Create Your Resume Experience
To write about your past effectively, it is important to get into the right mindset. That mindset is not to dwell on past accomplishments or failures, but rather to focus on the job you are going to get and the successes you are going to have. Here are three tips to getting things done right:
1. Focus on the way your past applies to the present opportunity. Reading over the job description, and highlight places where your skills match up with what the employers say they need. Present yourself as the solution to the employer’s problem of a vacant position.
2. Quantify your experiences. As you talk about your past, don’t be afraid to use numbers and get specific about the types of work that you’ve done. Share details about customer loads, cash amounts managed, or the size of your team. This separates you from other bland applicants.
3. Highlight the impacts of your efforts. This is especially true where your efforts positively impacted the bottom line, customer satisfaction levels, or overall efficiency. Employers like to see examples of workers who can get results.
Using these tips, you should be able to get past any writer’s block to effectively write your resume experience section.
How to Optimize Your Resume Experience
Just like an online website, when you optimize your resume experience, you convert more casual scanners into serious readers. It is also much more likely that your application will result in an interview. Raising the number of times you get through that first hurdle – out of the stack and into the interview room – helps you have more options for your next job.
The first step is to evaluate your resume with a critical eye. To do this, compare your resume with the official description for the job in question. Are you using phrasing that matches up with the key skills that the employer requests? If specific experiences are required, have you mentioned your personal history in that area explicitly? Make additions, reorganized, or remove information as needed.
Words for Resume Experience
The next step is to ensure that you are not using clichés, tired metaphors, or buzzwords that will set the hiring department’s teeth on edge. You can use “HR’s List of the 197 Words You Should Not Use on Your Resume” available free from resumedictionary.com as a guide to what words to avoid when describing your resume experience.
Finding the right words for resume experience sections can be challenging. Which phrases are the magic words that ensure that your application isn’t tossed in the trash? What words will catch employers’ eyes and get you invited in for an interview?
Many of the keys are found in the employers’ job description. Many candidates overlook these keys. They focus on showing off their personal visions, lauding their past accomplishments, and trumpeting their own horns. This is not the way to endear yourself to an employer.
Focusing Your Resume Experience
Instead of focusing on yourself, it is better to focus on what the employer needs. Make your personal brand appeal to their interests. To find the right words, take the original job description and any official statement of corporate values. Working with a highlighter or pencil, circle, or otherwise mark key phrases that jump out at you from the documents.
Looking at your list of highlighted phrases, check your existing resume for those same words. As you talk about your experiences, do you use the same words as your future employer? If not, think about other phrasing you might use that would resonate with the employer. By speaking their language, you separate yourself from the pack and make yourself seem like a member of the team who would really fit in at the company.
It may seem simplistic to choose words to meet employers’ vocabularies, but harried and stressed recruiters are looking for a strong fit. By speaking in terms they recognize and understand, the decision to extend an interview invitation to you becomes an easy one for your future employers.
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Flat Fee Recruitment:
Said on May 9, 2011
Articles with informative content like this are nothing short of magnificent. ...