In my lifetime, I’ve seen THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of resumes.  Some have made me drool while others have made me laugh (seriously, laugh!).  Okay, I admit I’ve felt guilty when laughing because I could also empathize with the person who was doing their best to present an impressive visual of their background, experiences and accomplishments.  Further, I don’t believe anyone wants to present a laughable resume when searching for employment….unless they want to be a comedian.  

If you’re unsure about the quality of your resume and want to help ensure that employers are not laughing at it, I think I can help you.  Over the years, I have pointed out many things you can do to enhance your resume, but following are three sure signs that your resume just might need a little help.

 1.  You’re not receiving calls or emails from employers. If this isn’t a “hint and a half,” I don’t know what else is!   If you have submitted dozens (let’s say 50+) of resumes to employer career sites or on-line job boards for positions that fit your background and haven’t received one response, this is a sure-tell sign that your resume is not hitting the mark. 

Of course, depending on the type of job you’re pursuing, there could be hundreds of other applicants.  If/when this is the case, it could simply mean that the employer found the slate of candidates they wanted in the first 97 applicants and you were applicant number 103.  Ouch!  However, you surely won’t be candidate number 103 for all 65 jobs you’ve applied to on-line – time to check your resume.

2.  Your resume doesn’t demonstrate enough relevance for the job you’re targeting. This happens a lot.  Candidates are usually so eager to show an employer EVERYTHING they’ve ever done, but don’t realize that’s not what employers are looking for.  EMPLOYERS WANTS TO SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE THAT’S RELEVANT TO WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR.  That’s pretty much it!

Let me help you to understand why.  Let’s first examine this from the hiring leader’s perspective.  Hiring leaders are incredibly busy.  When staff is down a person (hence, the job opening), this means they’re really incredibly busy.  When they now have to review applicants for an open position (more work), they are looking for very specific things.  In order to save time, relevancy is all they’re looking for.  It’s great that you won the “Best Student of the Millennium” award when you were in college, but that was 15 years ago – nice, but not relevant.  It’s nice that you work so hard that you now have a four-page resume – again nice, but I guarantee half of it is not relevant for the hiring leader and won’t get read.  Sorry!

From the recruiter’s perspective, they are tasked with sourcing, scheduling, screening and presenting talent for 15-75 open jobs.  For simple math’s sake, if each job had 100 applicants, that’s 1,500-7,500 resumes that need to be reviewed.  This doesn’t include their other work activities – emails, voice mails, meetings, projects, deadlines and, too often, not enough recruiting staff to have an adequately sized workload.  Just like the hiring leader, relevancy is all they’re looking for, and if they don’t see it,…..

According to a 2012 study conducted by The Ladders to better understand recruiters’ on-the-job behavior, recruiters spend, on average, SIX SECONDS reviewing a resume.  Think about this, if you don’t show a recruiter something compelling within six seconds, your resume will most likely go in their “thanks, but…” pile.

I know this is disheartening for some (because you love your resume and its contents), but trust me, you’ll thank me later.

3.  All duties, not enough accomplishments. With any resume, you want to convey the content and scope of your work, but don’t stop there.  What can set you apart from the crowd is by showing what impact you’ve had in your work.  Anyone can list the duties (that comes straight from your job description), but how you used those duties to positively impact the organization is what really counts.  Consider which you would find the most impressive:  

Example 1:

“Responsible for enhancing customer relationships and increasing revenue through new business development.”

Example 2:

“Boosted revenue and profits from $250M to $425M in less than two years through enhanced customer service efforts for existing clients and the identification and cultivation of seven new customer relationships.”

Which one would you call to interview?

Now, I want you to take a hard look at your resume.  If any of these three tips apply to you, the good news is it’s not too late.  You can make changes to your resume before anyone else has to see it!

Until next time….