When you're trying to land your dream job, sticking to resume "rules" can hurt more than help. In fact, many of these rules can be completely ignored.
Many of these resume myths have become so buried in our understanding of the world that we are terrified to deviate from them. We think that if our resume spills over two pages, our application will be an instant write-off. We think that if we leave a job gap, we are setting ourselves up for failure.
In reality, breaking these rules can often give us the edge we need to make sure the interview matters so much Supercharge Your Next Job Interview With These 11 Free Tools Supercharge Your Next Job Interview With These 11 Free Tools It Takes Skill to Land an Interview . There are a plethora of apps out there that will help you improve your job interview skills. Let's take a look at each step of the interview process. Read more.
When we get down to basics, a resume is a sales pitch. You are trying to sell yourself to a potential employer.
One of the first rules of writing is to focus on the customer and the benefits they will receive if they buy. A potential employer wants to know how he can help the company, much more than where he went on gap year. This is the difference between narration and for sale .
Narration: I worked as a data analyst with E-Corp for six years. I was in charge of a team of six people, managing multiple projects..
For sale: As chief data analyst, I managed a team of six people. Between us, we developed over 300 scripts in less than 4 years, which were directly responsible for saving the company over $4,000,000.
Telling people where you worked and what you did is important, for sure. But it is much more important to express what you have achieved and the transferable skills and potential benefits you can bring to your next role. In the example above, for example, a prospective employer would be excited at the prospect of having someone on their team who could save the company millions of dollars. This is the importance of including measurable results on your resume.
So for everything you write on your resume, ask yourself. “How can the potential employer see my experience as a potential benefit to them and their company??” . If they can't, rewrite it so they can.
A few years ago, job site The Ladders did a study that suggested we only have 6 seconds to impress with our resume, otherwise your application will be thrown in the trash.
Luckily, it turns out we shouldn't rely too heavily on that 6-second stat. According to statistics published by CareerBuilder, only 17% of recruiters will see your resume for less than 30 seconds. While 68% will look at your resume for two minutes or less… “Less than 2 minutes” Obviously not ideal for anyone spending time on their resume. But it's much better than 6 seconds, and it means you can rest easy knowing that more of your resume will be considered than other people would have you believe.
In short, there are no rules here. Creating an average figure is useless, as it was for Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour average. The 10,000 hour rule is wrong. How to really master a skill The 10,000 hour rule is wrong. How to Really Master a Skill Malcolm Gladwell gave us the 10,000 hour rule. It turns out that the rule is wrong. Here's the science on how you can master a skill much faster. Read more . If your resume format looks terrible, it could be discarded in two seconds. But if you have a well-formatted resume How to Get Your Resume Past the Applicant Tracking System How to Get Your Resume Past the Applicant Tracking System Nine out of ten large companies now use a robotic applicant tracking system to assess your resume. We help you avoid your judgmental algorithms with simplification and keywords. Read More
A resume should say what it has to say. No more no less. It should not include fluff, or sections that are irrelevant. But that doesn't mean it should fit perfectly on a single A4 page. In fact, unless you're out of school or applying for an entry-level position, it's going to be almost impossible to fit everything on one page.
Fortunately, this advice comes from a time when resumes were printed, and thumbing through stapled pieces of paper was a hassle. Pages can now be scrolled with the swipe of a finger. Employers just want easy access to the information they seek. So give it to them. To learn even more about this, read How Ivy League Colleges Recommend You Write Your Resume How To Write A Resume With The Help Of 8 Ivy School Guides How To Write A Resume With The Help Of 8 Ivy School Guides Trying to build the perfect resume? Check out these free resume tips from some of the best schools that make up the Ivy League. Read more.
This means that your resume will likely run on two pages, sometimes even three. If it runs on the last page for only a few lines, play around with the formatting or trim some long sentences (use the Hemingway app for this) to remove that page. But if your resume takes up a third or more of the last page, leave it as it is. Nobody is going to punish you for that..
Remember that the people who decide whether or not to interview you are people . Yes, you want to get past the company's applicant tracking system How to get your resume past the applicant tracking system How to get your resume past the applicant tracking system Nine out of ten large companies now use a robotic tracking system of applicants to evaluate your resume. We help you avoid your judgmental algorithms with simplification and keywords. Read More Applicant tracking systems are very good at looking for suggestions that someone will be a good candidate. But they are rarely trusted to find reasons why someone would be a bad candidate. For that, you (hopefully) need a human touch.
This means that if you were out of work for 6 months taking care of a sick child, that is completely understandable. If you went on a road trip 4 months after you got laid off, good for you. These employment gaps are a part of life and something employers expect to see.
If you want to build on the experiences you had during your spells of unemployment, as mentioned above, be sure to phrase them in a way that sells you for the specific role. Explain why your volunteer work will help you contribute more to the company. Explain that your 4 month downtime has left you more eager to take on a challenge than ever before.
If you find yourself applying for a large number of jobs, use a browser extension like Applied.at to keep track of all the roles you've applied for. You can go back to these and copy and paste relevant paragraphs (like why it didn't work between 2013-2014) into new apps to save you time.
If you want to stand out, Stunning PDF Resumes 15 Free Creative Resume Templates for Photoshop and Illustrator 15 Free Creative Resume Templates for Photoshop and Illustrator An amazing app can be the first step to landing your dream job. We've compiled the best free professional resume templates for Photoshop and Illustrator. Some packages include cover letters and business card templates. Read More But in the past, many people have advised against sending resumes in PDF format.
His reasoning was that PDFs can be difficult for applicant tracking systems to search for keywords, so your resume could be discarded before it's been reviewed.
But times have changed. Katharine Hansen, PhD wrote on the career blog Quintessential that “more than one-third (36.1 percent) of employer respondents in the 2010 Orange County Resume Survey said receiving resumes electronically prefer as PDF files” (emphasis mine). This is probably because PDFs retain their formatting, no matter what screen you're viewing them on. They're just... a more enjoyable experience.
Six years later, and file formats are an even smaller problem. It is the content of the resume that is important. Much more than how it is stored. If you want to save your resume as a PDF, go ahead. In the vast majority of cases, this will be fine.
That said, always do your homework. Check the racing page where you found the position to see if they prefer a certain file format. And if you're working with an agency, it's almost always best to use a Word document so they can more easily edit your resume on your behalf.
By understanding which rules you can break, it should be much easier to stand out from the crowd. Don't be afraid to send a two or three page resume. Don't worry about your work gaps..
As long as you keep your resume nice and full of relevant The information you are selling to a prospective employer is doing the right thing. All you have to worry about is overcoming your interview anxiety. 3 Tips That Will Eliminate Job Interview Anxiety 3 Tips That Will Eliminate Job Interview Anxiety The hardest part of landing a job is often the job interview. These three tips will help you get out of the process unscathed and with a new job. Read more.
What other resume myths should be debunked? And they actually contain some water.?
