Will Your Resume Pass the 6 Second Once Over?

Six seconds. That’s how long recruiters spend on average reviewing your resume. Here’s the video to prove it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBu7y9ShGaU. It doesn’t seem fair considering all of the hours you spend deliberating over each word choice and tweaking it to the nth degree, but that’s the harsh reality. The reason being, of course, that recruiters review thousands of resumes and are quite adept at spotting a good candidate at a glance.

I love helping my students and clients improve their resumes to more strategically position themselves for the job/career they want. Now I would like to share my top ten resume tips with you!

1. Due to the overwhelming number of resumes they receive, recruiters have the luxury to choose candidates who are as close to being an exact match as possible. Prove you’re an exact match by using plenty of key words from job descriptions and using them frequently throughout your resume. I tell my clients that your resume should “scream” what you’re all about at a glance. I recommend asking a friend to look at your resume to see what it screams to them. If it doesn’t match your career goal, then you need to revise it until it does.

2. Use bolding to draw the recruiter’s eye to those things that you want to emphasize. For example, I was just working with a client who wanted to transfer from the banking industry into market research. We decided not to bold the names of the banks on her resume because they were presenting her as a banking person and chose instead to bold her titles because they contained the key words (data, analytics, strategic) for the positions she was seeking.

3. Change your Summary or Profile at the top of the resume each time you apply to a job to match the key words from that specific job description.

4. Use a headline at the top of your resume in big bold letters that quickly conveys your key qualifications:

Proven Sales Results ● Relationship Builder ● New Business Development

5. Change the title of the generic word “EXPERIENCE” to one specific to your field such as “FINANCE EXPERIENCE.”

6. Break your work experience up into RELEVANT EXPERIENCE and then ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE so that you can push to the top of your resume only those experiences that are relevant to the job you’re applying to. I worked with a client once who wanted to transition into the real estate industry but she had no work experience in that field. However, she had been president of her condo association for several years so we decided to put that under her RELEVANT EXPERIENCE.

7. Use borders and shading to separate sections of your resume. They will make your resume look professional and visually appealing.

8. Use all capital letters for major headings and company/university names, etc. This might seem like a trivial point, but as someone who has critiqued thousands of resumes, I believe it makes a big difference in making your resume look more professional and powerful.

9. Reorder your bullet points to start with the ones that are most relevant to the job you’re applying to and demonstrate your strongest accomplishments and qualifications.

10. Put your accomplishment at the beginning of your bullet point:

From: Conducted five in-person sales calls per day to prospective technology clients to promote new software line resulting in the procurement of 10-15 new clients per month.

To: Procured 10-15 new clients per month by conducting five in-person sales call per day to prospective technology clients to promote new software line.