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Six Steps to a Blockbuster Resume: Overview & Step One
A resume has one purpose – to market your skills, achievements, professional background, academic history, and future potential to a prospective employer.
Much like a 30-second commercial, today’s resume must provide maximum data as quickly as possible, differentiate you from all other candidates, and be attractively packaged.
Impossible, you think? Not at all. Writing a winning resume simply takes thought and planning. After all, you wouldn’t drive from Los Angeles to Manhattan without mapping the surest route. The same goes for your resume. By using this six-step process, you’ll gain perspective on your career target and the audience you need to reach, learn how to showcase your strengths, minimize your weaknesses, and produce a document with maximum punch.
• Step One: Targeting Your Career and Audience
• Step Two: Formatting for Maximum Impact
• Step Three: Skill Set and Qualifications Summary
• Step Four: Accomplishments and Special Skills
• Step Five: Professional Experience
• Step Six: Education and Training
STEP ONE: Targeting Your Career and Audience
You must have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish in your professional life in order to maximize the impact of your resume for your targeted audience -- the hiring manager or graduate school admissions director.
Before you begin, ask yourself these questions. Are you: Making a lateral move? Seeking a promotion? Career transitioning?
If you answer "yes" to any of these three questions, the most effective way to begin targeting your resume is to search openings that appeal to you on job boards (i.e. Monster, Hot Jobs. CareerJournal), internal company postings, or newspaper classifieds.
Are you pursuing admission into a graduate program?
Resumes provided for graduate school admission showcase your skills, professional experience, accomplishments, and academic history in much the same way as “job” resumes. The difference is that an admissions resume will focus on what transitions well to the classroom, not to the workplace.
With the focus provided by your initial answers, you can highlight the qualifications you will need to be considered and the duties you would be expected to assume. Every match in terms of qualifications and experience will serve as key words in your resume, as well as provide focus so that the resume can be tailored for your targeted audience. The more closely the content of your resume matches the content of these postings, the more likely you will be asked to interview.
Key words to look out for and include are industry-specific jargon or acronyms. Examples include jargon like "triage" for nurses and acronyms like GAAP "generally accepted accounting principles" for accountants or combinations of both like "IP" for Intellectual Property Law for Attorneys.
