Tips 1 of 3: How To Develop A Winning Resume

Posted by Greg Ikner on March 8, 2010

You have spent quality time structuring your resume to accurately depict your qualifications and experiences. At this point your resume serves the purpose of getting you a face to face interview. This three part series on providing tips in developing a winning resume will help you get the most out of this document. Over the years I have reviewed thousands of resumes and I will share with you how to make your resume work for you. If you are already using these tips that is great and you are well on your way to moving to the next phase of the interview process.

Over the next three weeks I will provide to you tips on:

The use of Key Words
Making your resume job specific
How to get your resume seen by a decision maker

You have heard the term key words (action words) used often on social networks and internet search programs. When I entered the corporate world years ago we would literally read each resume to look for the best candidate(s) to advance to the next phase of the interview process. Needless to say it took many days to complete this task which resulted in lost productivity. Technology has shortened this resume review process to allow decision makers to have a robust candidate pool to choose from.

Many companies use resume scanning and parsing software that can identify and sort resumes by looking at certain keywords in a document. The best place to look for key words is in the job description. These action words should be used throughout your resume since these words have been programmed into the companies software for detection. If you have used Word or Excel software programs you know how to use the keyword and search function. This is the same technology that recruiters and companies use so take some extra time to make sure you have your resume enriched with these words. The critical part for you now is to know which keywords are right for the job you are applying for. After all; it is these keywords that will rank you against the other job candidates. The question often comes up that this process (technology) doesn’t always identify the best candidate to move to the next phase of the interviews? Well , if you know of a better way to review 2k resumes for two job openings that have to be staffed in 30 days please let me know. We are only sorting through resumes at this point and have not decided who will be phone screened and ultimately come in for a face to face interview.

Try these tips…

Thoroughly review the job description that is in the posting. Are you noticing action words that are being used to describe the job?
Are there words being used that are similar to other job postings? Take a look at other ads on websites to get ideas.
Visit the company’s website to look at their mission statement and company values to see if there are words that keep appearing throughout the document.
I like to use the Rule of 4. If you notice keywords that have been used at least 4 times be sure to include in your resume.

Now that you have your keywords identified I look forward to sharing with you next week: Tips On How To Make Your Resume Job Specific.

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