You Need to Make Some Changes to Your Resume

I won’t beat around the bush, my friend. Your resume could use some work. It doesn’t do a good job of selling you to potential employers, which is sad because I think you’d be an amazing hire! Don’t worry though, I’ll help you out. If you take these 3 pieces of advice to heart, your resume will be killer.

1. Your resume is supposed to be a marketing brochure

You’ve probably been told that a resume is supposed to be a factual representation of your qualifications and employment history that maybe you’re allowed to stretch a bit to make yourself seem more qualified. The faster you understand how wrong that is, the faster you’ll be able to juice up your resume. A resume is meant to sell you to employers and nothing else.

I read your resume, and you were obviously more concerned with presenting a complete picture of yourself than selling yourself. Alot of the skills you have on your resume don’t even seem relevant the jobs you’re applying to. You also have those skill competence descriptions, showing that you’re only minimally competent at one of the skills you listed. How does that help sell you? Don’t give an employer an easy excuse to cut you from the candidate pool!

2. Use an active voice throughout your resume

Employers want go-getters, so why do you talk about how you “helped create” that one thing, or “was responsible for taking care of” that other one? You sound weak and tired. You “made” that thing and “took care” of that other thing and “created” that last one! Don’t be afraid to take ownership over the things you’ve accomplished, and don’t be afraid to take pride in even the small accomplishments. Employer love that s***! Speaking of which…

3. Tell me about “why”

You talk a lot in your resume about what you did, but not how it helped the company. All your experience bullets should be in the following format:

I [HOW MY WORK HELPED THE COMPANY] by [WHAT I DID].

For example:
- I regularly kept our customers happy and satisfied by fulfilling their orders in under 90 seconds.
- I improved conversion by 20% by redesigning our checkout flow to have one less click
- I signed 20 new customers per day, beating the sales team daily average by 10%

I can see you scowling at me right now. “I didn’t have measurable things I did. I was a frickin’ receptionist! I was reading the news half the time!” Well then…

• I decreased churn and improved membership rates by enthusiastically answering the questions of everyone that walked through our doors.
• I kept our patients satisfied by answering all their questions related to billing, insurance, and appointment scheduling.

I guess what I’m telling you is…

Your resume needs tangible takeaways. It should convey who you are as a person, even if that’s just a simple, “I will do whatever it takes to succeed at my job.” At the end of the day, your resume won’t be the thing that gets you hired — it’ll be your interview. Your resume is the thing that’ll make an employer say “I want to meet this person,” and you know what, I think you’re worth meeting. You’re the kind of person who made it all the way through this dry article, so you’re driven and willing to do what it takes to succeed. I hope this helps you land your next gig. Good luck!