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 aLOT 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!