Part 2 of 5
Building an Effective Resume
There are many tips, hints, and ideas about how to have great resume. I have reviewed thousands in my 10 years of career coaching with students, alums, and executives and these points continually come up:
- Your resume serves one purpose – to gain an interview.
Don’t look at your resume as a biographical, chronological representation of all the tasks you have done. Instead look at it as a results-based document that speaks to your key employable attributes as well as the credible and transferable positive impact you can make in the role you seek.
- A recruiter or hiring manager does not care about the tasks you have done unless it is identical to what you are applying for.
They are primarily interested in the contribution you made to the organization in your professional roles. Further, they are spending less than 30 seconds to determine if that contribution is clearly transferable to the role they are recruiting for. This is assuming your resume made it through the applicant tracking system or ATS, which is another name for a scanning web-based system that qualifies or disqualifies resumes/applications. In addition, hiring managers want a safe hire. This is an applicant that brings immediate positive contribution to the team and does not require major training or supervision.
- Look at your resume and the job description side by side.
Focus on your professional experiences and the critical and preferable job requirements. Look at this impartially, from a recruiter’s perspective, do you see a strong fit? Only strong fits will be considered.
- You can use the following link to compare your resume to the job: Jobscan
You will get several free comparisons without having to pay a fee. You simply copy your resume and place it in one box and then copy the job description (not the background of the company) into the other box. Hit the compare button and you will see how the system sees your resume. The system does not compare one company experience versus another from the standpoint of importance, but it will show you if your resume is seen as a fit. The comparison is a basic one, but it will help you see how a company’s web-based recruiting system might perceive your resume.
- Always, always, always include your name in the resume file name.
If you send in a resume without your name in the file name, you stand a chance that the recruiter can’t find it/you.
We are teammates and fellow “B” Association members and we share a special bond built on sweat, blood and effort through our collegiate career. If you have career questions, please let me know and I will do my best to address them directly with you or to include it in future segments.
Sic ’em Bears!
Ken Buckley
Football Letterwinner 1977, 1980
“B” Association Board Member
Kenneth Buckley is the Assistant Dean for Career Management – Baylor Business School. He has 10 years with Baylor overseeing undergrad and graduate career management for the Business School and is responsible for career development, employer engagement and career placement including 9 years of classroom experience teaching career classes for BBAs and MBAs. Ken is also a published author in the career field, 2nd edition College to the Career You Love by Kendall Hunt Publishing. Prior to Baylor, he spent 24 years of progressive management experience in the technology industry with start-ups and large public companies.