The resume. It is your ticket to the interview table. Maybe.
The resume is a required document. But much of the conventional wisdom about the resume is from a world that has passed.
Think about it. The standard resume of today is much the same as the resume of 50 years ago. Sure, there have been a few changes. E-Mail addresses. Cell phone numbers. Fonts and formats. Hard rules about keeping it to one page, ordering it chronologically, and including activities and interests have survived for half a century. Why?
Imagine your job search is taking place in the 1970’s. Forget for a moment that when it comes to business, there are mostly males in that picture, and a fashion sense that has thankfully transitioned into museums and memes. Think about the role of that resume and how each of the parties relied on it.
The resume was everything. It was your ticket into an interview. The people who were doing the hiring read your resume. They read hundreds. They read your cover letter. Your ability to put your entire employment worth on two pages of high-quality paper stock was probably 80% of the decision to bring you in for an interview. Oh, and you had to be able to type well also. No mistakes. No white-out either. No computers or printers. There were 2 fonts. Just a typewriter and maybe a trip to the copy shop.
If you were lucky enough to get into that interview, the interviewer probably read through your resume line by line and asked you questions. If you didn’t stumble too much, maybe you survived that round, met with some higher-ups and got hired. Or maybe not. One thing was certain though. Your resume was a make-or-break document. It meant nearly everything.
What has changed in those 50 years?
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Bring Your Thinking About Resumes to Present Day
First, very few resumes are read by the hiring team. Back in the day they had to be one page, because humans had to read them. When you were in that interview room, a single page was the most practical method for getting your full story at a glance.
Resumes do not have to be 1 page anymore.
Today, the resume you submit electronically to your prospective employer is scanned and scored. It is mined for keywords and key phrases, language that matches requirements in the job description, or qualities and competencies that are prioritized by the employer. Once about 80% of applicants have been electronically eliminated, a Human Resource specialist may review the rest. After this round of screening, 10% or less of applicant resumes will be passed along to the hiring manager or team. These resumes will be read in detail. So, for a typical opening in the business world, only 1 out of 10 resumes will actually see the light of day.
Whatever application you use for your job searches, your resume or profile are scanned for matches to openings. You can probably view a job opening and instantly see that you’re either a strong or weak match to that job. That means you need strong general attributes in your resume to match a broad variety of job postings, and you also need to customize your resume to specific job postings if you are applying directly to a company. Don’t assume that your beautiful resume will play equally as well with all audiences. Be flexible and tailor it to the opportunity you are pursuing.
Understand the Reason for Your Resume
Second, the resume’s primary purpose is to get you into the interview. That’s it. Your objective is to get yourself into a conversation with the hiring team. A seat at the table. Once you are in the room, your resume has done its job. You can no longer simply show up and answer questions about everything you wrote on your resume. It does not work like that anymore. You must bring more to the interview table.
Do your research on your prospective employer. If they are a public company, get a copy of their annual report. You don’t have to memorize their financial statements. But you should enter the room with basic knowledge about the company and its performance. Then do a deep dive into two areas in the annual report.
Strategy. Be conversant in their overall health as a company. How well are they doing? What growth phase are they in, and where is it trending. Gain a high-level understanding of the company’s overall business strategy and their positioning in the product categories in which they play. Are they focused on rapid growth, innovation, share capture, or defense? Are they in acquisition mode or looking to be acquired? Who are their competitors and what position do they occupy in their marketplace.
Risks. For me, this has always been the section I turn to first when I read a company report or a financial prospectus. What are the things that keep the leadership team up at night? These are all the macro threats and megatrends that have the potential to fundamentally change the strategy and operation of the business. You absolutely must have an awareness of these items when you sit for an interview.
Once you have an overview level understanding of these elements, avoid stepping into this trap. I’ve interviewed many candidates who have done a healthy amount of research on my company, then began to prescribe strategies and tactics that we should take in the marketplace. Or product innovations. Stop yourself. You don’t know enough. Instead, ask questions that demonstrate you’ve acquired high level knowledge about the company and want to know what the leaders are thinking about these topics. Remember that most of what you’ll ever know about the company is what you’ll learn once you walk through the front door as an employee. Be curious and studious in the interview. Don’t be overconfident about what you know so far.
Related: Interview Advice – For the Interviewers, not the Candidate
Make your Resume POP with Color
Third, a resume should communicate more than dates and facts. It should convey themes about who you are. Build some color into it. Don’t ask the hiring team to be a CSI detective.
Start with a personal statement. Place this just under you name and contact information. This is a declaration about who you are as a person. It should communicate what the hiring team and company leadership can expect from you in terms of character and commitment to the success of the company.
On my resumes, I liked to place my personal mission statement here…
“I am committed to my personal journey of enhancing the lives of others, through being my best and sharing myself.”
If you have a personal mission statement, place it here. If you don’t, this is your opportunity to construct a clear declaration of exactly who you are and what you’re all about.
Below the personal statement, I liked to place a single line with a handful of keywords or phrases that listed my core skills:
Leadership – Sales Management – Strategic Planning – Team Player – Innovator
Use this space to accomplish a couple of objectives. Help those electronic scanners by serving up the keywords they are searching for and give your interviewer a short cut to see what competencies they have found by bringing you in for the interview.
Then go a step further. Make sure that in each of your experience, education and other sections you are mapping your competencies to these keywords. If you’ve stated that leadership is a core strength, then the interviewer should be able to tease that theme out of your stated responsibilities and accomplishments in your work experience or your volunteer history. Each of the skills you listed at the top should pop from the color you are providing in your descriptions below. Make it easy for your interviewer to validate your stated competencies.
A Word About Social Media
Finally, your resume should map consistently to your social media footprint. Understand one thing. In 1970, nobody knew anything about you beyond word of mouth and the resume you placed in front of them. Today, prospective employers are checking you out. They are looking at your social media presence to see if who you say you are, is in sync with who you tell the world you are. Do not wonder about whether this is happening. It is.
Make sure your electronic footprint is attractive and consistent with the image you are trying to present in your job search. If your resume communicates integrity but your Twitter communicates that you are the MVP of Spring Break, you may have some cleanup work to do. Even though individual expression has become ubiquitous in the digital age, hiring decisions are still made by people, and getting hired is all about making a positive impression and demonstrating your qualifications. This dynamic will always lag behind the leading edge of acceptable public expression. That is not fair, but it is reality. Take control of your public persona. Make it work for you, not against you.
Related: What are You Becoming…Anything?
Get the Jump on Your Competition
The resume of today is still a powerful tool. It doesn’t dominate the interaction between employers and candidates like it did in 1970. But for the candidate who understands the new leverage points of the resume in the digital age, it can have even greater impact on decisions about who gets to the interview table and who does not.
You have that power. The power to communicate the essence of what you have to offer to a new employer.
Use your power. Get a seat at that table.
Lead well.
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