Powerful Resumes: The Critical Details for Getting Job Interviews

Powerful Resumes: Are you sending out dozens of resumes and not getting job interviews. Here are some resume basics that will increase the power of your resume.

Truth and Accuracy

Lying or stating inaccurate information on your resume can cost you an interview. Furthermore, lies can live forever. Six months into the job, your employers might call you out or even fire you for lying to them about the things you put in your resume.

Often hiring managers and recruiters know whether your resume is accurate without even speaking with you. Experienced recruiter’s, especially those who specialize in your field, have the knowledge and can access additional facts on the accuracy of your resume.

Hard Skills versus Soft Skills – Facts versus Opinions

Skills come in two categories: hard skills and soft skills.

Hard skills examples:

Skilled database developer: I created the first-ever, company-wide database of clients.
Skilled website developer: I can code in HTML, css, PHP, and JavaScript. I am the company’s webmaster.

Soft skill examples:

Versatile
Intelligent
Conscientious
Loyal hardworking

As a recruiter, I view a simple list of soft skills of little value. Stated without substantiation, soft skills are just puffery. A list of soft skills shows a lack of thought about the compelling and persuasive power of your resume. To me as I recruiter, powerful resumes describe what you have done, not what you think of yourself.

However, soft skills are important to an employer. During the interview, the best hiring managers will ask you for examples that illustrate your soft skills. Here are two examples of how a candidate who has the soft skills of an effective communicator can illustrate those soft skills.

Served as the company spokesperson to the press, radio, and television.
Edited the company’s monthly newsletter.
Wrote the copy for the company’s annual report.

Stating an Objective

At one time, stating an objective at the top of their resume was common.

However, stating an objective is often a waste of wording in a document that must grab the reader’s attention immediately and hold the reader’s attention. As a recruiter, I am less interested in reading some general objective than I am in seeing whether you are qualified for a job. Like most recruiter’s, I spend just a few seconds reading a resume to decide whether to keep it or toss it. Although I want to match applicants with the jobs they want, I first want to see if they can land that job.

On the other hand, when people do include an objective statement, they can give it meaning by making it specific to the job for which they are applying.

Sample:

Objective: To apply for the program manager vacancy at your company.

Powerful resumes get straight to the point of your skills, accomplishments, and qualifications.

Grammatically Perfect

Seeing grammatical errors on resumes frustrates me as a recruiter. Suppose I have a perfect candidate. I am excited to present a resume to a client. But I have to stop, contact the applicant, and get a corrected copy of the resume.

Be careful about using grammar that is non-standard in U.S. correspondence. One case in point is failing to use the Oxford comma for words in a series. Here is an example of omitting the Oxford comma. “Two amateurs, Chef Francois and Chef Diego prepared our meals.”

Here is the same sentence with the Oxford comma. “Two amateurs, Chef Francois, and Chef Diego prepared our meals.”

Here is a bullet point illustration in a resume.

I increased sales, reduced costs, and expanded market share.

Powerful resumes contain standard U.S. grammar.