Quick Resume Fixes That Will Make You More Desirable to Recruiters

It’s well documented that recruiters only spend about 6 seconds looking at each resume they receive. I’m going to give you the inside scoop from the perspective of a six-second recruiter. First thing you should know is that these professionals have bosses, hiring managers and senior leaders relying on them to find the best talent. Sometimes, they’re competing with other recruiters to fill the same role. Their compensation may even be tied to whether or not the candidate they present ultimately lands the job. That’s a lot of pressure.

So, when a person who’s looking to fulfill a position glances at your resume, they are not just searching for applicable skills. They are trying to determine whether or not they can sell other people on your experience.

Ultimately, a recruiter is only as good as the candidates she’s able to find. So, when they look at your resume, they want to see results, achievements and key selling points. In other words, they wants to find applicants who will make themselves look good, who will prove to be an asset to the company.

So what does all of this mean for you? It might just be time for a resume redo. The easiest, best way to start shifting the way you think about the content is to consider your experience from the perspective of a hiring manager. In short, you want to do everything that you can to make the process straightforward and simple.

To get started, pull up your resume and ask yourself the following questions as you read it over:

1. Does My Resume Make It Easy For Recruiters To Sell My Experience And Achievements?

If your most-prized document doesn’t list specifics about these top items, it’s not doing what it’s supposed to be doing. The way to sell yourself and your experience is to make a list of any special projects, goals or quotas you’ve met, exceeded or delivered. This isn’t a time for modesty; if you got promoted after nine months, make that—and any other achievement—known. If you gained 50K more subscribers to the company newsletter once you took over, state that explicitly.

2. Does My Content Tell A Compelling Story Of My Amazing Accomplishments?

Not only do you want to list stats and achievements using concrete numbers and info whenever possible, but you also want your resume to tell a compelling story of your accomplishments, and to do that, you need context. Were you the top selling regional account executive? Great, but don’t leave out the fact that there are over 60 other account executives in your region. Were you the designated team member to spearhead the safety improvement project and resulted in a 20% decrease in work related incidences? Did you roll out a new CRM system? Be sure to mention that you also evaluated multiple platforms, identified the system most suited to your organization’s needs and negotiated the contract. Your accomplishments will be best illustrated if you also provide the backdrop for which to showcase them.

3. Have I Included Tangible Metrics To Help Illustrate My Successes?

Your outstanding achievements and notable statistics related to your work effort are most easily digested when you assign a number or result to everything you’ve done of note. Having something that a hiring manager can quickly grasp, especially if it demonstrates your excellence, will help you stand above the rest. So, if you not only met but exceeded your sales goal month to month, you’d have a bullet saying, “Exceeded sales quota by 30%.” If something you did helped the organization cut costs and reach a desired end result sooner, be clear about how all that happened. Don’t just say, “Oversaw website redesign,” say, “Completed website redesign two weeks early, resulting in $5,000 cost savings.”

Ultimately, spending more resume real estate on what you’ve accomplished and focusing less on your day-to-day responsibilities will pay off. It’s great that you manage your company’s Twitter page but it’s even more impressive that you’ve doubled the number of followers since you took over writing and scheduling tweets. Did you design a training program for your company’s new software rollout? That’s impressive, but mentioning that this program resulted in a 100% increase in user adoptions is what will catch a recruiter’s eye.

Resumes that highlight specific and substantial stats are the ones that catch the most attention when a recruiter is scrolling through hundreds of applications. Few things are more meaningful to a person reviewing these materials than featured results, numbers and key accomplishments. You’ve worked hard and now’s the time to show it off.