Is your resume a hot mess?
What if resumes were people? Think about it. You might as well call your resume a person, as it is YOU on paper. Your resume is like your first introduction to a decision-maker. Now that my infallible logic is clear, let’s say your resume is a hot mess.
Let’s keep it clean – a hot mess is not always a derogatory term, so no need to send your children away to read the rest of this article. Among its definitions, the urbanite term is used to describe a person whose thoughts are in disarray, while maintaining an air of attractiveness – easy on the eyes, but confusing to the brain. If your current resume is a hot mess, it’s time to give it some thoughtfulness.
This is what you want to happen: a hiring manager to pick up your resume and not only think it’s pretty, but also smart – a resume they’d be proud to bring home to Momma, or their boss.
To make your resume outshine others, you need to figure out what you want to do first. What kind of jobs are you looking for? Why are you a match for that kind of job? Then, do some research. Go on the job boards and find actual jobs you think you’re perfect for. After reading through some of your favorite ones, see if your resume has some of the keywords that are in the job ads you’ve identified. Take note of those keywords that need to be in your resume.
If any of those keywords don’t make any sense to you or they just sound nice, I’d advise that you don’t include them in your resume. Imagine being asked during the interview about that big, impressive term and fumbling through your words trying to elaborate on how it relates to your experiences. Now think of how compromised (cheap) you’ll feel after your meeting abruptly ended within a few minutes with no promise of a future call.
Now that you have your keywords, I guess you can take the easy way out and just dump them into a section in the resume and hope the candidate tracking software used by employers picks up on them. They will, but when the employer sits down with the resume (let’s say under candlelight to set the mood) to see what it says about you, the attraction is gone after realizing that it’s just a hot mess. Coldly without care of your resume’s feelings, the employer moves onto another potential match – one with visual appeal and lots of character and brains.
This is not to say that that you don’t have any brains, but if your resume doesn’t really say much about you, then a busy hiring manager just won’t take the time to see if there is more behind the pretty resume.
Dumping keywords in a special section doesn’t show how they are relevant to your career. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for a keyword section in a resume because it does help with electronic screening employed by many companies today. But, eventually a person is going to read your resume to find out if you truly are a match for their company.
If you throw keywords in your resume hoping to show that you’re a good catch without really knowing what the words actually mean, then that awkward moment you wish to forget about can be relived. You know – like the time you nodded in agreement to something someone said among friends without really knowing what he or she was talking about; then being asked what your thoughts were on the topic.
It’s time you put some bones to the keywords you use in your resume and show potential employers why you put them in your resume in the first place. It’ll take some planning, but think about how your selected keywords need to be placed within the content of the resume itself, not just the keyword section.