Tips for Keeping Your Resume Off the Reject Pile

Most people tend to think of their resume as an historical document setting out basic contact info along with their job history, but this type of cut and dry document will probably get placed on the reject pile.

Instead, you have to write it with the hiring manager in mind. You must ask yourself, what is the best way to get his or her attention? How can you get the hiring manager to notice you out of hundreds of other applicants?

Here are eight ways to get noticed:

1) Forget the objective statement

Unless you are just starting out or changing careers, it’s best to forego using an objective statement. Objective statements tell the prospective employer about what is important to you in a position and not what you can offer to the company.

2) List your job title immediately after your contact info

Make it easy for the hiring manager to figure out the actual position you are qualified for. Unless you make note of your desired job title, the hiring manager will assume that you’re looking for the last position you held.

3) Write an outstanding qualifications summary

This is the most important part of the resume and determines whether or not the hiring manager will keep reading. This is your opportunity to shine and sell yourself. Summarize your career, setting out 3 or 4 of your most important qualifications and accomplishments.

4) Backup the claims made in your summary statement

Support the statements you made about yourself in the qualifications summary by setting out how and when you accomplished those things in your job history. For example, a sales manager would demonstrate a “keen sales ability” by noting within one job description that he sold $2 million worth of widgets in 2008.

5) Quantify your accomplishments for each position using numbers, percentages and dollars

This will really help you to get noticed. Let’s say you were a manager or supervisor. How many people did you direct and manage? What is the size of the firm in terms of dollars? How many divisions or departments did you oversee? Did you increase productivity? If so, use numbers to impress your audience.

6) Find out what the actual requirements are for the job that you’re applying for

It’s a good idea to find out what the job you’re applying for entails and then demonstrate that you have the ability to perform those duties and have done those things in your past job history. For example, if you are applying for a meeting planner job, you will be required to have good customer service skills, be well-organized, be able to budget expenses, etc. The best resume will highlight how you carried out some or all of those responsibilities in your past jobs.

7) Do not make spelling and grammatical errors

Think about it - what does this say about you? This is practically the same as going on an interview with torn clothing, messy hair and dirty nails. Resume mistakes make a bad impression. It makes the reader think that if you are sloppy and careless on your resume, you’ll be sloppy and careless on the job. Read your resume carefully and check for errors; don’t just rely on your spell check. A great hint is to read your resume backwards; your eye is less likely to miss errors this way. Then, just for insurance, have a friend or two go over it to check for errors too.

8) Be sure to use enough key words on your resume

Just as the traditional resume should be designed to attract the human eye and attention; the electronic resume should be designed to attract the computer’s attention. Since your resume will very likely end up in a database; either when listing it on job boards or when a company scans your resume into their database, it is imperative to have enough keywords within the resume so that when the hiring manager accesses the database and performs a search, the resumes that use the most keywords will come up to the top of the list.

How do you find keywords for your position? For industry specific keywords, look at newspaper and job board advertisements for the position you’re interested in and take keywords from there. Also, look for similar ads at other companies. This will help you to see which keywords are showing up over and over again.

If you follow these eight steps, your resume will get noticed when you apply for a job and you will very likely be called in for an interview. The value of a well-targeted, well-written, concise resume cannot be overestimated.