5 ULTIMATE RÉSUMÉ HACKS THAT MAKE RECRUITERS PICK YOU!

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1 5 ULTIMATE RÉSUMÉ HACKS THAT MAKE RECRUITERS PICK YOU! Everything you wish you knew about Résumés! 5 Plug-and-Play Résumé Hacks You Can Put To Work Right Now! Welcome! A résumé like it or not, is the necessary medium not only for applying or expressing interest in a position, but in marketing yourself effectively for them. If your plan is to move up, you can t escape the need for a powerful résumé. Every piece of effort you make in the right direction toward getting your point across to the reader increases your chances of success. Forget Wall Street, investments and your savings for a moment. If you make just $40,000 per year, you make more money than a retired person with a half-million in financial investments. Leveraging your résumé to produce a higher income is without a doubt the most powerful investment you can make during your working life. This short, 5-part ebook is intended to express some of the lessons and hacks if you will, that we have learned over the past fourteen years as professional consultants to some of the most respected résumé firms in the country and helping individuals from entry-level jobs up to C level executive positions at Fortune 1,000 companies. You can apply these methods to a résumé that you prepared yourself, or even to a professionally produced, already powerful document to make it even better. A professional writer can apply some of these methods and some of these you ll need to do yourself. You know your jobs and your own background better than anyone. Item #1 for instance is something that YOU should be doing. Is your résumé finished to the point of being ready? If your résumé isn t finished or you re unhappy with it, consider having a professional prepare it for you. Our writers are so good that we provide a written guarantee that you will get interviews within 30 days or we ll re-write it for FREE. Once your résumé is finished, come back to this ebook and apply the adjustments and tweaks to personalize the effort and further increase your chances of success. See if our résumé service (includes a cover letter and other perks) is right for you. Click to take a look here. This is a complete done-for-you service. 1 P age

2 We hope that you make great gains in your current prospecting campaign. Follow this advice and you re certain to gain advantages you didn t have before. Best of luck to you! Begin Now: 1. What's the most well known "Hack" that far too-few people take the time to do? Do your homework on the company, and update your résumé for every job you pursue. Determine: What are the main points of emphasis in their job posting? These will not be the same for every job even in the same field. These details speak to the priority items of the specific employer. What's happening at the company lately? Who are the competitors of the company you're pursuing? Compare your target company with their competitors and identify the advantages that each possess. Executives are surprisingly the worst at this. One company may have a job listing that almost mirrors another company's listing. Company A however, might be flirting with a merger in the near future and need someone with experience in managing transition. Company B might be in a state of financial duress and need someone that can tighten things up or has another aspect of their background that lends itself to better financial management than a predecessor. If you speak directly to the needs and priorities of each organization individually you'll increase your success rate. Guess what else? You'll also interview MUCH better with a company that you understand in ways that others haven't taken the time to investigate. Yes, this can be a real pain in the rear, but how serious are you about landing an interview with them? If you're dead serious, take the time to read between the lines a little so that you understand your audience better. By doing this you'll have no need to send out 100 résumés hoping for a response. 2 P age

3 2. Open with a title. This is the "Easiest Hack" we have, and you would be astounded to know how few people do this. Ask anybody that s hiring what they are looking for, and the first phrase out of their mouth 90% of the time includes the title of the job. "We're hiring for a Branch Manager". "We're seeking a Certified Teacher's Aide". All of the qualifications COME in the SECOND SENTENCE. Please - if you currently hold a position with a similar title, the exact title, or a complimentary title - Your headline should be that/those title(s). STEP UP AND TELL THEM that you are exactly what their first notion of the job calls for. If you're NOT currently holding (or previously held) that title, we must assume that you're at least qualified to do so. Right? Hence your hope of getting that job. Open with a headline that begins with: "Qualified Branch Manager", "Highly Qualified Customer Service Representative", or something really, really close to this. You can still represent their FIRST notion of what they need this way. If you're a pessimist: Leave it to the rest of the document to let them disqualify you or shoot you down, but from the first line of your résumé you're telling them exactly what you are. If you're a realist: This sets of the framework of reinforcing this claim further while they are reading your résumé. DON'T OPEN WITH AN OBJECTIVE. Don't beg for consideration. Demand validation and an interview! 3. Include a quotation, testimonial, recommendation or commendation. Outside of the machine-type and résumé blah blah there are certain things that catch the eye more efficiently than others. A quoted and italicized excerpt of a third-party's comments is one of them. Further, these carry with them great weight and meaning. Customer comments and testimonials play a big role in familiar environments like Amazon.com and other places where the opinion of others is useful. When used in a résumé, this brings an element of notable impact first because nobody expects it, and secondly because these usually speak volumes about your capability, creditability and value to others in a way that you can t express yourself. 3 P age

4 Note: Value to Others. That's what we're looking for when we read a product review or a customer comment on a product page, right? How much did someone with similar needs regard this product or service after having used it? Providing this evidence of value from a third party is indeed unexpected in a résumé. Further, it is impactful and usually an appreciated feature. True Story: Honestly, way back (a LONG time ago) in the 90's before I began work in recruiting, résumé and career services, I was looking through my past performance reviews for my previous job. I was looking for compliments and items that described some of my efficiencies better than I might have explained them myself. I came across an employee review from a former supervisor that complimented my capability to analyze and solve complex problems. I included his comment in quotations on my résumé on a whim - and I liked it in there. I was invited in for an interview with ALL FIVE companies that I applied to. Coincidence maybe, but one manager commended me on the inclusion of the quote, and said that both the quote and the ingenuity of having used it made him curious and he wanted to meet me in person. Where to find these? The most common places to find quotation material are: Employee reviews from the past. Annual assessments for pay grade increases. Kind thoughts from clients, customers, a co-worker or someone else you've helped. Linkedin. Ask for one. There's nothing awkward about asking someone to provide you a written reference and/or a recommendation on Linkedin. Former supervisors, co-workers, friends (with an understanding of your professional qualities), and all the above are possible sources of material like this. This "Hack" is rarely used and largely unknown, but is usually highly effective. 4 P age

5 4. Packaging Test: Are you qualified ABOVE the fold? Fold the first page of your résumé in half. Forget about the details of your experience and the nuts and bolts of the rest of the résumé. With your résumé folded in half (seeing only the top half of the first page), ask yourself the question: Am I 100% qualified for the job? This is a simple Yes or No question. Here's an exercise: For each job you're after (taken one at a time), what are the top 5-7 things that they are asking for or essentially expect a qualified applicant to possess? Have you addressed EVERY one of them somewhere in the top half of your résumé? If not, then find a way to include that information. Note: The requirement of a degree is the only exclusion to this rule, which is usually a "weed-out" mechanism at the end. If you have your reader's attention and have satisfied every other qualification they will take the time to look for your education section. Unless your degree is an absolute prerequisite don't worry about that detail. Next, answer THEIR need, and also reveal benefits they weren't anticipating. If you're certified in something where certification isn't asked for or required, include it. For instance if you're going for a high level job in Human Resources and you have a PHR certification then mention it whether they ask for it or not. If you're in construction or manufacturing and possess an OSHA certification then mention it. If there is ANY way that you exceed the expected norm then mention it. If the employer asks for a minimum of five years experience and you have ten years - mention it. Perhaps MOST of the companies you're looking at all list a certain skill or capability requirement, but one of them seems to be missing this particular one. Mention it. If there are any commonly listed skill sets for a particular type of job you must include all of the applicable capabilities you possess. Call it an industry standard. You might be the one who reminds the job poster that they should have listed that skill. Every job everywhere requires some level of organization and communication skill. These are no-brainer additions to your qualifications section somewhere in the top of your résumé. Very, very often I'll see someone that lists a set of qualifications such as Project Management, Project Assessment, Project Cost and Budget Responsibility... All great stuff, but this is where you can inject something like "Excellent Communicator", "First-Rate Negotiator", "Analytical Problem Solver" just to break up all the project talk. Mix it up a little bit. Now, again - read the top half of the first page of your résumé and ask the question: "Am I fully qualified?" 5 P age

6 5. Engaging Format - Format your résumé last. An old master of print marketing always composed several layouts of the exact same ad, and then lined them up side by side. If you're not an old print junkie - "Composing" was the old task of literally snipping out paragraphs, photos, headlines, etc.. Into individual pieces so that you could move and re-arrange them in the layout you wanted before sending a page off to the presses. Next, he would step back away from the board containing each of the layouts - just far enough away that he could barely read any part of it or none of it. In a simple matter of three seconds or so, he picked his favorite layout and that's the copy he ran with. His initial logic was: "If my uncle Ron finds my ad inside of the newspaper or in his mailbox, I want him to like it BEFORE he puts on his reading glasses." He later evolved his methods to mark visual points of interest in the ads he produced. These were the areas that drew his eye into them. Without changing the layout whatsoever - He made sure that the most impactful information began at the locations in his ad that drew the eye. He did this by changing the order of sentences in a paragraph, or by trading out sections completely. He was incredibly successful with his ad work. Back to your résumé: Only once you're finished writing the content you can make changes to the document format that will hold. First, make sure that you're using some or all of these "tricks" to break up your résumé content: 1) Use white space to "drop the eyes" into featured areas. 2) Use bold type and/or bullets to draw attention to your top qualifications and achievements. 3) Use color highlights to subtly calm or assure the reader. You're not finished until you try 2-3 different layouts and pin the first page of each to the wall side by side. Step back about 10 feet and you'll like one of them the best without having to read it. That's your layout. Second, after you have the layout that your attention is most attracted to, it's time to drill into the details. Your format, if executed carefully should include a mixture of font sizes, bold type and bullets to draw attention to the key details that your readers MUST SEE. Since you have a layout appearance that works, you don't have too far to go. Look for the breaks and gaps and bold type that you're already using (in the copy from the wall). Grab a pen or a pencil and step to within reading range of the document on the wall. Then, mark the page with a pen or pencil, in every location where your eyes pause when you scan the document. A pause is a pause - even if extremely brief. Your gaze while you scan your document should flow at a constant pace until something interrupts that flow. That's a pause. 6 P age

7 When you scan your own document you should notice the pauses even more than a stranger looking at it. You already know the material - and might be quite sick of looking at it by this point. So when you scan each line from left to right and top to bottom, do this quickly and at a smooth pace, but make a mark on the page where your gaze was paused, interrupted or misguided. NOW: At each of the interruption points make sure that the absolute most important detail of that section you're in - appears at that point. Here's an actual example right from my desk, and the explanation of each mark, lettered A-G: 7 P age

8 A. First, (My preference) I ignore the headline and summary to a small extent because this all should be your heavy-duty "qualifying" material - Period! The very next element my eyes are drawn into is the top-left first bullet in this table. That's a no-brainer. This bullet and the ones below and to the right are VERY important and should contain your top traits. B. As I began to scan the other terms in the table, for some reason my eyes were pulled to the lower half of the middle column. Probably because this résumé example had so many of these bullets my eyes were looking to skip ahead. C. Again, my eyes were looking for the conclusion of this section. I almost completely ignored the top item in the third column of this table. We see patterns like this in web publishing also, where the "end of the line" item sometimes gets clicked by readers more often than the immediate few items preceding the end of a section. Another example of "Skip to the end" mentality. D. This is enlarged, bold-faced type and almost unavoidable. I laugh while I'm writing this because this is just an old, random résumé template I pulled up to illustrate this concept. In my actual résumé - writing work, I leave the company name alone, and enlarge then bold-face the person's title. E. The first bullet. Of course I stopped here. Now - It doesn't matter if you have a paragraph ahead of the bullets (that would contain more of a formal job description), the bullets usually will win. Be sure to build some impact into the first sentence of a summary like that regardless, because the guy that hits the paragraph first can't be left out. Your first bullet should be the most impressive and most qualifying item in that list. No question. Re-arrange your bullets if need be, so that the top bullet is the best one. Lots of times your best bullet is the longest one, which will have them eating of of your hand as you'll see in a moment. F. The fourth bullet? Yes indeed. My "skip to the end" mentality got bored real quick as soon as I got to the second or third long-sentence bullet. I'm looking for a shorter one to read!! This should be a noticeably shorter bullet, and this should be the second-most-impactful-and-impressive item in the list. G. My last pause on the page was at the beginning of the bullet section for the last job. While this is already explained above, I must emphasize that this has to be the most interesting and most impactful of the items in this list. This is the visual analysis of what caught my attention, and what I needed to put there. At each point of emphasis I'm including the very best material in that section as a priority. It's not rocket science. There is a higher probability of the material in those particular locations of your résumé to be seen. You're positioning your best stuff on these points so that whether they read the whole document or not, you're still giving them the main material that you need them to see. 8 P age

9 Bonus Tips. Use specific numbers, statistics, and details as often as possible. Using vague references to describe a quantifiable event or statistic is boring and a waste. Actual numbers carry profoundly more validity than an open claim. "Increased profits" stinks. "Created 22% increase in profit" carries weight. If your numbers were not so impressive (especially if you're going from a smaller company to a big one, usually the percentage difference tells the story in more of an accurate context, and sounds better. Don't send your well-designed and dressed up résumé into the automated filtering machine. When pasting a copy of your résumé into a form online, save your document as plain-text (.txt), remove the odd symbols and set line breaks where they need to be. Then, copy/paste that version. Software that reads the information will be confused about a table, a text box, special characters, bullet marks and fancy layouts. Use a friend or family member or a peer (or all of the above) to review your materials before sending them out. In a vast majority of cases you'll receive feedback, find mistakes or other things that will be helpful. It can be a life saver. Deliverability & Accessibility - Keep a PDF format, Word format, Text format and an online version or downloadable version. Be able to deliver a copy at a moment's notice and/or send someone to a web address where they can get it fast. Whether in your résumé or cover letter (wherever it is more appropriate), Include interactive features such as a Linkedin profile link, a link to a downloadable résumé or an article you've written or evidence of something you did (news story, annual report that your effort created a positive benefit, or something else that you did that can be verified online). Any and all third-party reflections upon you reinforce your validity. 9 P age