Cool New Jobs

How to Write a Resume

Learning how to write a resume which increases your chances of being contacted for a job interview is easier than you'd think. There are no fixed rules which, if followed, you can be sure of 100% success rate. Downloading and copying resume models from the internet won't help you too much, if uyou don't know how to adapt them to serve your purposes. Each job and each employer is unique. In the same way, each candidate is unique, and so his resume should be: unique. There's a principle in professional communication, which says that any well-written piece of advertising needs to follow the AIDA model. AIDA is the acronym for Atention, Interest, Desire, Action. As your CV, or resume, is the way you advertise or sell yourself to potential employers, it should obey the same principle as an advert.

A Good Resume Should Attract Employers' Attention

Think of employers trying to fill in some job openings they have. Each and every day, they receive hundreds if not thousands resumes, cover letters, recommendation letters or job applications. It would be impossible for them to call all those people for an interview, so they have to make several selections, before proceeding to interviewing the candidates. The more you manage to stand out of the crowd, the bigger your chances are to get through the primary selection filter of the employer. This doesn't mean that you should write non-sense, or shocking things in your resume. Nor does it mean that you should include your sexiest photo when appying for a sales representative job. I remember, in my recruiting times, how I used to make fun of those young ladies who applied for medical representatives and sent me Playboy-like photos. I very much doubted doctors, professors and pharmacists wanted to see those ladies promoting pharmaceutical products. Neither did I, nor my bosses, therefore those candidates never got an appointment for an interview. You can attract attention by other means, such as an intriguing cover letter. More about the art of opening, in a future article on Cool New Jobs.

Writing Good Resumes Means Attracting Interest

After you've got my attention, you need to awaken my interest in you. Why should I choose you for the job? Here, most candidates tend to ennumerate dozens of positions, years of experience, places where they've worked, schoold they've graduated from. Honerstly, I'm not so interested in what you did for others or for yourself. I want to know what you can do and what you will do for me, in case I hire you. I need you to give me the specific, direct benefits I'm going to get if I choose you from the crowd. You need to be able to differentiate between features and benefits. To tell me you've been an area sales manager for 10 years is a feature. To tell me that you'll strenghten my sales representatives team, in order to make them more efficient and increase my sales, because you've already done that with other teams and you know the mechanism, so you can repeat the performance over and over again, is a benefit. Now I see that if I get you aboard, my sales will be better and my team will be more motivated and
efficient.

Outstanding Resume Writing Skills Make the Employer Want You

Your resume is your mirror representation, until the employer meets you in person. Knowing how to write a resume will result in a strong desire in me, the employer, to call you, so we get to know each other better. Your CV has to be specific, and it should illustrate very well the benefits for the future employer, sustained by your skills. Employers need to know that you can do X and Y for them, because you Z and W.

Only the top 10 Resumes Lead to Action

Action is your final purpose. Action, for you as a candidate for a job opening, means to get scheduled for an interview. In that moment, you'll know that your chances of success are real. Nobody wants to waste time, so if you've been scheduled for an interview, you can be 100% sure that the employer believes that you are able to cope with your future job's duties. Therefore, you can be positive that you have as many chances as all other selected candidates.

As a final note on how to write a resume, I want to say that you always need to read carefully the job description and adapt your CV in such manner that it responds all those attributes wanted by the employer. You probably have a lot of skills. Don't put them all in your resume. Emphasize those which are needed by the employer. If they need a fast acting person, don't write that you are extremely detailed and obsessed with perfection. At first sight, this might translate into "he never finishes what he starts". By no means should you lie in the resume. If you are not fast, then don't apply to jos which require you to be fast. Even if you get the job, you'd either be fired very son, or you'd be unhappy and willing to leave it yourself.