Why so many resumes get the silent treatment
Remember the time you rushed your resume off to apply for that job that fit you perfectly but you never heard from them? Did you every wonder why? Do you know why some resumes seem to get all the action while the majority go straight into the trash can or worse, to the bottom of the bird cage? Consider this: Hiring managers report spending no more than an average of 15 seconds scanning an individual resume to determine if any deserve a second look. Most do not get read at all.
If you spend the time putting together your version of a good resume, you at least want the hiring manager to give it more than a cursory review. But how do you accomplish that? If you do not know, don’t feel bad because many of those in the resume writing business do not know either. They continue to miss the essential necessities for putting together a resume that gets results. Here is why. They start in the wrong place and with the wrong assumptions.
The WRONG place to start is with your background and what you have accomplished. No way! Start with the skill-set the organization is looking to acquire. You can figure that out with little difficulty by reading the position description, visiting their web site or talking with someone in the organization.
The WRONG assumption is that your resume is about you. It is not. It is about the hiring organization and the problems they are trying to solve by paying talented people like you to come work for them. Your job (or that of your resume) is hone in on those problems in such a way as to show yourself as the ideal candidate.
Let me give you the top five things to do when writing your resume and the order in which you should do them. Take note: three of the five focus on the employer and not on you.
- Be clear about what kind of job you are looking for.
- Identify organizations that have the jobs you want and are hiring now or in the near term.
- Do research on the industry these organizations belong to and the kinds of problems they face.
- Carefully review job ads and position descriptions to understand the problems and issues hiring organizations are looking to solve by filling the position you are interested in applying for (companies hire because they have some need. your job is to figure out what those needs are before putting your resume together).
- Start thinking/ constructing your background in the context of the problems hiring organizations are trying to solve. in describing your background be sure and use the same words they use to describe their issues.
The secret to building an attractive resume is to make sure the reader can quickly and easily see that you have the ability/experience to solve the problems they have. This requires a translation between your background and their needs. And the most effective way for this to get accomplished is for you to do the translation for them. Never, never, never, leave the translation to the hiring organization to figure out.
Too many of the resumes I see are obviously put together by people who have fallen victim the “wrong place/wrong assumption” malady which all but guarantees their candidacy will not survive the 15 seconds they have in front of the hiring manager.
I expand on these concepts in my audio CDs and work books which you can find here, as well as on this blog. The messages do not change however. Even with what you know after reading this, you can begin to build a resume others pay attention to.
Rusty Weston, Founder and Chief Blogger over at www.myglobalcareer.com recently featured an article entitled “How Resumes Find Black Holes.” I thought our readers would find it useful to know they are not the only ones who send in resumes and never hear back. But once I had a chance to really think about it, I realized that the black hole for resumes is not much of a mystery at all.