Target Your Resume, Target Your Success

As recently as a decade or so ago, all-purpose resumes listing all of your job responsibilities might have been OK. But times change.

Once the economy shifted during the 2007 -2009 Great Recession, with fewer jobs available than job seekers needing them, telling a prospective employer what you did wasn’t good enough; you had to prove you were good at it. Why else should they care?

Listing general tasks and duties, the kind you might see in a job description, gave no indication of the size, scope, and results of the responsibilities you had. Hiring managers needed better, more specific information, to quickly see how you could help them, and if it wasn’t provided, there wasn’t time to figure it out or guess. They just moved on (as did companies’ Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS, where computers weed out mismatches first).

The End of the All-Purpose Resume

An all-purpose resume is one you’d use to apply for every job, general enough to send to multiple audiences and situations. It’s also obsolete.

A generic resume makes you look … well, ordinary. Nothing stands out to differentiate you from all the other candidates applying for the same position. Often, it doesn’t even indicate the type of position you’re pursuing. Worse yet, it fails to provide compelling evidence to support your candidacy. Not a good start.

Does an all-purpose resume ever make sense? No. It makes applicant tracking systems and hiring managers work too hard to figure out what you’re looking for, and “why you.”

Because approximately 80 percent of people find a job through their professional network, your focus should always be on expanding and building your network. When an opportunity becomes available, there’s a good chance that someone in your network may be able to facilitate an introduction.

Related: Networking During a Pandemic

Once you have a foot in the door (and, ideally, an interview on the calendar), your resume becomes more of a support document, a piece of paper that follows you and demonstrates “why you?” beyond the introduction made by a colleague. It’s still important job search currency, as people in the organization pass it around to others involved in the hiring process. The more targeted the resume, the more it speaks to their specific needs, the greater your chances to shine.

5 Questions a Targeted Resume Should Answer

A targeted resume is the opposite of a generic resume. You customize it every time you send it out, strategically incorporating the right keywords to get through the ATS software that most employers use to screen candidates.

While its first job is to get your name in front of a hiring manager, its primary job is to convince them to invite you for an interview.

A targeted resume should (convincingly) answer these five questions:

·      What are your top competencies?

·      What accomplishments, details, facts or figures set you apart from other candidates?

·      What awards, certifications or distinctions have you earned?

·      What makes you memorable?

·      What impact can you offer a prospective employer?

Focus on Results and Relevance

Bullet points that list your current and past job responsibilities will tell a prospective employer what you do (or did). But that’s not enough. You need to convey how well you’ve done them.

By focusing on outcomes, impact and results, you tell a far more compelling story. Did you increase your audience by 10 percent? Work on a committee to streamline operations that saved the company $3 million? Don’t be shy. This is one place where it’s appropriate, even necessary, to highlight your accomplishments.

Everybody makes an impact in some way. Even if your job doesn’t lend itself to numeric data, think of all the ways in which your employer benefited from your qualitative contributions. It may be tied to client satisfaction, loyalty or retention. Or maybe you came up with an innovative idea that helped the company launch a new product line. If you need to jog your memory, look back at your performance reviews.

A laundry list of accomplishments alone won’t do much. The magic happens when you tie those achievements to the requirements of the position. You might choose to highlight certain pieces of information in the first or second bullet point for one prospective employer, but further down the list for another, depending on relevance.

A Targeted Resume in an Untargeted Job Search

Not all job searches are targeted. Sometimes you know you want a change — but aren’t quite sure what that change will look like.

Related: How Assessments Can Guide Your Next Career Move

Even if you’re pursuing multiple career avenues, a targeted resume still makes sense. Perhaps you can create a “master” resume that includes all of the jobs you’ve held and what you’ve accomplished in each of your roles. When you apply for a specific position, you can pick and choose the most relevant highlights and achievements. 

Resume trends are constantly changing. While it’s important to stay on top of best practices, it’s equally important to know how to implement them to your competitive advantage.

Just as pieces of a puzzle need to fit together, your qualifications have to meet the requirements of a given position. Targeted resumes work because you’ve done the heavy lifting for the prospective employer. You’ve connected the dotted line … hopefully, one that leads to an interview and, ultimately, a job offer. 

How good are you at selling your best self?

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