How to Write a Resume like a Professional Even If You Are Not One

Every job seeker knows how to write a resume. It is however only the professional resume writer that knows how to craft a resume that is attention grabbing. You see, the real problem isn’t about writing a resume. It is recognizing that you have written a CV that is great and one that market ‘You’ compellingly to a prospective employer. Take Jane (a former employee in a company whose staff was outsourced to our company) for example. After doing a critique of her resume and informing her of my opinion about her resume being unappealing, she told me she did not think her CV was that bad. In point of fact she did not believe me at all. Believe me or not, she has remained stuck in a job she did not like and consequently frustrated and dejected. So much for her distrust for my professional opinion and advice!
In my over 25 years plus as a human resource practitioner I have had the benefit of scrutinizing thousands of resumes. Some were good, many bad and the greatest number outright ugly. What do you say of resumes of 6 – 8 pages packed with a whole lot of irrelevant information? Or generic CVs not targeted to a job on offer? Or what do you say about resumes without any compelling career summary? Of course they would suffer rejection from the hiring manager because they are not attention grabbing and if not they cannot win the job seeker any interview invitation. The objective of your CV is to win you the prospective employee an invitation for an interview and nothing more. What therefore makes a job searcher a perfect candidate such that he gets invited for interviews over and over again? It is by crafting an appealing resume that is appealing and devoid of errors. Ninety- five percent of job seekers however present CV’s that are replete with errors and therefore becoming barriers to their being shortlisted for interviews. Most job hunters often do not bother to go over their resumes to find out whether there are errors before submitting them. This is why they do not command a second look from hiring managers other than the initial consideration. So how do you then know when you have crafted an attention grabbing resume the way a professional would? How do you craft a resume that is attention grabbing and therefore worthy of selection for an interview? 1. Conducting Proper research on self and the company putting a job on offer: Your CV tells your professional story. Without you the prospective job hunter having substantial information on your attitude, skills and achievements how will you be able to match it with the demands of the job put on offer? Likewise without you the job seeker having substantial knowledge about the company putting a job on offer, how will you be able to match your personal details with the needs of the company? That is where the benefits of research on self and the company come into play. It makes you the employment seeker identify those skills, attitude and accomplishments which otherwise might have been hidden. Likewise the job hunter will be able to identify those needs of the company putting the job on offer that otherwise might have been hidden. Matching the needs of the company with your skills and accomplishments and crafting a relevant and appealing CV will always win you the desired interview. Your resume must therefore be targeted to the job on offer and not generic. 2. Avoidance of irrelevant and inadequate information in your resume: This is another vital blunder employment seekers often make that prevent them from writing an attention grabbing professional resume. Ninety percent of job hunters concentrate on providing information on their personal details like date of birth, address, colleges attended, job history and their responsibilities leaving out the meaty details about what the employer actually needs. The employer is only interested in the value and benefits you can bring to his company and nothing more. He is interested in your skills and accomplishments and how they match his requirements. Similarly, you need to include a compelling career summary in your resume. Any information outside these is inadequate and consequently worthless. This is basically the reason why some job seekers write pages of worthless information! 3. Avoidance of structural errors: Nine out of ten resumes being considered for short listing by any recruiter are filled with structural errors. They are often so poorly written that as a hiring manager scrutinizing them makes you feel like sleeping. You must therefore avoid these errors (e.g. grammatical, fond size, fond type, balancing between white space and resume) when crafting your resume. Research has shown that recruiters spend less than ten seconds skimming through resumes because of these errors which often ease their task. 4. Subjecting the resume to a set of checklist: Further, to make your CV attention grabbing, you must subject it to a set checklist of course. The application of this checklist makes communication of what you have in your resume more concise and in the end makes reaching your goal of being invited for an interview more promising. Tactically, using a checklist makes writing your professional resume clear and logical. Furthermore, it also makes writing it more economical. The use of these checklists will also send some messages to recruiters. One is that you are an organized person. Two being that you have taken extra time to compose your resume and by doing so have given more than cursory attention to the employer’s requirements and consequently added more value. Above all therefore, the recruiter scrutinizing your resume will be tempted to give your resume a second look if it has been subjected to the test of the checklist. The following checklist should therefore be applied:  proofreading of curriculum vitae for errors  use of resume samples for comparison  appearance for aesthetic beauty  relevance of resume to the job on offer From the foregoing, the challenge of how to write a compelling resume the way a professional would must have been adequately taken care of. This is because the kind of mistake employment seekers often make when preparing their resumes must have been identified. Another reason being that it helps you to identify the best ways of avoiding such mistakes. I hope you have benefited immensely from reading this piece as much as I have in writing it. Thank you for sharing your time with me.