11/19/2017–I want to learn the absolute best practices for handling a job search. This includes writing resumes well. Here are the fundamentals of resume writing that I’ve found to be the most effective.
There are three sections of guidance here: Purpose + Principles, Format, and what to remove/add.
Purpose + Principles
I’ve found the purpose of any resume is to get an interview when your network can’t do it for you.
The future will bring unpredictable change to the job search process. However, today I still find that to get a job you need an interview, and to get an interview the hiring manager needs to be persuaded to give you one. Having a network of people who know you well enough to recommend you is the most efficient way to do that. Submitting a resume is the second-best way.
A quick word about “effective” hiring managers.
You’ll see I use the phrase “effective hiring manager”. I just mean that there are good ones who do this process well, and bad ones, like I was when I first started hiring people. I was like most managers–often lazy, poor at managing priorities, or just bad at evaluating applicants. You want to work for the good ones and you want to join a team of people who’ve made it through that manager’s tough evaluation. Thus, your resume should be designed to impress good managers, not all managers. This is more work, but you want a great job, right?
What persuades a good hiring manager is seeing experience that indicates you can perform well in the open role they have. Two principles dictate how persuasive your resume is to a hiring manager–What have you done? And how well did you do it?
First principle: What have you done?
The effective ones aren’t persuaded to interview you without knowing what jobs you’ve had. Further, the only persuasive resume is one that shows jobs relevant to the job you applied for. Specifically, they want to know what your responsibilities were that relate to the responsibilities of the job they have for you. To come up with responsibilities, think: What were you paid to do? What did coworkers or customers rely on you for? What would you get fired for if it didn’t get done? If you need help, call your previous employer or teammates, or use online job descriptions of the role to spark your memory (but please don’t claim responsibilities you didn’t truly have).
Second principle: How well did you do it?
I mentioned hiring managers only care about relevant experience. However, even if the job title you want doesn’t match what you’ve done, you can often show relevance by applying this second principle. All jobs have standards of quality, or timeliness, or growth, or teamwork. If you have achievements that show your ability to deliver these things, type them onto your resume in a way that relates them to the role you’re applying for. No matter what you’ve done, your resume will only get you an interview if you indicate you performed relevant roles well. Do this by listing your achievements. Fortunately, hiring managers often give you an interview even with only one relevant job on your resume if your resume convinces them you achieved something in that role. A resume with only one relevant experience that was done expertly is much better than the resume that has many irrelevant experiences, or one that has jobs you don’t appear to have done well. The second element of an effective resume is format.
Format
Most importantly, write each job’s responsibilities in sentence form with the achievements in bullet points below. Then, I recommend you format your resume to be one page, ½ inch to 1-inch margins, reverse chronologically.
Responsibility sentences, achievement bullets: This is probably the most helpful formatting suggestion, so I’m listing it first. It’s the most helpful because the others are pretty standard, and few people follow this piece of guidance. Here’s how I recommend formatting your YMCA job:
Title, Company Name, City, State or Country (all the way to the right———————>) 9/07-1/11
Manage front desk, schedule meetings for executive, prepare and proofread membership forms, recruited members, camp registrar for kids camp.
- Achievement 1 (“prepared approximately 10 forms/week”)
- Achievement 2 (“sold $10,000 in memberships, 50% above team average”)
- Achievement 3 (“sold out, smooth camp registration three consecutive years”)
Note the title, employer, location, and mm/yy date are all kept to one single line (date may appear on next line in this article if you’re viewing this on your phone). This saves space for the most important info: all your great achievements!
One-page: The one-page format benefits both you and the reader. For you, you’re forced to clarify what’s valuable about your achievements. Another benefit to you is that your answers to interview questions will be easier to understand if you’ve already learned how to describe them so clearly. For the reader, concise bullets make it easy to find the value in your achievement. Remember, all the resume needs to do is persuade them to give you an interview, not tell them how great, interesting, or “well-rounded” you are. Effective hiring managers don’t read the whole resume if they’re persuaded after 5 bullets—to be clear, I’m suggesting 5 well-written bullets can sometimes be enough to persuade them.
½ inch to 1-inch margins: Keeping the margins at least ½ inch ensures your resume is easy to read on all screen types (laptop, mobile phones, etc) while printers won’t cut off any text. Setting the margin below 1-inch allows you to use more space to advertise your great experience!
Reverse chronological order: (You already do this) This means listing your previous jobs such that your current or most recent job is first. It’s what hiring managers expect to see, since our most recent job is usually the most relevant. Each job after that takes the reader further back in time. While you don’t need to go all the way back to school, include the most relevant and attractive experience that you can fit on one page with these formatting suggestions.
Once you’ve made these formatting changes, you can begin to consider what content belongs and what doesn’t.
Content to remove and add
What to remove
There are two reasons something should be removed: either it doesn’t help you get the interview, or you can use the space for something more valuable. Remove these three things:
- Home address. Your email and phone are preferred contact methods. Nobody needs to mail you anything before an interview and they don’t need to know where you live, but you may be asked if you have “reliable transportation”.
- “Objective” paragraph. Your objective is to get an offer for the job you’re applying for, so it’s redundant to put it on the resume. People who think it’s useful forget that you could use the space for more achievements or experience.
- “Skills” or “profile” paragraph. Anything you put in the section should appear as an achievement bullet, because if you can’t make a bullet out of it, it’s not really a skill you should claim, is it? If you can’t give me an example of how you’ve been a “strong leader” in a job, you can’t ethically put it here. If you CAN give me an example, turn it into a one-line achievement bullet! Remember, we’re writing for effective hiring managers who will recognize when someone’s claiming skills they can’t justify with experience.
- “Hobbies” or “other interests”. If your hobby is relevant to the actual role you’re applying for, include the hobby in the experience section formatted the same as any job. For example, I have a hobby of recording music. My band recorded 6 songs at a professional studio, which required schedules to be coordinated, priorities to be aligned, and basic project management. While these might be interesting to the hiring manager for small-talk, they’ve never been relevant enough to make it onto my resume.
What to add
The main need of most resumes I’ve reviewed is specific achievements that more clearly describe value. Think numbers, dollars, speed, etc. For example, a great one might be “answered phones from a 12-line switchboard”. This is much better than “answered phones from a switchboard” because it tells the reader how big the switchboard was, and how complex your job was. It could be improved further, but that’s an example of how one slight change makes a big difference. You may have several relevant examples of achievements, but I’d like to see them written with more quantitative descriptions, like “12-line” from the switchboard example.
After a strong network, a great resume is the most valuable tool for anyone seeking a job. Reflect the principles of a solid resume in a format that enables efficient reading. Then remove sections of relatively little value, and add as much value as you can in bullet-points, as clearly as possible.