What Key Points Should Be In A Resume

How to dramatically improve your resume…even if you don’t know howThis is not your ordinary career site. I help the corporate worker who toils away in the company cubicle make career transitions. You want to do your job well, following all the rules -- .The career transitions where I can help you center on three critical career areas: How to land a job, succeed in a job, and build employment security.Top 10 Posts on CategoriesHere is the frustrating question: “I need to redo my resume because I want a new job. What should I put in it?”It’s a frustrating question…because I can’t answer it. So, I ask questions. And then I start frustrating the person asking the question, usually because they don’t know the answers.You can’t blame the person, either â€" I was once like that in my career. I wanted out of a job, but I knew I needed to update my resume. Then, when I updated my resume, I started to go looking for jobs.When I found something I thought I would like and woul d qualify for, I submitted my resume. This is especially true if you not only want out of a job, but out of the entire industry.We start thinking we need to update our resume, so we try and figure out how to do that. Then we update the resume and send it out into the world.Unfortunately, this is not a successful approach.The question is this:  Does  my resume match the job description of the job I want?That drives a different set of actions on your part.You need to find a job that appeals to you. Always a good thing, right? A job that appeals to you?Now you have something to work with. Get ten of these job descriptions of jobs that appeal to you and now you  really have something to work with.Action Item -- find 10 job descriptions you likeSearch for jobs that interest you, then find job descriptions of jobs that you believe you qualify for and interest you. Get 10 of them! It will show you common skills and requirements for the position and allow you to compare them with your resum e.Remember that  the only purpose of the resume is to get the interview. Nothing else. So the person actually  reading  your resume is going to do something very straightforward that few people remember: that person is going to look at your resume  and  compare it to the job description.  The more check marks you get for job skills needed for the work on your resume compared to the job description, the bigger your chance of getting an interview.It is as simple, and as complicated, as that.You have a base set of skills, education, and experience to put in your resume, of course. But to have an  effective  resume, a set of job descriptions will drive your content, show your strengths, and highlight your weaknesses.And having this rational look at your resume against job descriptions will show how you need to drive your career to gain the skills you need to get the jobs you want.The key here is that the person reading your resume and trying to decide if you deserve to get an interview will first try to answer this question:  Can this person (you) DO the job? Do you have the job skills? If the job description calls for advanced laser surgery for the eyes and you’ve never used a laser machine before, you won’t get the interview. “Can you do the job?” is the first big question that needs a ‘yes’ answer in order for you to move on in the process.Do you have at least one job description of a job that appeals to you? Hopefully more than one from different companies for the same type of position so you can get a more complete picture for your resume.Here’s what you do:Look at the required job skills on the job description and see if they are on your resume. Look at each one on the job description and find it on your resume. Do you find each one? Great. You’re covered.Look at the soft skills in the job description and see if they are on your resume. Soft skills are things like ‘team player,’ ‘works well in a fast-paced environment’ and all that †˜plays well in the sandbox’ stuff.Look at the certifications on the job description and see if they are on your resume.  You see where this is going.When you do this analysis â€" especially with multiple job descriptions for the same type of position â€" you’ll quickly discover how much is missing from your resume that  should be in it.Plus, you’ll quickly see what holes you need to fill in terms of your job skills and certifications in order to up the number of check marks you get when a person reading your resume starts comparing it to their job description.What I’ve been demonstrating here is applying for a new job that is, essentially, the same as your own, just in a different company. It’s an important use case, for sure, and it will answer the critical question of “what should I put in my resume?”.But there are other use cases. The two that come top of mind are these:Each of us has our own set of job skills, performance, and experience. We want recruiters to find us. The way to do that is to match our job skills and experience to the job descriptions. The better they match, the more likely you are to get the interview.  The key points in the resume, then, are those that match the job description.Going through this process will also show what you need to work on next to get that next position, whether it is in your own company, a promotion or something entirely new.  This is not your ordinary career site. I help the corporate worker who toils away in the company cubicle make career transitions. You want to do your job well, following all the rules â€" .The career transitions where I can help you center on three critical career areas: How to land a job, succeed in a job, and build employment security. policiesThe content on this website is my opinion and will probably not reflect the views of my various employers.Apple, the Apple logo, iPad, Apple Watch and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. I’m a big fan.Copyright 2020 LLC, all rights reserved.