When it comes to getting hired, first impressions matter.
Fortunately, there are several ways to make a positive first impression on your future employer both online and in person. Whether you use your resume, LinkedIn profile, or biography, you should consider these application materials as value propositions — because essentially they are.
A value proposition is a business term that encompasses materials used to market a service or product. Companies use value propositions to persuade prospective clients to choose them based on the value they can bring to the client’s life or business. You can use this strategy in your application materials. Aim to persuade potential employers by demonstrating the value you can bring to their brand.
What Values Should You Highlight?
When you begin your job search, it can be challenging to know what qualities to highlight in your application materials. Editing your resume and LinkedIn profile to list your most up-to-date technical skills and qualities is an ongoing process, but there are some essential skills you can use to improve your resume at any stage:
Candidate Skills
Once you’ve homed in on the jobs you want, one of the first steps toward demonstrating your worth is including the right hard skills. These are technical abilities you’ve gained through education or experience — such as computer skills, data analysis, or editing.
How do you know which hard skills to include? Start by considering the company goals of the organization you’re interested in. Gaining an understanding of the work it does and the ways you can concretely contribute to its goals will put you on the right track when crafting your resume and professional profiles.
When listing your hard skills, the goal is to demonstrate why you would provide a skill-based fit for the company. Craft your resume to include your most relevant work experience. Make sure to go into detail about the hard skills you have, how you’ve earned them, and the ways you have amassed a proven track record of using them in a professional setting.
Cultural Skills
While hard skills are certainly valuable, cultural skills can be equally as important during the hiring process. How can you demonstrate to your prospective employer that you will be a great cultural fit for their organization? You can highlight an awesome cultural fit by clearly emphasizing the right soft skills — such as time management, organization, initiative, and leadership.
One way to tailor the soft skills on your resume to match the needs of your employer is to clearly display that your employee goals align with the company’s goals. A cultural fit is based on the way you will mesh with other employees, contribute to positive workplace culture, and inspire continued productivity. When your goals and values as an employee align with the goals of your employer, a cultural fit is natural.
Value-Added Statements
To paint an undeniable picture of the benefit you will bring to your prospective employer, it’s important to use value-add statements — also known as value-added statements — to your resume, profile, and bios.
In business, value-added statements are documents that outline the positive outcome a product or service can bring to its customers, often monetarily. When crafting your resume and profiles, using a value-added strategy can quickly elevate your application materials.
On your resume, you can incorporate value-added statements in the description of your work experience. For example, rather than simply mention that you’ve improved sales at your previous companies, include specific examples with strong action words. “Boosted sales by 3% over six months” provides a concrete example of the value you bring to a company.
Whenever possible, use specific details to describe your soft skills, too. For example, “managed a team of 20 professionals with collaboration and leadership skills” is more persuasive than simply listing “collaborative” or “strong leadership skills.”
Once you’ve crafted value-added skills for your resume, you can easily weave them into your professional profiles and bio to paint a vivid picture of the worth you will bring to an employer.
How Capstone Resumes Can Help
The way you craft your resume, LinkedIn profile, and professional biography will depend on the industry and type of job you’re vying for. No matter what your professional goals are, it is important to illustrate the concrete ways you can help employers reach their goals.
It can be challenging to identify which of your skills and qualities align most with potential employers. Making these connections can help you land among the top applicants at your ideal company. Fortunately, Capstone Resume Services can help you zero in on your most important strengths and showcase them to prospective employers.
]]>Make An Outstanding First Impression
Surely you’ve heard the old adage, “You never have a second chance to make a first impression.” A resume provides a fitting example that this maxim holds true. When employers read your resume, they are sizing you up, making assumptions about you and placing a value on your abilities and experience. All of this before they even meet you. Your resume holds the power to preset a higher value.
Your resume as a whole will set the overall impression. While it’s most important to articulate your experience, abilities, accomplishments and education in a concise and compelling way, it’s just as important to ensure that there are no spelling and grammar mistakes, and that the layout and formatting make it easy to read and follow. Button up your resume and increase your chances of getting a reason to button up your best interview suit.
Demonstrate Your Value
We cannot stress enough that the core of your resume should be accomplishments and results. A laundry list of tasks tells the employer what you know how to do, but competency is an automatic expectation for anyone applying for the job. What the employer wants to know is how well you do those tasks, how you added value to your prior places of employment, how you helped to improve them and how you helped them make or save more money. The more you can clearly demonstrate a reliable history of results, the higher the chances an employer will be willing to place a premium on you and your abilities before you even meet. This sets you up to be in a place of great negotiating power.
Make Them REALLY Want You
A winning interview is the key to becoming the top choice, but first you have to get one! Your resume must convince the employer of the value you brought to prior positions so they believe you have the potential to do the same for them and want to discuss that with you.
Make sure your resume is relevant to the employer by tailoring it to them and the job. Read the job description very carefully and ensure that your resume clearly connects the dots between the position’s requirements and your skills and experience. Employers will not spend the time making this connection for you, but they are often willing to pay more for the “perfect fit.” Is your resume tailored or frumpy?
Avoid Throwing The First Number
While the actual salary negotiation process is a separate topic, we do have another bonus tip for you. When possible, avoid being the first to name a salary number. You could shortchange yourself if you provide a number below the employer’s budget. As any good sales person knows, when the price is high, you want to avoid disclosing it until you’ve had an opportunity to describe the benefits. Try to save the salary discussion until after you’ve wowed them in at least one interview. One approach is to explain that your salary is negotiable depending upon learning additional details of the position and the overall compensation package. If you must provide a number, try checking market value with professionals in closely comparable positions (those salary websites can be inaccurate) and provide a range rather than one specific amount.
Salary negotiation can be an intimidating process, but a stellar resume can help set the stage for a better salary. It’s not about being greedy, but knowing your own value. Respecting your own worth also adds value for the employer because better job satisfaction for you usually translates into better results for them.
Are you sending out tons of resumes but not getting interviews? If your resume is not getting you the results you want, we can help!
Capstone Resume Services’ certified resume writers with recruiting and hiring backgrounds create affordable resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles that get results. Learn more here.
]]>The Recruiter’s Role
To put it simply, a recruiter is a matchmaker, a screener and a sales person. As matchmaker, the recruiter’s goal is to find a candidate who is the proper fit for a specific position within a company. As a screener, the recruiter sifts through candidates to identify the best matches. He or she is a sales person in two ways, selling a job to a qualified candidate and selling the candidate to the employer.
While the recruiter may appear to be a neutral middle person, realize that the recruiter is ultimately paid by, and accountable to, the company who hired him or her. This applies to recruiters in corporate HR departments as well as recruiters who work independently. Therefore, he or she will always approach a search according to the employer’s specifications. You must first convince the recruiter why you should be presented to the hiring manager. That convincing begins in the screening process, so it’s important to understand how that process works.
The Screening Process
How does a recruiter go about screening candidates? The short answer is — very quickly. If a recruiter or company has posted a position publicly, you can bet that they are receiving hundreds of resumes, which requires a fast initial screening process. With this kind of volume, the goal is to eliminate and narrow to a short list.
A recruiter simply doesn’t have time to read all of the resumes, so he or she scans them. If you are lucky, your resume may get 10 to 20 seconds of review. More likely, you will have about 5 to 7 seconds to persuade the recruiter to keep your resume in the running.
What does a recruiter look for during this 5 to 20 second resume screening? The main items that a recruiter is scanning for are: industry, function, level, recent experience, education and stability. He or she is looking primarily at the last two companies you worked for, how long you worked there, what you did and at what level, and your level of education. Realistically, those with prior experience in their client’s industry, with a similar function and at a similar level, have the best chances of surviving the recruiter’s initial screening, assuming that information is clearly articulated.
What You Can Do
Recall that that the recruiter isn’t the only sales person in this equation. Your resume is your sales pitch. The key is to make it easier for the recruiter to do his or her job with an easy-to-scan resume.
- Start with an attention grabbing headline as part of your summary. Be specific, but also get to the point. Give the reader information that will align you with the desired position, such as total number of years experience, industries worked in and key skill sets.
- Highlight achievements and results. Chances are very good that the recruiter already has a sense of what someone is your functional area does. Instead, explain how your work benefited the company. Quantify it in dollars, percents, or other meaningful numbers.
- Less is more. You don’t need to tell them everything you did, just enough of the relevant highlights to get them interested. Think phrases, not paragraphs. You can save the details for the interview.
- Have a clean format. Your resume should have a clear visual hierarchy and plenty of white space. Use bold formatting to emphasize key areas.
- Tailor it to the job. Include only what is pertinent to the position, or at the very least make sure that the appropriate experience, education and skills visually stand out.
If you are applying for many jobs, but not getting calls, it may be helpful to get an objective resume review from a resume writing professional.
Capstone Resume Services’ certified resume writers with recruiting and hiring backgrounds create affordable resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles that get results. Learn more here.
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Expect To Rewrite It
If you’re changing industries or occupations, it’s unlikely that your current resume will get your foot in the door without changes. The greater the leap, the more changes you can expect to make. You are competing with others who already have specific experience in your new field, so the goal of your career change resume is to help the employer understand how your prior experience is relevant to the new position. Plan for a serious overhaul, if not a complete rewrite, of your resume to accomplish this.
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Start With Transferable Skills
Leadership. Communication. Management. Planning. These are just a sampling of skills that are necessary for almost any type of professional position. Surely there are plenty of skills you have developed in your previous positions that can help you succeed in your new career. Identify your strongest skills and bring those that make sense for the new job to the forefront on your new resume.
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Focus On Accomplishments
Employers want to know what it is that you can do for them. Demonstrating a successful track record in your previous positions can go a long way in convincing an employer that you can also do well for them. The more specific you are about your accomplishments (i.e. numbers) the better. Highlight any previous accomplishments that are relevant to the new position first.
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Keywords Are Key
Your resume is probably full of keywords relevant to your current or prior career. Carefully examine job descriptions for your new field to determine how you can incorporate relevant keywords into your new resume. Relevant keywords will stand out to the hiring manager who reviews your resume and can also help you get through the electronic systems that filter resumes.
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Relevant Experience Isn’t Necessarily Paid Job Experience
It’s not so much about how you get the experience, it’s more about having it. And it’s not just paid experience that counts. If you’ve done volunteer work or otherwise gained experience in your new field, be sure to highlight it on your new resume. If you have no experience in your new occupation or industry, it would be helpful to gain specific skills in your spare time that are relevant to the new line of work in you are targeting.
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Consider Changing The Format
Most job seekers are used to the standard reverse chronological resume, but there are other resume formats that may be more appropriate for career changers. A functional resume format puts more emphasis on skills than employment history. A hybrid version of this would have a strong career profile at the top, emphasize skills and relevant experience first, and save the reverse chronological work experience for the end or the second page. This hybrid model highlights the relevant information up front while also showing an employer that you do not have employment gaps (if you don’t).
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Know What To Leave Out
Your current resume is probably full of specific responsibilities that pertain to the field you are trying to exit. If you have an extensive work history, you don’t have to include great detail for all of your previous responsibilities, especially those which are not applicable in the new field you aspire to enter. Do not fear leaving out irrelevant information. It can clutter your resume and increase the odds that an employer will overlook what you have to offer for the new position.
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Connect The Dots
As briefly mentioned above (see tip #1), a hiring manager will probably not automatically make the connection between your prior experience and the new position. It’s important to be clear in your cover letter that you are serious about changing careers and demonstrate on your resume how your skills and prior experience will make you successful in the new position. The more you can help the hiring manager or recruiter make the logical connections, the better your chances of getting an interview.
Affordable resumes, cover letters and LinkedIn profiles created by Capstone Resume Services’ certified resume writers with recruiting and hiring backgrounds get results. Learn more here.
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