subject: Why You Really Need Effective Resumes and What They Should Do – It's Not What You Think [print this page] Why You Really Need Effective Resumes and What They Should Do It's Not What You Think
Everyone from your friends to the overpriced job-search coaches will tell you that if you want to land a good job, you have to write and send out hundreds of effective resumes. Yes, that's often true. But if you don't know exactly why you're producing all those resumes, they won't be effective.
So, what, precisely, is the purpose of a well constructed resume? If you said, "To get me a job," then you'd be pretty far off the mark. The purpose of a resume is to pre-sell.
And that means its primary purpose is to get you an interview where you do the real selling. And make no mistake it all boils down to salesmanship. But before you can even begin to sell the product (yourself) you've got to grab and hold the attention of the potential buyer (your prospective employer or, more likely, the person hired for the tedious task of making the first review of all those submitted resumes) and make that buyer want to learn more about the product. You have to be able to make that person want to be sold to.
And that is exactly what your resume should do. But just how does it do that?
First of all, an effective resume has to be more than a mere list. And that's the hard part because a resume is, in fact, a list a list of past jobs, high-school and college degrees, abilities and skills, awards and accomplishments. All of that is, of course, necessary, but it can be enormously boring. So a good resume has to be more than that.
Further, a killer resume one that gets the interview has to have the proper packaging. This includes physical formatting on the page, resume style (e.g., chronological, functional, hybrid), ordering of listed points, level of diction, illustrative examples, and so on. Here's an analogy that may help.
Suppose you go to the supermarket to buy a new breakfast cereal. You know what general kind of cereal you like, so you go to the appropriate section of the cereal aisle and scan the boxes. It's the package that box with the gaudy (or subdued) colors and large picture and attractive name that first grabs your attention. So, then, you pick up the box and read the sales pitch and the ingredients. If it really appeals to you, then you take it home and give it a try. And this is exactly how effective resumes function.
The third and related point is that a great resume must be custom tailored to fit each specific position/job you're applying for. Generic, one-size-fits-all resumes just don't cut it anymore (if they ever really did). You will need to consider the specific position, salary level, size of applicant pool, education and skills required, as well as a host of other impinging factors. Different jobs call for different resume styles and different ordering of listed information.
The problem here, though, is that custom tailoring a resume to closely fit each position you want to apply for can run into tons of extra work involving many hours of re-writing. But most of us don't have the time or the energy to do all this extra work even though it's essential and necessary when we're deep into a job search, especially if we're already working. So what's the solution?
