Responsible for handling 50+ client calls per day.
Exceeded sales goal by 7%.
Trained 5 junior team members on compliance procedures.
In an effort to be as truthful as possible, has your resume ended up being kind of, you know, boring?
While it’s obviously incredibly important to be honest in your
resume, that doesn’t mean you can’t spice it up and highlight certain
skills over others. In fact, there are plenty of ways to slant an
experience to your advantage or more creatively describe your
responsibilities to a particular hiring manager.
For example, you’ll often find job postings that stress soft skills
like teamwork or communication. You can add these traits to otherwise
stale bullets, which can help you seem not only more qualified, but also
more interesting.
To illustrate this, here’s a little exercise. Let’s say your original resume bullet is this:
Developed framework for globalization initiative to improve the sharing of institutional knowledge.
Here are five different ways to describe the same project, each
emphasizing something different: impact, teamwork, communication,
independence, and motivation.
1. If You Want to Show: Impact
Whether a job posting lists this as something it’s seeking or not,
it’s always a good idea to stress the impact you were able to make in a
particular area of your work. Hiring managers, after all, always want to
hire people who have a track record of making things happen.
To do this, try stating the results of your work explicitly, using numbers if possible. In this case, we’ll point to just how much you improved the sharing of institutional knowledge:
Developed a framework for company-wide globalization initiative
to improve the sharing of institutional knowledge, improving efficiency
of weekly communication and eliminating 50% of all-staff meetings.
2. If You Want to Show: Teamwork
This is another skill that almost every hiring manager wants, but
you’ll see it emphasized in some job postings—if, say, you’ll be working
on a small or close-knit team—to a larger extent.
To show your affinity for teamwork, try including the number of team
members you worked with on a particular project. This is also helpful
for projects on which you assisted but feel uncomfortable taking full
credit for in your resume.
Collaborated on a team of 4 to investigate existing business
communication practices in order to develop a framework for knowledge
dissemination to support the company’s new globalization initiative.
3. If You Want to Show: Effective Communication
Almost all work-related responsibilities or projects include some
component of communication and, likewise, almost all job postings seek
strong communicators.
The key here is to make a point of highlighting this often-overlooked
part of your day-to-day activities. To do so, use verbs like
“presented,” “liaised,” “wrote,” “drafted,” and “communicated.”
Liaised with senior leadership and sought feedback and input
during the development of a framework that improves efficiency of
company-wide communication, ultimately cutting unnecessary all-staff
meetings by 50%.
4. If You Want to Show: An Ability to Work Independently
Many job postings will seek this, but even if a job posting doesn’t
explicitly call for the ability to work independently, it’s a good idea
for you to have some bullets focusing in on what you did specifically to
contribute to a larger project. It can look suspicious if you keep
referencing participation in a group, and not your own work.
Managed implementation and deployment of company-wide wiki as
part of an effort to improve communication across departments, leading
to a sharp reduction of unnecessary all-staff meetings.
5. If You Want to Show: Motivation
Motivation may seem like a soft skill, but for many positions in
sales or at startups, it’s a nonnegotiable. And you better believe
recruiters are combing through resumes trying to glean some information
about how motivated a candidate might be on the job.
To get this trait across, take the initiative to show initiative.
Initiated the development of a framework to improve the
efficiency of company-wide communication after a group analysis of
current business communication practices suggested areas of possible
improvement.
Conclusion
A resume can be a really dynamic document if you put in the effort and
try not to get boxed in too much by thinking about your jobs as just
what your responsibilities included. Whenever you’re ready to apply for a
job, first look at the job description and highlight the points and
skills that seem important. Then, look at your resume with fresh eyes,
and consider how you can better incorporate the skills you’ve pulled out
from the job description.
That, my friends, is what career counselors mean when they tell you to tailor your resume.
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