Aaron Engelsrud

Your resume is a promotional document that needs to be custom-tailored to do one thing: sell you and your skills to a prospective employer. If your resume is not doing that, if it does not make you shine, you need to revamp your tired and worn out resume, update it, and bring it new life. While working on your resume, never forget that you are creating marketing material focused on selling you. If you read it and aren’t impressed with what you read, chances are someone else won’t be either. What you do may be dry and dull, your resume doesn’t have to be.

Make your resume bring your work to life. Your resume should be powerful enough to make the reader want to do your job. It should sound rewarding, enjoyable, and exciting. If it doesn’t seem like you enjoy your work, you fail to set the right tone in your resume. Seriously, even something like accounting can sound fun and rewarding if written correctly.

1 - Use Proper Keywords Almost every company, even small ones, uses automated resume screening to filter responses to job postings. This makes using proper keywords critical to getting actual eyes on your resume. So, how is this done? One reliable method to determine top keywords is to gather the text from 5 relevant job descriptions and create a word cloud. This will give you the most suitable words from the job descriptions you selected.

Once you have determined from the job descriptions which keywords are relevant, integrate them into your resume’s text. Find places those words make sense to add, don’t just put them in a list. Use them in your relevant skills and descriptions of previous work. If you can’t do this, chances are pretty good this is not a job you should be applying for. Consider this carefully.

2 - Proofread Your Resume This should seem like a no-brainer, right? I cannot tell you how many resumes I’ve read have typos, errors, and formatting issues. These errors show prospective employers that you ignore detail and are most likely, not the right person for the job. Honestly, if you have typos or other errors in your resume, you will most likely not get any sort of interview.

So, to combat this, proofread carefully. Have someone else correct it. Then do it all again. Like any good writing, write, edit, and then re-write. This should not be a rushed process. Your resume should feel like a well-crafted document, professional, and perfect in all respects.

3 - Keep Your Resume To One to Two Pages To be fair, this is more of a rule-of-thumb than a hard-fast law of resume creation. I’ve hired people with 1-page resumes as well as people with 6-page tomes. The most critical part of this is to put every vital skill you possess on the first page. Do it in a way that makes sense and is easy to comprehend. If you do this, any subsequent pages will likely not matter anyhow. So, trimming as much fluff as possible is essential.

4 - Highlight Key Accomplishments In line with keeping things brief and to one page, make sure you focus on your key accomplishments related to the employment you are seeking. Most likely, these are your most recent accomplishments as well. While it is fantastic that you got the “Best New Employee” award as an associate in 1996, that fact is probably not going to get you the new job today. In resumes, like most other things, it’s all about what you have done lately. What recent awards, new company savings, new technology, and accomplishments do you have to show for your efforts? The past is the past; what are you bringing to the table today?

5 - Only Include Relevant Information There might be things in your work history that you are very proud of. That’s great. However, if they aren’t relevant to the job you are seeking, leave them out, or at a minimum, put them later in the resume. Include information that will lead the reader to determine that you are the best candidate for the position. Anything that doesn’t help drive this point home should be cut. Remember, this document isn’t to make you feel better about your work history and accomplishments. Its purpose is to get you a job. More specifically, it is designed to get you the job you want. Anything that detracts from this purpose hurts your chances. Leave it out.

Conclusion There is a lot of effort that needs to go into your resume. It is critically important you get it right. From keywords to correct spelling and punctuation, you need to pay attention to the details and proofread it before sending it out. You don’t get a second chance for the first read from a prospective employer. Formatting, flow, and content are all critical and should be tailored to your particular career path. Your resume will need to be different if you apply for an executive-level position at a company versus an entry-level position. Making sure your resume is tailored accordingly could be the difference between getting the job and getting shredded. Have someone else look at it and review it.

This is an important topic and will require a more thought, but for now, let’s focus on two general areas of focus. First, let’s look at a situation where you were fired. You didn’t get laid-off, and the company didn’t close. You either weren’t performing to the level your company required or did something egregious that caused them to let you go. Maybe you’d been on a performance improvement plan (PIP) for a while and could see it coming. Perhaps you thought you could continue to come in late every day without any consequences, right up until you couldn’t.

Either way, you have an issue to deal with.

Why? Because when you get back in the job market and start looking for new employment, companies you interview with will ask why you left your last company. You need to be ready to talk about it and provide an explanation. Here’s the truth, any good HR rep or hiring manager will be able to read through whatever story you tell them, and they will know you got fired. They will also know you are not being honest with them. Further, you will not get the job.

So, what do you do? You need to be honest and lay it out there. That’s the only option. Tell them what happened and what the outcome was. Let them know that you’ve learned from your mistakes and are looking for an opportunity to prove yourself. Be humble and open. This is the only way to deal with this situation. Lying will catch up with you. Ignoring it will allow others to fill in the blanks. Meet it head-on and deal with it.

The second issue you may need to deal with is your online persona. Have you ever done a Google search for your name? Is everything that shows up accurate? Anything that you’re not so proud of? Social media is your face online. If you have a social media presence, you need to make sure that the image you are putting forward is the one that you want prospective employers to see. I have seen numerous examples where qualified, educated, and high-quality applicants have been ruled out simply because of their online history. Many HR departments have tools that help them uncover your online life; it’s become that important. Think you’re anonymous? You’re not. This can be fixed - to some extent.

Remember, the internet never truly forgets.

You can delete posts that you’ve authored and, in some cases, comments you’ve made. It may be necessary to nuke your entire profile if your content is particularly unfavorable. This will not completely erase your online visibility, but doing so can make the harmful content harder to track down. Is it worth starting over online? Maybe. That’s for you to decide. Just realize they are looking, and it does matter. How bad do you want that new job? What are you willing to do to repair your past?

If you choose to do nothing to fix your online presence, like getting fired, be ready to deal with it. Here too, be honest and open. Don’t attempt to justify your bad online behavior. Instead, look to grow from it and be a better version of yourself. Ask for an opportunity to show them firsthand that you are not the person they see reflected in your online history. Then prove it.

I know the workplace has gotten casual—so you don’t feel there is a need to get a suit. You have no use for a great looking and well-tailored outfit to interview in. Employers have lowered their expectations. This may all be true, but it’s no excuse to look like you just rolled out of bed. Show up overdressed, looking good, and feeling better. By dressing appropriately, you will feel more confident and set the tone for approaching your work. Being clean, smelling good, and having a good haircut is not optional. Being well dressed and well-groomed is essential.

If you’ve done all the work to get a face-to-face interview (or even a Zoom video conference) and fail to make a solid first impression, all your work was for nothing. You need to do everything you can to capitalize on the effort you put into getting in the door. That includes presenting your best self and creating a personal image of success, self-respect, and responsibility. You need your prospective employer to know that you will be someone they can count on to get the job done before talking to you. You have the power to tell them all they need to know just by looking at you.

Finally, while this isn’t directly related to dress or personal grooming, being personable is essential. Maintain good eye contact, use active listening, speak clearly and slowly, shake hands, and smile. If you are staring at your lap, mumbling, and sweating through your shirt, you will not make an excellent first impression.

If you’ve made it to a personal interview, the job is yours to lose. Do everything you can to leverage your best personal attributes and look your best. It’ll all pay off.

Today’s job market is tight, with lots of applicants, fewer openings, and no real end in sight. Given this, you must keep an open mind when job hunting. Your perfect job might not be available, but you still need to work. You need to realize that you have a broad and diverse set of skills that, if positioned correctly, could suit a wide variety of positions.

Here’s an example:

• You’ve spent the last 10 years in middle management in an IT department.
• You’ve been responsible for multiple company-wide initiatives and product deliverables.
• You have personally managed numerous individual contributors.

You know that middle management has been decimated with cuts in your industry, and companies are restructuring to run leaner. Finding an IT management position may be difficult or might not be what you want to go back to. Restructure your job search to leverage your skillset in a different job title. You could transition to project management or quality assurance, or even a business analyst. Any of these would suit your skills and get you back in the game.

The important take away from this is to open your eyes to the world around you and adapt. You have skills, you have education, you have a great work history. These things do not trap you into one role. They allow freedom to make your own path and take a side road to the career you want.