Part 1
You wanted that job so badly. You prepared for it all your life. You know you can do what it takes to do the job even with your eyes closed. How come the company's recruitment specialist didn't give you a ring?
You beefed-up your resume and you are convinced that it is solid enough to impress anyone who reads it. But days - worse, weeks - passed and you haven't heard from your prospective employer. What could have gone wrong?
You are selling the most important product of all - You. And your resume is your sales pitch. If you don't get it right, there'd be no sales opportunity, no interview.
The key to get your foot into the employer's door is a resume that lets you jump off its page. If your current resume is not getting you interviews then it is high time to re-write it - and re-write it some more - to give you the right tone and image.
Here are 10 tips on how your resume will help you land that job you desire:
1. Why are you applying?
Why do you want to get that job in the first place? For glory and riches? For pride?
We know you want a job to earn a living so you can get your own space and be part of professional humanity, but you have to be thorough in your approach. According to recruitment experts, most applicants email their resumes to company job openings without studying what the job requires. If one of the employment criteria says "Looking for someone with 10 years of solid work experience in the field of complex adaptive systems," don't grumble if you don't get a ring if you only had three years of computing experience.
It doesn't hurt to read through the requirements of a job, step back a bit, and see if you suit the perfectly well. Prepare for each application before you start email blasting companies with your 12-page resume.
2. Use the appropriate resume language.
Now, you may ask, "What is the appropriate language?" The answer: a simple one. A powerful resume that gets the attention of recruiters is made up of concise, clear, and simple language. There is power in simplicity Neil Postman once said. You'll be surprised that the less jargon your resume has, the greater the chance of you getting called for an interview.
There are two schools of thought on how to make your resume more appealing to employers. One suggests you pepper your resume with bullet points to highlight your good qualities. The other suggests that you should give recruiters a chance to see your human face, while keeping its professional tone. What we suggest is to combine both to make your resume even more powerful. This is what we mean by your resume letting you jump off its pages.
What you should avoid, though, is "technicalese" language in order to sound erudite. Trust us, recruiters can cut through the smokescreen. Recruitment specialists have been at it many times they can see who's for real and who's not.
Here's an example of a bloated description of previous work experience:
"Heavily involved in the production of technical content for the sole purpose of providing instructions in various/myriad ways for staff consumption."
Er, what? If you meant you wrote memos for office staff then put in your resume that you "Wrote Memos."
You could write:
"Wrote memos to update staff and employees about company guidelines," or something to that effect.
Remember to avoid resume language only Martians can understand. More importantly, always remember that recruiters are also people with busy schedule. If they don't understand what you mean, then you've blown your chance.
Here's an example to test if you get our drift. Let's say X company placed an ad that says:
"We're looking for someone with 5 years of experience in design for business applications."
If you're familiar with design for business, how would you respond?
We suggest that you tailor-fit the language of your resume, dig deep in your work experience, and include this in one of the bullet points:
- Responsible for handling 6 project teams' strategic division in which I used design techniques to address problems.
3. Answer each job responsibility one-by-one to match your skills
There's a reason why job opportunities are listed the way they are listed. Often, they are presented according to the degree of each task the position requires. The first listed function of the job being described is what you will be doing majority of the time if you get hired.
If the first job requirement states, "The applicant will spend 70 percent of his/her employment hours with tribal communities in Rwanda to understand their plight using ethnographic techniques," you need to put your experience in the jungles of Sumatra at the top of your employment record.
Then, it should be followed by a brief narrative of what you did in that job: give a short description how you spoke with the people of Sumatra, learned their cultural nuances, and documented everything.
It's like matching your skills-set to what the job is looking for. If you do this, you've already won half the battle.
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