By Jessica Hernandez, CPBS, CDCS
Executive Resume Writing | Certified Personal Brand Strategist | LinkedIn Top Voice
You find a position that’s a perfect fit for you, so you apply, then wait and hear nothing back. Not even a rejection letter. Is it your resume? The market? Or something else? Chances are your resume is missing one of these five key resume factors that could get you 2x more interviews.
If you’re not getting the responses that you hoped for from your resume, take a few minutes to review the following five critical components of an effective resume. You’ll find out what your resume is missing, fix it, and start receiving more responses.
Key Resume Factor 1: Resumes Must Be Relevant
61% of recruiters will reject a resume that has not been tailored to the position. That’s a pretty large percentage of rejections if you’re not customizing your resume for each role. Effective resumes are the ones that are targeted to a specific position.
When you don’t customize your resume, the hiring manager won’t see the connection between your experience and their needs. If you need help figuring out how to customize your resume, I share four strategies in this article: 4 Simple Ways to Customize Your Resume for Different Positions.
More than 90% of recruiters want to see related work experience, so if you’re not tailoring your resume to the role, you’re not giving recruiters what they need to see you’re a fit.
Customizations don’t have to take hours. It can be as simple as adding the target job title to the top of your resume, adding three high-priority hard skills underneath the job title, and prioritizing the most relevant accomplishments.
Key Takeaway: Customize your resume for the position you want, and you’ll see better results.
Key Resume Factor 2: Resumes Must Include Personal Branding
Personal branding is about finding and conveying your unique differentiators. It’s your resume success formula and what makes your resume stand out to hiring managers. For your resume to project a strong personal brand, you need to identify themes in your career. Here are some questions that you can ask to help you uncover your personal brand:
What do you do better than anyone else?
What is unique about how you do what you do?
What do others tell you are your greatest strengths? What words do they use to describe you when they introduce you to others?
What is your favorite part of your job?
What do people come to you for?
What are you most proud of?
Use the answers to these questions to help you prioritize what to focus on in your resume. If what you do better than anyone else is get a budget under control and save a company millions of dollars, make sure this is front and center on your resume. Don’t bury it at the bottom somewhere.
Key Resume Factor 3: Resumes Must Use Industry-Specific Keywords
A simple keyword can tell an employer whether you possess the skills, abilities, and qualifications they consider necessary for you to perform the job in question adequately.
It’s important to include the keywords specific to the position you want, or you’ll be passed over for any interviews. Research the professional, technical, and academic skills required for the role. Make sure any you possess are given priority on your resume.
Keywords are critical when you apply online because applicant tracking software (ATS) will use them to weed out your resume from the other candidates who are applying and will rank your resume in order of relevance. But they are also important to the human eye.
When the ATS search deems your resume worthy and spits it out for review, the entry-level HR representative reading it will want to see those keywords—and he or she is not going to want to go looking for them.
That’s why I always advocate for having a keyword section (or a keyword competencies section) in the top third of your resume. This way you can immediately communicate to the hiring manager the professional, academic, and technical skills that you possess.
Make it easy for the hiring manager to locate the information they need to make a fit/no fit decision, and you'll get more interview requests.
Key Resume Factor 4: Resumes Must Use Active Voice
Passive terms and phrases on your resume will diminish your resume’s effectiveness. Ditch the “responsible for,” “duties included,” “familiar with,” “knowledgeable in,” and “worked with” stuff. It’s a waste of valuable space that you can use to communicate your accomplishments and what you achieved.
Instead, replace the passive phrases with action verbs that communicate your achievements.
Here are some of my favorites:
Accelerated
Achieved
Captured
Conceived
Designed
Created
Imagined
Reengineered
Revitalized
Spearheaded
Structured
Negotiated
Implemented
Automated
For a more comprehensive list, you can download this free PDF that includes 178+ action verbs, high-impact phrases, and strength descriptors that will improve your resume.
Key Resume Factor 5: Resumes Must Show Results
The majority of recruiters agree that the number one barrier to hiring is a lack of skilled candidates. I believe there are plenty of skilled candidates on the market—it’s just that most of them struggle to convey their accomplishments and results.
Communicating your value and what you’ve achieved is by far the MOST important factor in an effective resume. Hiring managers will predict/judge your ability to perform in the role based on what you’ve accomplished in the past. This is why it’s critical you explain what you’ve already achieved.
One of the best ways to do this is by using a C.A.R. format—this stands for challenge, action, and result. For each position, focus on the challenge you faced, the action or actions you took to address the problem or challenge, and the results of the action you took.
An example of a resume bullet written using this format is:
Secured $2.1M+ savings in banking fees across all UAE markets by negotiating RFPs. Created new platform, implemented SEPA-compliant services, and restored troubled bank relationships to optimize payment services.
The result is that the client secured $2.1M in savings.
The action is negotiating RFPs, setting up a new platform, implementing SEPA-compliant services, and restoring bank relationships.
The challenge is implied—restoring troubled relationships.
Notice how we used action verbs to communicate what the client achieved? Secured, created, implemented, restored.
Try doing the same when writing about your own unique differentiators.
Start with an action verb, follow it up with a quantifiable result, and then show how you delivered the result and the challenge you faced.
Sometimes, you can leave off the challenge and mention the action and the result. An example of a resume bullet that’s focused on just the action and result looks like this:
Transformed Prudential’s treasury organization to support EMEA, achieving $2.2M savings by consolidating treasury into a centralized operating model.
Pro tip: Use bolded text to draw more attention to the result you want the employer to read.
So there you have it—the five must-have components for an effective resume. If you tailor your resume to the position, convey your personal brand, use industry-specific keywords, include action verbs, and communicate your accomplishments, you’ll get more interview requests. In fact, I suspect that if you do these five things, you’ll be inundated with requests for interviews. We worked with three clients in the past two weeks who received interview requests less than 24 hours after posting and submitting their new resumes.
These components are powerful, and they work. They’re the same ones that we use with clients every day to help them land perfect-fit positions.
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