Resume Mistakes
1. Structure
Do you know how long you have to make an impression on a recruiter? 20 seconds. That’s it. 20 short seconds. Why? Recruiters get hundreds of resumes
for an opening. They can’t possibly look in detail through each of
those hundreds of resumes. So to make their job more manageable, they
first look to rule candidates out (not in) and get to a more manageable
list of 10-20 resumes that they can examine in more detail.
STOP!!! That took you 20 seconds to read what I just wrote. Do you think your resume made a good enough impression to get through the first cut? I’m betting not. Doesn’t sound fair does it? How can a recruiter possibly see all the great things you have accomplished in 20 seconds? The short answer is they can’t. But we live in the real world, not the perfect world. But just because the odds are stacked against you, doesn’t mean you can’t win.
It starts with structure. Your resume needs to be structured so that recruiters can scan it quickly and the important pieces of information pop out at them. Here is an abbreviated version of how to structure your resume so the important things shine.
Technically if you improve a process, you are saving money but let’s not split hairs. Candidates that get the interview and ultimately land the job offer understand this and they do a fantastic job of thinking about and quantifying the value they bring their employers. So the first thing you need to do is to quantify your results. For example:
A while back, I was helping a kid graduating college re-write his resume. He wasn’t getting any interviews and he figured his resume was the problem. He was a good kid but didn’t really have any professional experience yet. He did however have a summer job with an auto loan processing company. His job was to make copies of loan files all summer long. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I digress. Anyways, the reason he wasn’t getting any interviews was because his resume was not impressive and there were no results listed. I challenged him to quantify his accomplishments, but he was quite resistant. He said “Jeff, all I did was make copies all summer long. How the heck am I going to quantify that?” He was quite dejected thinking he was never going to land an interview. I like a challenge so I started quizzing him about his job. That is when the conversation got interesting.
Jeff the Career Coach: “I know all you did was make copies all summer but did you change anything about your job for the better?”
Each person makes $10/hour. However, they cost the company a lot more because the company need to pay for benefits, taxes, etc. A good rule of thumb is a 40% increase (remember that number). Therefore, the cost to the company for that person is $14/hour ($10 for wages and $4 for benefits & taxes). On an annual basis, each employee costs $28,000/year ($14/hour times 2,000 hours). Also there were five of them, so the cost for all five was $140,000/year ($28,000 times 5). Now, he increased their productivity by 50%. That means he saved the company $70,000/year ($140,000 times 50%). Why did he save $70,000? Because now they can do 50% more work which means they could either eliminate half of the positions OR do 50% more files with the same amount of staff.
Remember, when this conversation started, all this college student did was make copies all summer long. Now we determined that he saved this company almost three times his annual salary not to mention all the work he did in his normal job. With this new information, we changed the bullet on his resume.
Old resume:
Armed with this knowledge, it is time to go through your experiences and ask yourself how you Made Money, Saved Money, or Improved a Process. It might seem hard at first, but if you ponder these questions, you will surprised at what you find. By the way, I go through all of this in great detail in my webinar series.
What I do promise is I won’t hammer you with spam and crappy content. That’s just not my style. If you are still not convinced, I will make one last guarantee. If after reading The Resume Secret, you don’t think it is one of the best pieces of job search advice you have ever received, email me at jeff@jeffthecareercoach.com, and I will send you a personal apology for wasting your time. No automatic response. No email from my executive assistant. I will take time out of my busy day to personally write an apology to you. That’s how strongly I feel about the content in the Resume Secret.
So here’s what happens next. Fill out the form below. After that, you will receive an email confirming your email address is valid. If you don’t see it in your inbox, check your junk folder. Click on that link to confirm and the report will be yours.
STOP!!! That took you 20 seconds to read what I just wrote. Do you think your resume made a good enough impression to get through the first cut? I’m betting not. Doesn’t sound fair does it? How can a recruiter possibly see all the great things you have accomplished in 20 seconds? The short answer is they can’t. But we live in the real world, not the perfect world. But just because the odds are stacked against you, doesn’t mean you can’t win.
It starts with structure. Your resume needs to be structured so that recruiters can scan it quickly and the important pieces of information pop out at them. Here is an abbreviated version of how to structure your resume so the important things shine.
- Use Bullets. It is impossible for recruiters to scan a resume quickly if it full of paragraphs. However, recruiters can quickly scan bullets for the pieces of information they are looking for.
- List most important accomplishments first. Recruiters only scan the first couple of bullets for each work experience. If your most important accomplishment is in the sixth bullet for a job, they will never see it.
- Put your most recent work experience first. No one wants to read what you did twenty years ago. And if you put that on the first page, you are just cutting into the twenty seconds a recruiter is going to spend on your resume.
- Quantify Accomplishments. I go into detail on this below.
2. Quantify Accomplishments
Ultimately, everyone does one of three things in their job: Make Money, Save Money, or Improve a Process.Technically if you improve a process, you are saving money but let’s not split hairs. Candidates that get the interview and ultimately land the job offer understand this and they do a fantastic job of thinking about and quantifying the value they bring their employers. So the first thing you need to do is to quantify your results. For example:
- Reduced supplier base by 31% resulting in savings of $4 million through design engineering and standardization
- Improved logistics route efficiency by 20% generating a cost savings of $2.6 million annually
- Grew sales territory from $600,000 to $1.4 million in eight months
- Streamlined audit process resulting $1.3 million in annualized savings
A while back, I was helping a kid graduating college re-write his resume. He wasn’t getting any interviews and he figured his resume was the problem. He was a good kid but didn’t really have any professional experience yet. He did however have a summer job with an auto loan processing company. His job was to make copies of loan files all summer long. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? I digress. Anyways, the reason he wasn’t getting any interviews was because his resume was not impressive and there were no results listed. I challenged him to quantify his accomplishments, but he was quite resistant. He said “Jeff, all I did was make copies all summer long. How the heck am I going to quantify that?” He was quite dejected thinking he was never going to land an interview. I like a challenge so I started quizzing him about his job. That is when the conversation got interesting.
Jeff the Career Coach: “I know all you did was make copies all summer but did you change anything about your job for the better?”
College Student:
“Well now that you mention it, the process they had to make copies was
really inefficient. I determined that if I changed a few things, I was
way more productive.”
Jeff the Career Coach: “How much more productive?”
College Student: “I don’t know”
Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok, how many files per hour do you think you copied using the old process?”
College Student: “Probably 15-17 per hour”
Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok, and how many files could you copy with your new process?”
College Student: “I’m not sure but at least 24. I also taught the other employees that were making copies as well”
Jeff the Career Coach: “Great, how many employees were making copies?”
College Student: “Five counting me.”
Jeff the Career Coach: “Ok. One last question. How much did that job pay per hour?”
College Student: “$10/hour”
Ok,
now we have something to work with. Let’s start at the beginning. He
increased his and the team’s productivity from 16 to 24 files per hour, a
50% increase (The # of additional files: 8 divided by his old rate of 16). But that’s not all. He saved the company a ton of money.Each person makes $10/hour. However, they cost the company a lot more because the company need to pay for benefits, taxes, etc. A good rule of thumb is a 40% increase (remember that number). Therefore, the cost to the company for that person is $14/hour ($10 for wages and $4 for benefits & taxes). On an annual basis, each employee costs $28,000/year ($14/hour times 2,000 hours). Also there were five of them, so the cost for all five was $140,000/year ($28,000 times 5). Now, he increased their productivity by 50%. That means he saved the company $70,000/year ($140,000 times 50%). Why did he save $70,000? Because now they can do 50% more work which means they could either eliminate half of the positions OR do 50% more files with the same amount of staff.
Remember, when this conversation started, all this college student did was make copies all summer long. Now we determined that he saved this company almost three times his annual salary not to mention all the work he did in his normal job. With this new information, we changed the bullet on his resume.
Old resume:
- Made copies for auto loan files
- Redesigned auto loan file process increasing efficiency by 50% and generating an annual savings of $70,000/year.
Armed with this knowledge, it is time to go through your experiences and ask yourself how you Made Money, Saved Money, or Improved a Process. It might seem hard at first, but if you ponder these questions, you will surprised at what you find. By the way, I go through all of this in great detail in my webinar series.
3. Resume Secret
If you thought the first two tips were good, this one will blow you away. I call this one the Resume Secret. It is the absolute key to getting any interview you want. I will give this game-changing tip for free. All you need to do is fill out the form below and I will give you access to this special report.Why do you need my email address?
Let’s be candid with each other. You are looking for help to write a great resume and ultimately land your dream job. I am the #1 expert in the world at job search Visit My Bio. I am not one of these sites that only dangles great content but never delivers. I will give you a lot of great stuff for free. I only ask for three things in return. First, your email address. I have to be able to send it to you and the only way I can do that is with your email address. Second, if you like the content on this site, tell your friend s about it. And finally, after I have delivered a lot of great stuff, I will invite you to attend one of my paid webinars. At that point, if you think it’s worth spending a few bucks to land your dream job, great. If not, you can still enjoy all of the other great free content on this site. I think it is a fair deal. What’s the worst that can happen? You get a few emails from me that you don’t want? You can always hit the delete button or unsubscribe from our email list.What I do promise is I won’t hammer you with spam and crappy content. That’s just not my style. If you are still not convinced, I will make one last guarantee. If after reading The Resume Secret, you don’t think it is one of the best pieces of job search advice you have ever received, email me at jeff@jeffthecareercoach.com, and I will send you a personal apology for wasting your time. No automatic response. No email from my executive assistant. I will take time out of my busy day to personally write an apology to you. That’s how strongly I feel about the content in the Resume Secret.
So here’s what happens next. Fill out the form below. After that, you will receive an email confirming your email address is valid. If you don’t see it in your inbox, check your junk folder. Click on that link to confirm and the report will be yours.
