For Your Resume Success, Think Like A Professional Writer

It’s depressing, isn’t it? You sit there looking at your resume that isn’t getting the results sitting in your portfolio just waiting for interviews. But it’s just not happening for you. Why is that? Why can’t you get interviews? Stop the madness! Make sure your resume speaks volumes about what you have done in the past in a way that conveys you can accomplish that – and even more – for your future employer. There are tons of candidates who may have the same skill-set, but what you do with that knowledge makes all the difference in the world. If you’ve been working on your resume for what seems like forever, it’s time to step away for a bit. When you work on anything for too long of a period, you become ‘blind’ to its imperfections and your ideas become stale. Harsh, but true. Acknowledge your limitations. Even if you’re a talented writer, your resume can pose a challenge. That’s why there are so many professional writing services in business today. So if you really want to create your resume yourself, think like a professional. • Ask yourself the hard questions. This can be the most difficult part in writing your own resume. You have to dig really deep and brainstorm about your past accomplishments. Think not only about the obvious ones that you remember automatically; consider what may not have been huge in your eyes but had positive repercussions. • Add numbers to add punch. You’ve heard it a hundred times but it still holds true. The more you quantify your achievements the more impact it has on an employer. Include percentages, dollar amounts, anything that will make the reader stop and really read about your accomplishment. Also, if you accomplished something within a certain amount of time, that can also be useful. Stating that you decreased backorders by 75% in 3 months is a lot more impressive than accomplishing it in 12 months, don’t you agree? • If you get stuck, take a different approach. Professional writers can’t just quit and not complete a client’s resume if they hit a roadblock. They have to find another way to extract the information. One way you can do this is by going over old performance reviews. Some employers may offer you a copy and others may not. Attempt to get a copy from the Human Resources Department, if you don’t already have one. You may have forgotten about an achievement that meant big changes or improvements for the company. Writing your resume is no walk in the park. However, if you look at your work experience and achievements objectively and have plenty of patience and determination, you really can write a resume to impress.