“You need a resume to get a job!”
It’s been drilled into our psyches over the course of high school and college. Having the perfect resume can feel like an “all or nothing” exercise and if you don’t get it right, you are doomed to unemployment for life. We do realize that while a resume is an opportunity for you to show people all of the great experience you have, conveying that information in a way that successfully markets your skills and experience is a totally different story. The reality is that you need a resume to get a conversation with the hiring manager or recruiter but that doesn’t necessarily translate into you getting a job. That’s even more pressure, right? Your perspective of a resume can affect the way you market yourself.
Changing your perspective starts with a different definition of what a resume is. We define a resume as
“A tool in your job marketing toolkit that summarizes your contributions, impact, results, and accomplishments within various positions, with a mission to achieve your career goals while increasing your knowledge, skills and development.”
What does this mean? It means you’ve done some great things and you always aim for continuous growth in the process. One of our founding mantras is “if you are not learning, you are not growing.” One of your goals in life should always be growth in any endeavor you encounter whether personal or professional. We believe that the moment you stop seeing growth, it should be your cue that it’s time to move onward, upward and forward. You should be able to see this progressive growth in your resume.
When you approach your resume from this perspective, your focus would be on what you bring to the table. Focus on
- What value (even if you equated it to your salary) do you (did you) bring to this organization and
- What did the organization get in exchange for the investment they made in hiring you?
If you think about it, writing your resume is almost like writing your bio in the 3rd person. It can feel weird doing that, but it’s another person’s point of view as it relates to the value you bring to a job. It’s what other people will read about you. This perspective can be difficult for some people because they are not sure how others see them.
An exercise we suggest to clients is to create a self-survey and send it out to at least 10 colleagues, family members, close friends, mentors and other people you trust. The kinds of questions you are asking are all based on your personality, your level of professionalism, your work ethic, your strengths, your perceived weaknesses (we call these potential strengths) and how people would describe you to someone else. This is the kind of information you will include on your resume, convey in an interview, communicate on your Linkedin profile (you can also use recommendations in the same way), and in all of your job marketing tools. Here is an example of a self-survey if you’d like to get an idea. Simply recreate the questions in another free tool such as Survey Monkey, Google Forms or other tool you’d like to use. Please feel free to revise the questions, add more questions (though you shouldn’t do more than 10) and/or rearrange them as you see fit. These are just some ideas to spark your thinking. You can also choose to send the questions in an email or select just two of the most important questions to you and send through something like FB Messenger, Instagram DM, or Linkedin message. Whatever way is most comfortable, use that method.
Set aside some uninterrupted time to really dig into your job duties and responsibilities for each position you’ve held as well as your current position. Take a look at these two articles here and here for additional guidance and a great method to complete this exercise.
Remember that your resume is only one tool in your job marketing toolkit so don’t stress over it too much. You are talking about yourself from a different point of view and that’s the point of view that’s most attractive to hiring organizations.
Need a second opinion about how your resume reads from an employer’s perspective? Click here to send your resume for a free resume review (feedback by email).
