Resume Writing Secret: Always Do the Thinking for the Reader

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this until now.

But I was just reviewing an other-wise excellent resume from a prospective client for our Guerrilla Resumes service, and I culled this from the email I sent him:

When writing your resume, always do the thinking for the hiring managers who will read it.

That means you need to figure out — in specific detail — the highest possible value for the achievements you include on your resume. Let me illustrate with an example from an actual resume.

This bullet point is good:

• Achieved 99 percentile score from management

But it could be made better if you provide more context and are more specific about the value.

Why did you rank in the 99th percentile? Among how many people did you rank there? And why not say that you ranked in the top 1%, which is sexier — and means the same thing?

Very quickly, we can come up with something like this:

• Ranked in top 1% among 356 personnel for accuracy and productivity by management

See the difference?

If you force them to guess when reading your resume, busy employers will miss your true value. Every time.

So here’s a resume-writing rule to live by: Allow no unsupervised thinking by readers. Because, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.

Think this is a good idea? Wait until you see our new Guerrilla Job Search System DVD.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 12:59 pm and is filed under job search tips, resumes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.