. Gained

55. Generated

56. Improved

57. Lifted

58. Maximized

59. Outpaced

60. Stimulated

61. Sustained

You Changed or Improved Something

So, you brought your department’s invoicing system out of the Stone Age and onto the

interwebs? Talk about the amazing changes you made at your office with these words:

62. Centralized

63. Clarified

64. Converted

65. Customized

66. Influenced

67. Integrated

68. Merged

69. Modified

70. Overhauled

71. Redesigned

72. Refined

73. Refocused

74. Rehabilitated

75. Remodeled

76. Reorganized

77. Replaced

78. Restructured

79. Revamped

80. Revitalized

81. Simplified

82. Standardized

83. Streamlined

84. Strengthened

85. Updated

86. Upgraded

87. Transformed

You Managed a Team

Instead of reciting your management duties, like “Led a team…” or “Managed employees…” show what an inspirational leader you were, with terms like:

88. Aligned

89. Cultivated

90. Directed

91. Enabled

92. Facilitated

93. Fostered

94. Guided

95. Hired

96. Inspired

97. Mentored

98. Mobilized

99. Motivated

100. Recruited

101. Regulated

102. Shaped

103. Supervised

104. Taught

105. Trained

106. Unified

107. United

You Brought in Partners, Funding, or Resources

Were you “responsible for” a great new partner, sponsor, or source of funding? Try:

108. Acquired

109. Forged

110. Navigated

111. Negotiated

112. Partnered

113. Secured

You Supported Customers

Because manning the phones or answering questions really means you’re advising customers and meeting their needs, use:

114. Advised

115. Advocated

116. Arbitrated

117. Coached

118. Consulted

119. Educated

120. Fielded

121. Informed

122. Resolved

You Were a Research Machine

Did your job include research, analysis, or fact-finding? Mix up your verbiage with these words:

123. Analyzed

124. Assembled

125. Assessed

126. Audited

127. Calculated

128. Discovered

129. Evaluated

130. Examined

131. Explored

132. Forecasted

133. Identified

134. Interpreted

135. Investigated

136. Mapped

137. Measured

138. Qualified

139. Quantified

140. Surveyed

141. Tested

142. Tracked

You Wrote or Communicated

Was writing, speaking, lobbying, or otherwise communicating part of your gig? You can explain just how compelling you were with words like:

143. Authored

144. Briefed

145. Campaigned

146. Co-authored

147. Composed

148. Conveyed

149. Convinced

150. Corresponded

151. Counseled

152. Critiqued

153. Defined

154. Documented

155. Edited

156. Illustrated

157. Lobbied

158. Persuaded

159. Promoted

160. Publicized

161. Reviewed

You Oversaw or Regulated

Whether you enforced protocol or managed your department’s requests, describe what you really did, better, with these words:

162. Authorized

163. Blocked

164. Delegated

165. Dispatched

166. Enforced

167. Ensured

168. Inspected

169. Itemized

170. Monitored

171. Screened

172. Scrutinized

173. Verified

You Achieved Something

Did you hit your goals? Win a coveted department award? Don’t forget to include that on your resume, with words like:

174. Attained

175. Awarded

176. Completed

177. Demonstrated

178. Earned

179. Exceeded

180. Outperformed

181. Reached

182. Showcased

183. Succeeded

184. Surpassed

185. Targeted