Your Resume: It’s Not about You

Excuse me? It’s my resume, of course it’s about me.

Actually, it isn’t.

Back in the 90s, resumes started out with the all-important objective statement – the declaration of what you wanted to accomplish in your career. Your resume was all about you, your objective, employment history, education and maybe a few hobbies.

Times have changed. A resume is no longer an objective statement with a complete chronology of your past employment and job duties. It is a marketing document. We are marketing you to a potential future employer, and as any writer worth their salt will tell you, the first rule of writing is to know your audience. The modern resume is about the potential employer, and the goal is to position yourself as the perfect candidate for the specific position for which you are applying.

To edge out the competition, the pain points outlined by the position description must be addressed. Do they need a problem solver? Do they need to cut costs? Do they need to optimize efficiencies?

So how do you accomplish this?

Use the job description as your guide. Think of it as an open-book test. The employer is telling you exactly what he or she wants, now you just have to provide measured or proven examples of how you have achieved similar objectives in your career.

You may be thinking to yourself that you would like to apply to various jobs and prefer to have a more “generic” resume. However, over 98% of Fortune 500 companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to weed out candidates. That means that your application processing will be automated and ranked against a specific job description along with 100+ other potential candidates. Unfortunately, generic, untargeted resumes do not work.

Additionally, as ATS technology becomes more scalable, it has also become more accessible and affordable for small and medium businesses. Even if you are applying through a networking contact, chances are your resume will still be entered into an ATS. Every time you upload a resume, it is going into an ATS.

In short, to optimize your resume performance, it must focus on the potential employer. Make every resume strategy decision with your audience needs in mind, or contact me and let the professional write for you.