How to flush out your experience and make it stand out on your resume

I don’t know how many countless resume have been deleted from my inbox or stuffed in the “never look at it again” folder after transferring it to the applicant tracking system.

• 99% of resumes have been the ones that list tasks under experience instead of telling me “here is how it relates to what you are looking for”
• Most applicants use this type of format

Office Assistant

• Answered multi-line phone system
• Organized and filed documents
• Ordered supplies and made sure the office was clean
• Wrote memos and answered e-mails

That’s really great, my young cousin can also answer phones and put things into cabinets, and he can also click reply and fill out an order sheet.

What else is wrong with this picture?

Now imagine what this tells me about you and if you have been working at the above mentioned position for a long time. If you have been doing minimal tasks with no real responsibility or impact on the organization then why would I hire you?

What is more surprising to me is that people with really demanding positions and even managers still use this same style and then wonder why nobody is calling them for an interview.

You really have to flush out this experience and make this the world’s best office assistant position that can springboard you into a better job.

Office Assistant

• Worked extensively with large clients including “company”, “company” and “company” and made sure that all communications channels were managed transparently to ensure rapid customer response time.

• Maintained large databases in regards to proper document placement and created easy to follow file request procedures.

I hope you get the picture … right about now you are probably asking yourself …”well that would be lying on my resume”

Let me ask you a question:

• Who was on the other line when that phone rang?
• Was it a company, a client, a customer, an internal employee?
• Did they want something from you?
• Have you helped them?
• Did you find them somebody who could help them?

Well then you are not lying you are simply speaking from experience.

Another major issue I see is with people who simply don’t have much experience is that they are student or somebody who is just starting out to take their career more seriously. They have an incredible hard time because they think that they simply don’t have anything to put on their resume.

A few weeks back I posted a blog post on how to improve your resume so I will not go into it much but here is a quick example.

Volunteer Experience:

Company Name

Volunteered at company in order to help ….

So what is wrong with this picture? Well nothing really except the fact that 99% of people do this. You can leverage this experience much better.

How about this

Leadership Experience

• I am actively engaged with volunteer work at “company name” where I lead a group of 50 participants through complex activities requiring me to supervise, mentor and motivate large groups. Through my experience I have gained managers insight that has enabled me to develop strong communication and leadership skills.

  

So here is the quick Guide on squeezing the good stuff out of every job you have had

1)      List anything and everything you did at that job

I twittered a job post on the companies profile just for fun and now I can put social media experience on my resume. Think outside the box this will make you stand out so list any and all minor and major tasks.

2)      List everybody you know and everybody you spoke to at that company

Add these people to you LinkedIn profile would be a good idea, it will also give you a good look at what they do and how your position relates to it.

3)      List all the clients and companies you have dealt with, also list the major clients of your current company.

Now that the brainstorming session is over with and you have at least 10 to 15 for each point its time to start analyzing and eliminating by answering these questions.

1)      What did I do

2)      How did I do it

3)      Why I did it

4)      What results I achieved

And lastly

5)      Does this make me good for the position I’m applying for and does it relate to their job description.

Essentially after analyzing it you will have a good idea on how to make it stand out on your resume, as for elimination you need to decide if you can target that statement towards a bullet point on the job description, if you can it gets placed on your resume, if it can’t it gets tossed.

I hope everybody can use this simple technique to make their resumes stand out. Let me know below if it helps

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