PART IV OF IV IN THE “RESUME WRITING TIPS – THE PERFECT RESUME TEMPLATE” SERIES

In the previous post in the “Perfect Resume” series titled, “RESUME WRITING TIPS – THE PERFECT RESUME TEMPLATE” – PART III: YOUR PERSONAL BRAND & PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY’S THAT CAPTIVATE RECRUITERS” you learned how to stop Recruiters in their tracks through a thoughtful, compelling, and creative Professional Summary and Tagline. Next, we’ll update your job search so that you work smarter, not harder.

There are two ways to go about your job search, the old way and the new way.  In this final post, we’ll discuss both approaches, and tie everything we’ve discussed together giving you a complete picture of how you should approach your job search and why you should implement this method now, whether you are passively reviewing opportunities,  or actively pursuing a new job.

THE TRADITIONAL JOB SEARCH: SELLING UMBRELLAS ON A SUNNY DAY

When you were a child, did you ever have to sell things or raise money for a school charity by going door-to-door?  If so, then you know the pain of “push” selling, where you have to convince someone to do what you want against natural inertia or resistance. Ever walk past someone who was trying to stop you to get you to contribute to their cause.  Here in San Francisco, I get approached daily whenever I pass in front of the Apple store in my neighborhood, be it by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, or other cause du jour.  I too have done intercepts to gather marketing intel in front of stores, so I know how hard this can be.  This type of engagement is tantamount to selling umbrellas on a sunny day; you are trying to disrupt normal patterns of behavior and convincing people to give their attention to something that is not a pressing need at that moment.

This is essentially what most people do when it comes to their job search; they send a general purpose resume to the Recruiter and expect them to translate that resume to the needs of the requisitions they are filling. Even if the candidate submits a resume tailored to the role, they are still “pushing” a resume, trying to disrupt the normal patterns of the Recruiter, which is to actively search for the “perfect” candidate.

Let’s talk about an alternative, smarter approach that goes with the proverbial flow of how a Recruiter fills requisitions.

THE SMARTER JOB SEARCH: GIVING AWAY UMBRELLAS ON A RAINY DAY

Now, let’s imagine that you are giving away umbrellas on a rainy day, not only that, but you are giving them away in front of the people’s houses who don’t own umbrellas and are hence, your perfect target customer.  Let’s just say your business will be VERY successful.

We want to do the same thing with your resume (the umbrella) and the recruiters hiring for your target positions (the umbrella-less customers on a rainy day).  And here’s how we’ll do it.  We’ll hone your resume to be tightly aligned with the needs of your target job type, say Engineering, Product, Sales or Marketing, using the Keywords that recruiters are searching for (which we discussed in Part I on Keywords). We’ll make sure we focus first on the stage of the job search funnel that makes the most sense (Part II: Data-driven Job Seeker). Next, we’ll craft a Professional Summary on our resume and a Tagline on our LinkedIn Profile that entices recruiters to dig deeper into our carefully crafted career arc story (Part III: Professional Summaries). The last component has increasingly become more important in this data-driven world.

YOUR SUCCESS STATEMENTS – SAY IT WITH A BULLET

The majority of recruiters in our “Expert Recruiter Round-up” stressed the importance of candidates quantifying their successes in previous positions. In other words, what was their BUSINESS IMPACT? How did they move the needle? Was it by driving revenue or cutting costs?  Did they increase efficiency or develop a new product or revenue stream? The logical location on your resume to list your successes is in your employment history.

For each position in your work history, you will have:

1. Heading row – company name, your job title, company location (city, state), dates of employment
2. Responsibilities – paragraph that details what you did in that role descending in importance from the top
3. Success Statements – 2-5 bullets that quantify your successes in that role that impacted the business

Here, we are only going to talk about Success Statements due to their extreme importance. 

Again, your Success Statements should include quantified measures of your successes and impact to the business. Additionally, they should use one or more of the following: milestones, KPIs, measures, dates, time periods, dollar amounts, percentages or absolute values. Here’s a few examples of quantified successes:

1. Launched company from seed to 2,000+ customers, achieved consistent 30% MoM growth, and built a compelling data driven story for investors resulting in $7MM series A funding
2. Decreased CAC by 85% & increased conv. rate from 2% to 3.5% leveraging a/b testing
3. Strategized partner/content/SEO strategy that delivers 6,000+ unique, new monthly visitors
4. Mapped customer journey (touchpoints, channels & comms.) that delivered a 72 NPS

Every role in a company is filled to serve a business need. Success Statements are your opportunity to show how well you’ve lived up to the needs of your previous roles. If you’ve exceeded sales quota’s three quarters in a row or made the President’s Club, here’s your chance to show them off.

The better your Success Statements, the more likely you will receive a screening call by a recruiter, so take some time to perfect these, after you have fixed higher priority items on your resume.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE “RESUME REVIVE + THRIVE” CHALLENGE

We’ve covered a LOT in the “Perfect Resume” blog series. As I’m sure you can see, it takes a lot to hone your resume to the point where it consistently gets you recruiter screening calls without fail. But there’s no reason that you need to start from scratch.

It has taken me several years and hundreds of iterations of my Resume and LinkedIn Profile to get to the point that I am today, where I attract several great job inquiries per week from my LinkedIn Profile and almost without fail get a recruiter screening call for every online job application that I submit. But perhaps you want to get results faster than I did, and that’s why I have created the “Resume Revive + Thrive” CHALLENGE.

The “Resume Revive + Thrive” CHALLENGE is the FASTEST way to significantly improve your resume in the absolute LEAST amount of time. And best of all, it’s free!

Get started now by clicking the ribbon image below:

EXPERT RECRUITER ROUND-UP: THE PERFECT BOOST FOR YOUR “RESUME REVIVE + THRIVE” CHALLENGE

After you’ve signed up for the “ Resume Revive + Thrive” CHALLENGE “, check out the “Expert Recruiter Round-up” where you’ll learn even more great tips from nationally recognized recruiting all-stars. Why take my word for what makes the “Perfect Resume” when you can hear it directly from the gatekeepers themselves. Yeehaw! Let the Round-up begin!

PART III OF IV IN THE “RESUME WRITING TIPS – THE PERFECT RESUME TEMPLATE” SERIES

In the last post titled, “RESUME WRITING TIPS – THE PERFECT RESUME TEMPLATE – PART II: THE “CAREER PLANNING BLUEPRINT” & THE DATA-DRIVEN JOB SEEKER” you learned the importance of being a data-driven job seeker, and each stage of the job search “funnel” that you need to advance through to progress successfully in your job search. As part of this funnel, once you get your resume or profile in front of a Recruiter’s eyes, you only have ~6 seconds to catch their attention before they move on. Crafting an eye-catching Professional Summary at the top of your resume is your one chance to coax Recruiters deeper into your experience, skills, and successes. You had better get it right, and after reading this article, you’ll have the intel you need to stop Recruiters in their tracks and even make an unforgettable connection.

WHAT MAKES THE “PERFECT” RESUME TEMPLATE?

By now, you may be starting to wonder “what makes the perfect resume?” as the title of this series indicates. We’ve already covered some critical aspects, but let’s go through all of them from a holistic perspective.

1. Do you have the requisite skills & experience
   1. Keywords that align with searches
   2. Content that scores high in (gets past) ATS filters and bots
2. Is your resume appealing to humans
   1. Does your desire for this job make sense in your career arc
   2. Properly formatted – no grammatical, spelling or formatting errors
   3. What separates you from the masses

We’ve covered #1 by integrating the proper Keywords in “Resume Writing Tips – The Perfect Resume Template – Part I: SEO, Keywords, & Bots. Oh, My!” Using a Career Planning Blueprint we can ensure that our career arc makes sense, which we covered in “Resume Writing Tips – The Perfect Resume Template – Part II: The “Career Planning Blueprint” & The Data-Driven Job Seeker.” Now, the next two items are more aligned with your Personal Brand, which we’ll cover next.

ARTICULATING YOUR “PERSONAL BRAND” TO SET YOURSELF APART

First, let’s talk a little bit about your Personal Brand. While we won’t get into the minutiae of what makes a “brand,” for simplicity, we’ll define your Personal Brand as everything you do that represents you, including the style of elements, fonts, layout, colors, images and language you use in your resume, LinkedIn Profile, blog, posts, presentations, social media sites, etc.

If you haven’t given much thought to your Personal Brand, perhaps now is a great time. You want to create an image that reinforces the position that you are pursuing. You want to create parity between all of your online presences, to present a consistent theme, quality, and experience to everyone with whom your brand touches.

WHY YOU MAY WANT TO SANITIZE YOUR ONLINE PRESENCE FIRST

60% of employers view social media profiles of candidates. What is your social media profile saying about you, the job candidate? If you haven’t viewed your Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn profile through the lens of a hiring manager, please take a few moments now to do so. Then, integrate a few of these tips to improve your job search using social media.

Now, you have already started on the journey to hone your Personal Brand. Remember this is not a one-off; your Personal Brand is built over time and across all of the touchpoints that Recruiters and hiring managers will have on your job search journey. Therefore, moving forward, you will keep your Personal Brand in mind as you create more content on the wild, wild web.

YOUR PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY/TAGLINE AND WHY IT MATTERS

OK, you’ve bypassed several hurdles in the job search quest, and you’ve got your resume in front of a Recruiter’s eyes. It’s the moment of truth. Your objective is now twofold:

1. Reinforce your product-market fit for the role
2. Set yourself apart from and above the competition

You’ve crafted your past employment experience to align perfectly with the job for which you are being considered, but we need to use the top of your resume to entice them to look deeper. We do this through the “Professional Summary.”

The Professional Summary is your executive summary at the top of your resume, and it includes a sentence that highlights your years of experience, discipline, and highly relevant experience. Think of it as a (generally) one-sentence elevator pitch that highlights the key attributes that a potential employer or Recruiter would need to qualify you for a position. We’ll also re-purpose this one sentence as your “Tagline” for your LinkedIn Profile, albeit limited to 120 characters as this is the limit set by LinkedIn.

Your Professional Summary and Tagline should include these four elements:

• Desired or current profession and years of experience
• Relevant skills
• Degrees (e.g. MBA), Certifications or professional memberships
• Industries

Each of these keystone elements is an opportunity to include high-value Keywords that Recruiters may be searching for. While not all of these elements may make sense for every opportunity, it provides a good blueprint upon which to build your own Professional Summary. Here’s just one example of a Professional Summary:

CMO, MBA & Mechanical Engineer with 13 years experience launching SaaS startups, scaling predictable growth, and hitting revenue targets in Enterprise FinTech, and Healthcare.

Just below this, we include a bulleted list of our “Offering,” or the strategies and tactics we plan on implementing in our new role to hit the ground running. Again, this is an opportunity to integrate high-value Keywords near the top of our resume or profile for the search algorithms, bots, and Recruiters, but it also demonstrates initiative on what we’re excited to bring to the table when we are hired. Here’s an example of an Offering:

• Develop a growth strategy, execute hands-on tactics and build an agile marketing team
• Leverage analytics, A/B testing and experimentation to demonstrate ROI of initiatives
• Implement a lead-to-revenue marketing automation process, with content and analytics
• Partner with cross-functional teams to rapidly scale successful, high-visibility growth projects, programs and campaigns across new and proven digital channels

Notice the abundance of skill set specific Keywords riddled throughout, and a theme for each bullet: 1) hands-on tactics and building a team. 2) testing and measurement. 3) marketing automation and content. 4) cross-functional collaboration

Combined, the Professional Summary and Offering deliver a powerful introductory statement that greets Recruiters within the first few seconds of reviewing our resume. Remember, Recruiters are most likely reviewing hundreds of resumes and profiles every day, so you only have a few seconds to capture their attention.

INFUSING YOUR PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY WITH YOUR PERSONAL BRAND

While the examples above cover the “blocking and tackling” fundamentals, the purpose of this blog series is to give you that edge that puts you ahead of your peers and makes you standout from the crowd.

Your Personal Summary is the perfect canvas on which to showcase your Personal Brand. What is it that makes you unique, memorable or an invaluable employee? It could be a special skill, such as being a charismatic speaker, or it could be a cause, such as volunteering or only wanting to work for socially responsible companies. Infusing this passion will make your resume more memorable, which could mean the difference between getting a call, versus ending up in the circular file. Here’s an example Personal Brand statement:

Nonprofit Director with 9 years of experience fundraising in the childcare services field, making a difference one adoption at a time

Can you see how this could create an unforgettable latch point that separates your resume from the masses?

While you may choose to integrate this in your Professional Summary, you have the opportunity to integrate an emotive Personal Brand statement in your LinkedIn profile in the Tagline, but within only 120 characters. Here’s an example LinkedIn Tagline that drew compliments from several Recruiters and created a memorable bond:

Head of Marketing – Acquisition (SEO, PPC) & Engagement; Startup on the Inside, Enterprise on the Outside

Take a few moments and reimagine your Professional Summary and Offering bullets and integrate your Personal Brand statement. Then monitor your performance and feedback, and watch it improve over time. If it doesn’t improve, then you may need to iterate taking a different creative angle.

CONCLUSION

By now you understand the importance of crafting your resume to appeal to both machines (ATS bots, SEO) and humans. You also understand that the Professional Summary and Tagline are but a glancing opportunity to catch the Recruiter’s attention and leave an indelible mark in their memory. Make the most of it following the tips in this post and infusing your Personal Brand.

In the next and final post in this series titled, “RESUME WRITING TIPS – THE PERFECT RESUME TEMPLATE – PART IV: GET RECRUITERS TO PURSUE YOU!,” we’ll talk about how to structure your past experience to reinforce your value through your quantified successes (this was the #1 common request from Recruiters interviewed in our “Expert Recruiter Round-up”) and finally how to wrap everything up together to get Recruiters to pursue you! You’ve come this far, don’t procrastinate, read Part IV in the Perfect Resume Template series!