The competition is fierce! HR professionals are receiving more resumes and cover letters than ever before. Will your cover letter and resume get noticed if it is 1 of 1,000?
With so many resumes being submitted for available positions the goal of all HR professionals or Recruiters is to reduce that number to a manageable list of viable candidates. A common first step in this process is to electronically scan your resume for keywords. If you are applying for an executive position and the company wants a candidate with an engineering degree, they might scan for “P.Eng” or “MBA”. For a sales and marketing position they may scan for “P&L”. Have you included the necessary keywords in your resume to keep you in the running?
Okay, you’ve passed the scanner but is your resume free of spelling mistakes or gramatical errors? Will it exceed the expectations for this professional document, easy to ready, bulleted points, standard font, white paper, consistent page borders, no excess white space? If your resume doesn’t look impressive, neither do you.
The next step in the few seconds of attention that your resume will be given is to discover your attributes and achievements. If they don’t jump out at the reader, no one is going to spend the time to go looking for them. Clear, concise, quantifiable and impressive results will be noticed. Do not waste your time with vague comments such as, “saved the company money”.
If your resume has generated enough interest at this point to put you above the crowd, you are one of the few but you could still miss out on the job interview if you have neglected to include some pertinent information. If you have missed including the dates anywhere in your resume you will generate a negative impression as it will be perceived that you have something to hide. Finally, the most critical information of all is your contact details. There are still those who are not comfortable putting their phone number on their resume and still many who have not realized the significance of an online presence and do not have an email or LinkedIn address. If you are not a phone call away or a google away, you may have come this far only to be dropped out of the running.
Your resume and cover letter are the most critical components of your job search! You need them to get in the door and if you don’t get it right, you could be missing out on the job opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t take the risk, call a professional resume writer.
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