Write a Resume

The job market has become incredibly competitive. With more people looking for jobs then jobs being offered, you're going to need a resume that pops! Your resume is the first contact you have with a potential employer. It can be the key, to the lock, on the employment door. To do this your resume' needs to be fresh, focused and sprinkled with finesse. A resume that will stand out from the rest. If your resume' pops it will catch the potential employer’s attention. Once you've caught it, you need to hang on to it!

Another way the automated resume sorters work is by filtering out what the employer is looking for in an employee. For example, if an employer is looking to hire a chef for his/her restaurant located in Chico, CA he/she enters that information into the resume sorting program and like a colander, it filters out the resumes containing those key words (photo below). This saves a great deal of time but it also eliminates the opportunity to have your resume looked at by a human.

There are automated resume reading programs you need to be aware of. It assists employers with sorting through the mass amounts of resumes they receive.

Have you ever clicked on a job you’re interested in and one of the first questions presented is, ”Would you like your application to be filled with your information automatically?” This is a program that reads your resume, pulls out the desired information and places it on the application in the appropriate section. This is the first step of the filtering system. It’s advisable to look for a job application online that asks this very question. You want to make sure the automated sorters can read and sort your resume correctly. After the auto-fill has completed it will offer you to review the information. Upon review make sure your name, address, phone number and work history are in their correct boxes. If there is anything out of place I strongly suggest you go back and edit your resume until the auto-sorter places it in the correct spot. All employers that use auto-sorting don’t necessarily offer the initial auto-sort, they sort the resumes later. If your resume doesn’t sort correctly, you won’t know it and your resume will end up in the trash, so run it through a sorter yourself first.

For those employers that still actually read and sort resumes by hand your resume needs to be fresh. What is fresh? A fresh resume has all your current information name, address, work history, etc. Has your phone number changed since you first wrote your resume? What about your street address? Have you held a position of employment you need to add to it? These are all important editing errors made on resumes. You don’t want the job of your dreams to call the number on your resume only to find it was disconnected with no forwarding number!!

Another way your resume can be fresh is with the format you use. Put emphasis on your name. Use boarders and shading to highlight work experience and education. Try to avoid changing the font. The filtering program may not be able to read a fancy font.vIf your resume is put through a filtering program it needs to be able to read it or it goes into the trash. Resume readers recognize block lettering the easiest.

If your resume is, "focused" it reflects that you are very aware of the company you are applying to and their industry. Your resume will speak to the potential employer in their language with pertinent information to their product or industry. I have four separate resumes, each highlighting a specific talent I have and omitting needless information. For example, if the job I’m applying to is in the IT field my resume reflects the years I have working with computers and programs and my certificates in computer programming. I leave out information about my years as a truck driver. Truck driving has nothing to do with this position so I leave it out and focus on IT information about me. Before I send anything to my potential employer I check out the company. You can run a search on the company using any one of the multiple search engines available online. Look at the “About Us” page for the company and any other pertinent information about the company. Upon further research I may find that the IT department for this particular job includes field work. Servicing computers at customer’s homes. Since driving is a part of the job I go back and edit my resume adding my truck driving experience.

Sprinkle your resume with finesse by using key words. Some keywords are better than others at catching the potential employers attention. After twenty or thirty resumes, a person can't help but become bored seeing the same words used over and over again. That's where the following table of words can help your resume. The words in the left hand column work best when you know your resume will be in the hands of a person and not a filtering program. They are words not commonly used, or, at least, less commonly used. The fresh words, in a pile of resumes using the same words over and over, can be the boost that you need to land an interview.

The column on the right should be implemented when your resume is going to be read by a resume filtering program. They are common, a resume filtering program will have the commonly used words in its program. In an attempt to keep your resume in the running and not filtered out, use the more commonly used keywords.

For the resume that you know will be read by a human, instead of the same words used by every other resume, try some eye catching words. For example:

Instead of: Actively Try: Indefatigably

Instead of: Build Try: Inaugurate

Instead of: Develop Try: Materialize

A simple thesaurus is all you need to research less common words to find the one that may be able grab that potential employers attention.

With the job market so competitive you need to find a way to have an edge. Before sending your old resume out on another job application make sure you take a minute and freshen it up, check the focus and sprinkled it with finesse.