Five Keys to a Great Resume!

I hope that you are all having a great week.  I started out the week discussing the biggest mistakes that people make on their resume.  You can read this here:

Five Biggest Resume Mistakes

As promised I’m following up with the most important aspects of what should be on your resume.  Please remember that resume writing is an art form and many people have different theories about what works.  These are my thoughts and I’m to hearing your thoughts as well!

1.  Your Resume Should be Action Oriented

This one is something that is really important.  It’s kind of like in English class when you are taught to write with an active voice instead of a passive voice.  The description of your tenure at a job needs to show what you did and how you did it.  Since I work in insurance I’ll be giving examples from this industry with a typical insurance sales person.  A non action oriented description would be:

• Prospected for new clients

What a waste of space on your resume. This gives me nothing new that I didn’t already know from your title.  Instead you should write:

• Generated $150,000 in commission revenue in first year through active prospecting

When writing in this tone you should be using words like achieved, accomplished, gained and engineered. 

2.  Your Resume Should be Clear and Concise

This is so important.  I’ve been told that people that read resumes have an attention span of seven seconds when looking at a resume for the first time before they move on to something else.  Work with me here and count to seven in your head.  That is how long you have to make an impact on someone to read more about your background.  Because of this your resume has to be easy to read.  The best way to do this is to change how you think of your resume.  It is not a piece of paper that encompasses your entire job history.  Instead you need to think of it as an advertisement designed to make companies want to talk to you.

My wife teaches a Microsoft Office class and in one of the units they talk about PowerPoint and how an effective slide should follow the six by six rule.  What this means is that no slide should have more than six bullet points and each bullet point should have no more than six words.  I’m not saying that this should be the exact philosophy you should follow with your resume but the concept is correct.  Pick the most important achievements from your jobs to share on your resume and use an economy of words.  If you see anything on your resume that even remotely resembles a paragraph – work on it.

3.  Your Resume Should be Relevant

When you are applying for a job your resume should include information that is relevant to the job and to your career.  There are a lot of competing theories out there about the benefits of a chronological resume versus a skill themed one.  I’m OK with deviating from the Chronological as long as it doesn’t look like you are hiding something.  Regardless of the format though I think that it is important to change what you share about yourself on a resume to match the position you are applying for.  You should always keep your greatest accomplishments but do what you need to do to make yourself the most attractive candidate as possible.

Bonus tip here.  Some things are simply not relevant after a certain period of time.  If you graduated college more than five years ago and have had two jobs I would say that you should drop all of your college activities off of your background unless they directly relate to the position.  The same goes for high school.  If you are in a type of position that values volunteering and community involvement – like sales then you should definitely have your associations on there.  If you volunteer and it doesn’t relate to your career at all you should leave it off.

4.  Your Resume Should be Easy to Read and Scan

This is something that people really mess up on.  Your resume should look great aesthetically.  Take a look at your resume and ask yourself.  Does it look pretty? 

• Make sure that it is uniform and that you use bold face in the same places. 
• Make sure that your information is indented the same way
• Make sure that the appropriate information sticks out

Another trick is to shut your eyes and then quickly open them looking at your resume.  What is the first thing you eyes are drawn to?  If it is your name you have a problem.  You want them to be looking at your experience.  Just remember in this area that if you resume looks like it is a chore to read then people will just hit the delete key.

5.  Your Resume Should Include Basic Information that is Expected

This one seems like a no-brainer but many people  are simply told bad information.  When you apply for a job you are asking for someone to reach out to you.  Why then would you make it difficult to contact you?  Make sure that you have your name and cell phone number on your resume.  I often times get resumes from people that don’t put their phone number on their resumes – I get paid to source people so I take the time to email them and ask for a phone number.  I’ll then ask why they didn’t put their number on there and they tell me that they didn’t want a bunch of phone calls about jobs – sounds pretty stupid right.  I can guarantee that someone that works for a company that prefers to call people over emailing them will delete resumes without a phone number and move on.

Other information you should put on there is your address.  A lot of people assume that because the US Postal Service is a dying industry that your address doesn’t matter – the company isn’t going to mail you something, right?  Wrong!  If you don’t put your address on your resume companies assume you are hiding something like a long commute or that you don’t actually live in the area.  The morale of the story is that companies expect that you have specific information on your resume.  Some other information can include:

• Full name
• Dates of employment
• Company names
• Education
• Licenses if you work in an industry that requires them

Many times people don’t share this stuff because they don’t think it is important.  It probably isn’t important information however; the issue is that companies expect to see it.  Don’t put yourself at a disadvantage because you are smarter than everyone else.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today!  Have a great weekend and I’ll have some more thoughts for you next week!!!

As always feel free to leave comments or email me at sthompson@insurance-csg.com.

Check out some of my recent articles on the blog here:

Year in Review

Five Dumbest Mistakes You can Make in an Interview

Five Things Employers Do in the Interview Process that Suck

The Four Skills that Every Insurance Account Manager Needs to Succeed in Their Career

So You Got Fired…  What Do You Say in an Interview?

Five Things You Should Know When Working with a Recruiter

Five Reasons to Look at Making a Move in 2012

Self Defeating Job Search Moves

Forward Emails:  The Silent Job Search Killer

Six Biggest Challenges Faced by Insurance Producers

Four Keys to a Great Reference

Answering the Salary Question

The Four Worst Interview Tips