Four Ways to Improve Your Resume

Yahoo lists four ways to improve your resume as follows:

1. Focused Objective
2. Keyword Section
3. Personal Branding Statement
4. Specific Achievements

My take on these is that #1 and #3 are a total waste of time and seem amateurish to me. I've never seen a good resume pull either of these off successfully. Besides, as an interviewer, don't I know what you're looking for (the position I have open)?

I whole-heartedly support #2 and agree with the article that so many people give lip service to this idea but don't do anything about it. Then again, there seems to be contradictory advice on exactly how to make your resume better equipped to be searched by a computer. Anyone have any concrete advice for the rest of us on this issue?

But the point I like the best is #4. Here's what they say about it:

Companies hire employees to be an asset to their balance sheet. That means your work involves helping a company either make money or save money. Think beyond your skill sets and job duties and think of as many ways as you can as to how you accomplish this.

For example, suppose you're a video photographer taping and editing weddings and special events. You take the extra step of performing all of your post-production work before submitting your final results. Your extra effort has saved your employer several hundred hours of additional work.

This translates into dollars saved by the employer and it's just this sort of achievement that must be on your resume. When you can, try to monetize, or put a dollar value, on your achievements. Our photographer example might look like this:

"Saved my employer over $6K in additional labor costs over the past 2 years by performing post-production work before submitting my final results."

By including several specific achievements where you've helped your employer make or save money, you separate yourself from your competitors and quickly gain the attention of your reader.

Exactly!

I can't tell you how many resumes I've seen that tell what the person has done in general terms -- probably 80% of all resumes I've looked at are this way -- versus specific, measurable achievements (or, as I call them, accomplishments.)

Want to know the difference between the two? Check out How to Write a Winning Resume where I give examples of both. The general listings are weak, don't really say much, and won't get you noticed. The specific accomplishments show you have done great things in the past -- which implies you can do great things in the future as well. Now isn't that just the sort of person every company is looking to hire?

For more of my thoughts on resumes, see these posts:

• How to Make a Minor Accomplishment into a Major Resume Success

• You Need a Great Resume

• How Long Should a Resume Be?

Comments

[Kevin]

Though not for a resume (for my annual review) I have a statistic that I did 20% more returns last tax season than the year before - in less time to boot. I assume this is something that should be detailed on a resume for #4?

[FMF]

Kevin --

Yes! Would you rather hire an average preparer or one that did 20% more returns in less time? And who would you pay more? :-)

[Kevin]

The "pay more" is what I'm after :)

[pink panther]

#4 raises a good point, especially for online resumes, since you're trying to show you have a track record of solving problems and achieving in your field, but this is precisely the sort of unstructured data that resume sifting systems can't grok.

[Denise]

I agree whole-heartedly. I work in HR and screen resumes for a HUGE organization, and have done the actual interviewing and hiring at a small one, and listing an objective can ONLY hurt you. I find more spelling errors there than anywhere else on a resume, and some people stupidly leave their objective unchanged from one job to another. You want to be a fireman? Lovely, but I am looking for underwater basket weavers so your resume goes in the trash, regardless of whether I'm going to read that you are the World Basket Weaving Champion of 2006.

Objective facts and measurables belong on your resume. Opinions, self-assessments, explanations, anything subjective goes on a cover letter or in required essays if there are any.

#4 will absolutely matter as soon as human eyes hit it, so best to include it. And even where I am, with over 5,000 new hires this year, all resumes are reviewed ONLY by humans, so don't assume it's all about the computers!

[Financial Course Blog]

This is brilliant! Never heard about this idea before but at one company I worked at some years ago I did the interviews and analysis of CV's and never met this but it's such a nice idea because it addresses a fundamental criteria for hiring and that is how much will a new person cost the company and how much will that person bring to the company.

With this you at least have an idea over how the person sees his actions in relation with the company financial evolution.

Thanks!

[Terry]

What if your objective is a menial job and you have way too much education for the job you're seeking?

[Spiff]

.4 Is good advice, however, it is not always possible. I've been working in the IT area as a consultant for over 8 years and 4 or 5 large clients and still, in most cases I had no access to metrics that would allow me to understand how much money I was generating (or wasting). I guess it will depende on your type of activity.