Each step in your job search must be considered a sales presentation: a communication geared to persuading the employer that you are the right candidate for the job in question. This understanding is essential in preparing a truly effective resume. According to this sales philosophy, we make four basic assumptions about the persuasive nature of the job resume before discussing specific techniques of preparation:
- Job-getting campaigns are sales campaigns.
- The resume is the key written sales presentation in any campaign.
- Your major objective is to convince employment representatives that you are the right person to fill their current or future job openings.
- Each element of the resume must contribute to the broad resume goal of proving your job worthiness.
The resume is more than a personal data sheet or business document telling about yourself. It is a specially prepared sales piece carefully featuring and high-lighting your job-worthy accomplishments; it is an attractively organized presentation of your key capabilities; it is a clear, concise, and complete statement of your value to the firm. How successful you've been in conveying who and what you are becomes a critical factor in job selection. Employers see hundreds of resumes, many containing credentials of people with similar backgrounds and comparable skills. Yet what make some resumes stand out among the rest are the attractiveness, clarity, and interest with which job credentials are presented.
Many applicants with top credentials fail to win jobs because of a dull, uninteresting, and unclear written language, as well as an unattractive format for presenting themselves to employers. Others who perhaps have not achieved as much but who know how to communicate persuasively on paper often succeed in landing their chosen jobs. In other words, with all your abilities and talents, if you cannot impressively communicate how you can fit into the firm, someone else who can will land your job.
What impresses the employment representative about the job resume? She is impressed when she
- immediately sees qualifications that serve the needs of the job and company;
- can quickly answer three important questions: '*Who are you?" ''What do you want?" and “What can you offer?"
- can read quickly, easily, with interest and involvement;
- feels that you clearly and completely expressed yourself;
- believes that your resume is neat, attractive, and professional-looking.
A resume item is any fact about you that deserves to be included in the resume because it is considered a job-worthy credential, proving, in some way, that you have what the company needs. A resume item is composed of elements. Resume items are classified into meaningful sections and presented in broad groupings so that employment representatives can quickly detect a few well-developed sections rather than hundreds of scattered and unrelated resume items.
Four traditional groupings of resume items are experience, education, personal, and references. Resume headings are the captions that highlight resume sections. Unskilled resume writers generally use unimaginative, dull, worn-out and non-descriptive language for resume headings.
The resume title is the main lead-off caption of the entire resume. It is extremely important because it is the first thing the eye sees on the page. Unskilled resume writers misuse this key resume position by writing such dull and weak titles as ''Data Sheet" or ''Resume." This is as silly as entitling a book "Book" or a magazine "Magazine." Instead, a resume title should be interesting, positive, and descriptive, and should highlight information of key importance, such as your name, job desired, and possibly even the name of the company or field sought.
The principle of emphasis requires that very convincing and impressive credentials be featured or highlighted while less persuasive credentials must be accorded less attention and space. An understanding of how to give emphasis or power to an idea on paper is a vital skill for the resume writer.
Here are several ways for emphasizing positive credentials in the typewritten resume:
- Position: Place more important resume items at the top of a resume section, with less important items listed in descending order. This special arrangement of information is called the "order of importance." It also describes the order of presenting resume sections in the resume.
- Space: Give greater space coverage to important ideas by more thorough discussion and development of items or sections. On the other hand, credentials that are not as important should receive less space in the resume.
- Repetition: A reader's attention may be directed to an important accomplishment by repeating the same idea in different ways and places in the resume and in other presentations throughout a job campaign.
- Underscoring: Key words of a resume can be emphasized by underlining. This technique is illustrated throughout the sample resumes
- Ruled Line Drawings: Typed resume titles and headings can be framed in ruled line drawings in order to produce greater visual impact
- Typeface: To emphasize a key word or phrase, use a typeface that is different from the one used to type the general body of the resume.
- Color: An alternative technique for emphasizing key words or phrases is through the use of different colored type.
- Margins: Provide whiter margin around ideas to be emphasized. In this way the greater white background makes the black type stand out.
- Capitalizing: Most of the type on your resume will be in lower-case letters. Therefore, a simple technique for emphasizing certain key words is to type them in capital letters.
