Time to write a resume and look for new job?  If you are relatively new to the job search process or if you have not been in the job market a while, times have changed significantly.  If you want your resume to get noticed, you are going to have to adjust to these changes or your job search will be really long and really painful.  There are several mistakes in this resume.  I am going to highlight two of them.  If you want to get some more detailed advice, I recommend you attend my Free Webinar Tuesday May 22nd at 12:00pm EST , I focus on what’s wrong with this resume so you don’t make the same mistakes.  Make sure you hurry to reserve your seat.

Mistake #1

So what’s the first mistake?  Well, this professional would send this resume out on dozens of jobs and RARELY hear back from the company, even though they were certain they were perfect for some of those jobs.  Their problem wasn’t that they weren’t qualified.  Their problem was that no human being actually ever READ their resume.  Unfortunately, this professional is not alone.  Did you know that over 90% of resumes submitted for jobs never even get read?  It’s pretty hard to get the job if your resume is never being read.  But why?  That’s because today, companies get hundreds or even thousands of applications for each job.  That doesn’t even count the resumes recruiters find in their company resume database, job board resume databases, and LinkedIn.  All told, recruiters will “screen” tens of thousands or even millions of resumes.  It is physically impossible for them to read every resume.  They need to get the list down to 100-200 before they actually read them.  They use something called “Boolean Search” to take 1,000 resumes and turn it into 100.

Everyone uses Boolean search today.  Every time you go to Google to search something on the web you use some form of Boolean search (probably the way you found this site).  Corporate recruiters just use it in a much more complicated way.  Recruiters will take a long job description and boil it down to five to ten keywords.  If all of these keywords are not on your resume, then it will never be read.

To make sure your resume gets read, think about the jobs you are going to apply for and predetermine the key words recruiters will use to screen applicants.  Then make darn sure these key words are on your resume.  This can be a daunting task for many professionals.  But it isn’t as hard as you think.  If you want a simple way to identify the key words important to you, join me next week for my FREE webinar where I will provide a simple process to find them.

 

Mistake #2

The other problem is that when this resume was read, the recruiter was underwhelmed by the content. Even though the recruiter has already narrowed the list down to 100-200 resumes, they still will not read each in detail.  They do what I call the 20 second screen.  The goal for this screen is to rule candidates out (not in) and get to a more manageable list of 20-30 resumes that they can examine in more detail and phone screen.  All you have is 20 seconds to make an impression.  Think about this:  it took you 20 seconds to read this paragraph.  In my FREE Webinar, I go in great detail how to make sure to get through this screen.  However, here are some tips to apply immediately:

Your resume needs to be structured so that recruiters can scan it quickly and the important pieces of information pop out at them. Here is an abbreviated version of how to structure your resume so the important things shine.

• Use Bullets. It is impossible for recruiters to scan a resume quickly if it is full of paragraphs. However, recruiters can quickly scan bullets for the pieces of information they are looking for.
• List most important accomplishments first. Recruiters only scan the first couple of bullets for each work experience. If your most important accomplishment is in the sixth bullet for a job, they will never see it.
• Use Bold & Italics with Precision – As a general rule, professionals grossly overuse bold and italics.  You need to think strategically about what words or phrases you want the recruiter to focus on, and only use bold on those terms.  The more that bold and italics are used, the less useful they are.
• Quantify Accomplishments. I go into detail on this below.

Quantify Accomplishments

Ultimately, everyone does one of three things in their job: Make Money, Save Money, or Improve a Process.

Technically if you improve a process, you are saving money but let’s not split hairs. Candidates that get the interview and ultimately land the job offer understand this and they do a fantastic job of thinking about and quantifying the value they bring their employers. So the first thing you need to do is to quantify your results. For example:

• Reduced supplier base by 31% resulting in savings of $4 million through design engineering and standardization
• Improved logistics route efficiency by 20% generating a cost savings of $2.6 million annually
• Grew sales territory from $600,000 to $1.4 million in eight months
• Streamlined audit process resulting $1.3 million in annualized savings

Now I know, this is where I start to lose people. They say “Jeff, that sounds great but in my job, I don’t do anything that I can quantify. I’m a truck driver or administrative assistant or a banker. I just do the same job every day.” I hear these comments all the time. Most people don’t think they can quantify any results from their job. And if I was a betting man, you are probably saying the same thing right now as you read this. But the good news is you do have accomplishments to quantify. You just need to change the way you think about your job.  Here is a real life example to give you encouragement.  If this college kid can quantify accomplishments, so can you.

A while back, I was helping a kid graduating college re-write his resume. He wasn’t getting any interviews and he figured his resume was the problem. He was a good kid but didn’t really have any professional experience yet. He did however have a summer job with an auto loan processing company. His job was to make copies of loan files all summer long. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I digress. Anyways, the reason he wasn’t getting any interviews was because his resume was not impressive and there were no results listed. I challenged him to quantify his accomplishments, but he was quite resistant. He said “Jeff, all I did was make copies all summer long. How the heck am I going to quantify that?” He was quite dejected thinking he was never going to land an interview. I like a challenge so I started quizzing him about his job. That is when the conversation got interesting.

Jeff the Career Coach: “I know all you did was make copies all summer but did you change anything about your job for the better?”

College Student: “Well now that you mention it, the process they had to make copies was really inefficient. I determined that if I changed a few things, I was way more productive.”

Jeff the Career Coach: “How much more productive?”

College Student: “I don’t know”

Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok, how many files per hour do you think you copied using the old process?”

College Student: “Probably 15-17 per hour”

Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok, and how many files could you copy with your new process?”

College Student: “I’m not sure but at least 24. I also taught the other employees that were making copies as well”

Jeff the Career Coach: “Great, how many employees were making copies?”

College Student: “Five counting me.”

Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok. One last question. How much did that job pay per hour?”

College Student: “$10/hour”

Ok, now we have something to work with. Let’s start at the beginning. He increased his and the team’s productivity from 16 to 24 files per hour, a 50% increase (The # of additional files: 8 divided by his old rate of 16). But that’s not all. He saved the company a ton of money.

Each person makes $10/hour and there were five of them.  That meant he saved the company $50,000/year (5 times $10/hour times 2,000 hours in a year* 50%). Why did he save $50,000? Because now they can do 50% more work which means they could either eliminate half of the positions OR do 50% more files with the same amount of staff.

Remember, when this conversation started, all this college student did was make copies all summer long. Now we determined that he saved this company almost 2.5 his annual salary not to mention all the work he did in his normal job. With this new information, we changed the bullet on his resume.

Old resume:

• Made copies for auto loan files

New resume:

• Redesigned auto loan file process increasing efficiency by 50% and generating an annual savings of $50,000/year.

Each of these bullets describe the same person. However, after reading it, which candidate would you want to interview? If a college student that spent a summer making copies can find a way to quantify his accomplishments, so can YOU!!!

 

 

Please join me for FREE webinar on How to Really Find a Job on May 22nd 12:00pm EST.  Space is limited and there are only 20 spots left.  Space is given on a first come basis.  Don’t risk getting shut out and sign up today while there is still availability.

• How to TRIPLE your Job Interviews
• My secret and controversial strategy to GUARANTEE your resume is in the final five
• A simple process that can help figure out YOUR key words in 15 minutes
• A technique to identify & quantify your accomplishments
• How to find hidden jobs
• The truth about recruiters and ways to maximize your results with them
• How to grow your LinkedIn network to 20 million people in ten minutes
• And much, much more

Free Webinar CLICK HERE TO REGISTER   There are only 10 6 slots left.  Make sure you hurry to reserve your seat.