Ever wonder why Executive’s and HR Recruiter’s choose one resume over another? Are you curious what content they are searching for? Have you been perplexed over what information is need-to-share and which information is background noise? Candidly, hiring authorities today have access to vast numbers of resumes and typically they are searching for a few key skills and benefits regardless of the position to be filled. Unaware of what those skills and benefits are, many times we stack the probabilities against us by the language and content we include in our resume and ultimately, we inadvertently write ourselves out of consideration unwittingly.
Faced with this uncertainty, many people choose to outsource their resume creation entirely to a firm that specializes in writing resumes for a fee. While the presentation, consistency and organization of the content is typically outstanding, often the information shared lacks impact and power. As a contingency and retained recruiter for ten years I have many professionally created resumes in my database. Unquestionably they are polished however they simply lack marketing power.
Steps to Create Your Resume:
1. First identify for each position your compelling accomplishments by asking these questions for each position.
ü What was the key metric leveraged to monitor my performance?
ü How much money did I save the company?
ü How much revenue did I create?
ü How many projects were I involved in and what were the names and relevance to the core business?
ü How many of the projects that I was involved in were completed in time and under budget?
ü How much under budget?
ü Of those projects, how much revenue can I tie directly to my project?
ü How many new customers did I attract and close?
ü How large were the largest deals I closed?
ü How much revenue can I tie directly and honestly to those closed deals?
ü How much was my quota for each year and how did I perform? Characterize in dollars or percentages over quota contingent on which variable is most compelling.
ü How many offices did I open?
ü How many people did I hire?
ü How many leads did my marketing department create?
ü What was the conversion ratio?
ü How large of a department did I create?
ü How large was the company or team when I joined and how large is it today?
ü How much venture funding did I attract?
ü What accounting standards did I utilize?
ü Who subscribed to the Initial Public Offering?
2. Next, open a blank page and in the header type in your contact details including Name, address, phone number and email address.
3. Now create a Professional Summary that takes the three most compelling accomplishments you have achieved in your career and communicate them using active languaging.
4. Skip one line, create a header that says: Strengths. Write one line that clearly communicates your professional strengths. Be careful not to dilute the power of your strength, so I would propose only including two to three.
5. Next, in bold text, underlined and Cap locked, write EXPERIENCE:.
6. Now skip a line and add your most recent employment history. Name the company, it’s headquarter location on the first line. Beneath include a paragraph on your most recent employer’s solution and services, customers and a link to their website.
EXPERIENCE:
2000-Present Company Name, Landover, Maryland.
A publicly traded, $300,000,000 market leading provider of software tools and solutions to enable web based test and quality assurance which ensures maximum up-time, extensibility and reliability. Clients include ninety-five percent of the Fortune 100, Government Contractors and Federal Agencies. http://www.companyname.com
Federal Integrator Manager
· Responsible for all FSI Solution Partner Alliances including GSA Schedule Partners. Developed market strategy with Alliance Partners to expand Mercury presence beyond the testing marketplace.
· Increased GSA Business from 10% to 50%.
· Increased FSI Business from 0% to 30%.
· Partner business increased from 10% to 80% of total Federal Business. Quota: 17 Million of 21 Million.
· 100% of Quota 3 of 4 years.
7. Repeat the same format for each position held being attentive to accomplishments, focused on revenue created, growth, cost savings and performance metrics for each position.
8. Once each professional experience is completed and formatted as above, add your Education. Invariably, if your G.P.A was high, be sure to note it as well. Beneath your education include your professional certifications such C.I.S.S.P. etc.
EDUCATION: University, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Graduate Degree in Business Management; Minor in Economics.
9. Next add your affiliations. Affiliations are any networking groups and associations you belong to.
Resume writing is a simple process really. The key is to begin to think as an executive thinks, which is clearly on the ‘business essence’ of your role. High impact verbiage with a focus on your key performance metrics will jump off the page for recruiters and Executive leaders. I offer an audio for $29.95 called Resume Mastery to the general public, however if you would like a free copy simply email me or got my site.
All the Best