Resume Writing Tips for 2009

Posted on 10. Jan, 2009 by Annemarie Cross in Uncategorized

It’s around this time of year as people begin to wind down and enjoy the holiday season with friends and family that they also take time to reflect and take stock on the previous year. Feelings of stagnation and the desire for new challenges and greater opportunities can often be the catalyst that prompts people to seek new and exciting job opportunities.

If you are aspiring to revitalise your career in the New Year to support you in your transition you will need to create a compelling marketing document that promotes your overall value and personal brand as a passionate contributor to the ongoing success of the company thus demanding an employment interview.

Today’s job market is increasingly competitive and the window of opportunity can often be as little as 10 seconds for your resume to spark the reader’s attention. Gone are the days of a tasked-based resume with an inventory of a position’s responsibilities, coupled with a standard (and boring) list of personal aptitudes. This has been replaced with an achievement /accomplishment driven document that depicts you as a pro-active candidate that demands results and demonstrates the significant value on offer to the organisation.

Here are some tips to inspire your writing:

~ Replace an uninspiring career objective with a succinct career profile that summarises your expertise and includes accomplishment highlights with quantifiable results. This is bound to impress the reader and concentrates on what you can deliver for them, rather than on what you want.

~ Incorporate industry-related key words as well as action words that will grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Orchestrated, devised, instructed, spearheaded, maximised, led, directed, streamlined, oversaw, managed, motivated, controlled, delegated, consolidated, generated, implemented, proposed, specified … and the list goes on.

~ Identify challenges you overcame; the action or solution you undertook to alleviate the challenge; and the (quantifiable) result, and script into a powerfully written statement. For instance:

Challenge: Staff turnover high, performance levels extremely poor, with overall costs to recruit and train new staff high.

Action: Developed staff monitoring and incentive programs; implemented staff training programs.

Result: Increased staff knowledge base; decreased staff turnover by 66.7%; increased staff morale and collaboration; increased productivity levels by 77%.

Then by incorporating a number of action words, the above can be written as:

Enhanced staff morale; optimised productivity levels by 77%; and reduced staff turnover by 66.7% following implementation of various monitoring and incentive programs.

Notice the deliberate detailing of the quantifiable results at the forefront, followed by the method in which this accomplishment was obtained.

~ Ensure your document is consistent in its formatting; if you bold a position title, bold all job titles throughout your document. Make certain your overall document is well structured (plenty of white space), and aesthetically pleasing (professional headings and layout).

~ Refrain from providing details of every single position you have ever had. As a guide, generally the last 5 – 10 years is appropriate (if the position being applied for is relevant to what you have been doing), with a maximum of about 15 years.

~ For far greater impact when identifying your professional experience, create a strategically written paragraph outlining your main accountabilities (remembering to incorporate attention grabbing action words), followed by a bulleted list of achievements.

~ Lastly, edit, edit, and edit again. Then ask a family member or friend to read through the document to ensure your career-marketing document is error free.