If your resume is dull, it doesn’t matter how perfect you are for the job — hiring managers will never know how great you are if they’re not blown away by your first impression: your resume. Hiring managers looking at the resume for less than 1 minute each means yours needs to be interesting in order to get even a small chance at an interview. So how do you take your resume from boring to impactful? Here are a few tips from HR thought leader and “Michel Jordan of Hiring” Dr. John Sullivan. The main point: Focus more on content and less on pretty formatting… Show your effectiveness, skills, and leadership abilities, as proven in your past organizations. Dr. Sullivan has 30 tips for how to do that… Here are 6 important ones:
- $$$$ talks … Use dollars whenever possible to quantify your accomplishments.
- Skills used … Say not only what you did but what skills you used to do that.
- Leadership … If you led teams — either formally or informally — make sure to mention it.
- Ideas … If you proposed a new innovative initiative, talk about it.
- Future Forecasting … Show that you’re forward thinking. Show a time you forecasted future events.
- Presentations … Did you write and present projects? Explain your project and audience.