Is your resume just a list of past employment and accomplishments, credentials and educational background? Does your resume feel choppy, going from one section to the next with no flow or overarching goal?
That is why many career professionals are stressing the need to think deeper and tell a story with the resume. The idea is to give a sense of progression, movement and development in a person’s career, to tie things together with a theme.
The ultimate goal of your resume is to display your value proposition in the hopes of getting hired. This gives the resume more impact, makes it a more compelling read, reveals more about the applicant as a person. It’s about creating a narrative that will pull the hiring manager in and capture his or her attention. Here are some ways to accomplish that.
Professional Summary
The average hiring manager will likely only take a few seconds to see if your resume deems further review. With that in mind, it should draw attention to the most compelling information.
A professional summary to start your resume can offer a quick glimpse into who you are as a professional. You can do this with a few bullet points – outlining your communication and language skills to show how well you communicate, showing your skills that apply to this specific job. The key here is to give thorough statements about what you can do and what you’ve accomplished in previous positions.
Use Accomplishments to Tell a Story
Many job candidates simply list their previous positions along with their duties and responsibilities. This does little to tell who you are. Plus, hiring managers will know what your duties were from seeing the job title. Rather, you need to focus on your accomplishments – what you achieved in those jobs. Give evidence and support those achievements with examples, quotes and data.
You can portray these accomplishments in the form of a story. To do this, you want to describe a problem or challenge you faced, giving needed context or background. Explain what action you took to resolve the problem or surmount the challenge, and then finally explain what results you achieved.
Spotlight the Most Noteworthy Information
In a resume, because hiring managers generally spend so little time with each document, you should make sure the result or achievement stands out the most. This can be done by reversing the order and begin with the result or achievement first, then outline the problem and actions taken. Alternatively, you can use text effects to highlight and separate your bullets describing the results, or use the professional summary area to give your accomplishments their own space.
At Opti Staffing, we work to learn the stories of all of our job candidates, building relationships with them based on honesty and respect, so we can match them with jobs that fit their skills and experience. Contact your local branch today to learn how we can assist your job search.
