Customizing your resume to fit your audience -- Career Center Blog

May 8, 2009

Customizing your resume to fit your audience

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By Randy Woods
NWjobs

In a typical job interview, many candidates are looking to make a strong impression right off the bat and to use the rest of the 30 minutes or so to make the best possible case for why they should be hired. But before that interview can even be scheduled, most applicants have a much shorter window of time to get noticed: Try 20 seconds.

According to Arthur Koff, an employment expert and CEO of RetiredBrains.com, 20 seconds is roughly the time it takes for the average employer to decide to follow up on a résumé. So if your skills don't come across in these fleeting seconds, your carefully crafted profile will likely end up in the recycling bin.

"Most résumés are divided into three piles," says Koff, who has worked for more than 50 years in the advertising and marketing business. "Pile 1, where they hope to find the right candidate. Pile 2, where they will only go if they can't find someone in Pile 1. And Pile 3 that gets a 'Dear John/Dear Jane' rejection letter."

Today, with the near ubiquity of e-mailed job applications, most of the personalization goes into the cover letter, while the résumé gets tacked on as an attachment with barely another thought. The problem is that cover letters tend to get separated from résumés, Koff says, so the hiring managers end up with a lot of generic résumés that end up in Pile 2.

"Candidates are often told to include as much material as possible as opposed to focusing on the needs of the particular employer," he says. "A job seeker should go online and do some research prior to sending out a résumé."

Koff recommends that a résumé should be treated like a cover letter and re-written for each hiring manager, with the areas of applicable experience expanded or contracted as needed. Look for the key words in job postings. Get to know some of the terminology used at the company, and make sure you use that verbiage as much and as early as possible in your summary of experience.

In other words, if you're looking for, say, a marketing position, the recruiter is not going to care that you used to be in the real estate business, even if it's your most recent job. Make sure you move whatever marketing experience and skills you have to the top of the page, which is the place where your résumé "absolutely must include the kinds of experience the hiring manager or recruiter is seeking," Koff says.

For more information from Arthur Koff about getting yourself noticed in the job market, visit his website for his professional résumé-writing services.

Randy Woods writes about job-search tools, networking techniques and other tips to help you land your dream job.

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Rod Mattson on May 8, 2009 6:31 PM | Reply

Mr Koff is right on. Each resume must be customized to the specific job. In our monthly seminars, I have noticed that most folks have these "generic" resumes they send out. It is a waste of time because generic resumes are too vague for the an employer and your competition for a job posting is customizing her/his resume.

When an employer has a vague resume in one hand and a specific one to his/her company in the other hand, who do you think will get the call for an interview?

Finding a job is a full time job. The same commitment to excellence you put into your work when working is also demanded when you are looking for work.

Another objection to finding a job I hear is the economy and the high unemployment rate. We must take responsibility for our job search; blaming our unemployment on outside circumstances is a cop out. Yes, unemployment is over 8%; however, if you reframe it, the employment rate is 92% or there abouts. People move, get sick, die, get fired, get promoted, get demoted, etc there are always openings that come up. The key is to be prepared and search actively for an opportunity. I think that is the definition of luck--when preparation intersects with opportunity.

We must work at being prepared when so we don't miss those opportuninties--and those opportunities are going right by us all the time; often, we are not prepared so we don't even recognize one.

Don't delay calling referrals (opportunities). I got a referral for a possible communication workshop last Wednesday, I figured no big rush since the referring folks didn't know if they were really interested in communication workshops or not. I waited until the next Monday to call. She told me I should have called last week as they just hired a company to do some communication workshops. There was an an opportunity I lost because I waited.

Tailor those resumes, build a data base of accomplishment statements that can be quantified. Get one hundred of them, then use only three or four in three or four categories of skills on your resumes. You don't have to tell an employer your entire life history, they won't read all that. Just use the accomplishment statements that the employer wants--how do you know what he/she wants? Ask him/her!

Rod Mattson
www.MattsonCommunication.com

Nika on May 12, 2009 12:33 PM | Reply

My resume is the poster child of what Mr. Koff and Mr. Mattson are talking about! Too long, too detailed, not customized. I even paid Monster's resume service to re-write it a few years ago and, recently, considered having another Monster-like job site improve on what Monster did. I was actually told that they couldn't really improve on what I already had. Well, apparently, I had it totally wrong! To say that I’m frustrated is a bit of an understatement.

I got a big wake-up call last week when I attended Mr. Mattson's fabulous "Job Seekers Seminar." In the space of a few minutes, he explained what I needed to do to totally rework my resume, how to customize it for each job opportunity and how to maximize attention from the HR folks.

If you're at all concerned about the state of your job search, I urge you to attend his seminar. I can say, without a doubt, that I have never been to a more practical training session nor received better job hunting advice. Articles are helpful, but there is nothing like compassionate, face-to-face help and the camaraderie of others who are in the same boat. His “been there, done that” credibility speaks volumes and I felt right away that he was pulling for me.

In two hours, and for a price you won’t believe, Mr. Mattson gave me, and will give you, the reality check and tools needed to vastly improve your job search and he’s going to make you feel much better about yourself, too!

hemen parekh on January 6, 2010 6:28 PM | Reply

Customization of resume is an art that does not come easily to every jobseeker.

Then there is a science of customization which converts a plain text
resume into 8 graphs, online / automatically / instantly.

What is a resume supposed to achieve ?

 to capture the attention of the recruiters

 to motivate the recruiters to read it long enough to interpret the jobseeker's story

To impress the recruiters, what you need is a graphical / visual / analytical presentation.

There is only one job-portal on the Web which can do this and FREE

www.CustomizeResume.com

Regards

hemen parekh

hcp@recruitguru.com

Mumbai - India