Get Noticed! The One Thing You Should Be Doing to Update Your Resume
5 MINUTE READ
There are a million creative ways candidates are presenting their resumes these days. With access to beautiful templates off Etsy, resources and articles online that guide you (like this one!), you can even hire someone to write your resume for you. But let’s not forget, according to online job search site The Ladder a Recruiter spends on average 6 seconds looking at your resume before moving onto the next.
So how you do you get noticed in 6 seconds? Think about the very top of your resume, presumably where the Recruiter will look first - your professional summary. This is the perfect, 6 second snap shot of who you are and what you’ve accomplished…so you better make it count.
According to Harvard Business Review, here’s what you need to do:
Write a different summary for each job application: You want to tailor your summary to address the responsibilities of the open position, this will make it easy for the Recruiter to connect the dots and know you are qualified.
Focus on specific results: Be specific and include data, for example if you are an HR professional and you have improved employee engagement by 20% then highlight that! Stay away from general terms in the summary.
Include the industries and types of organizations you have worked in: If you are applying within the same industry you certainly want to draw attention to this, if it is a new industry highlight the cross functional skills you learned in your current industry and how it applies to the new one.
Avoid generic terms: Instead of claiming you are “results driven” include compelling data that proves your point!
Check out the link for specific examples of strong professional summaries, this update is well worth your time.
Forward by Alisha Adams, Co-Founder of Talent Lab