How to Improve Your Resume!

First, some of you reading this might be thinking – 
• How can a marketing guy help with resume writing? 
• What does he know about me and the jobs I'm looking for? 
• Resumes are supposed to be written a certain way – so I'm locked into that, how can he help me?


What I do is help companies sell products and services, so why not sell yourself using some of the same principles?

If you are looking for an illustrator, email me (ggreer@tampabay.rr.com), for my illustration website URL.

I recently had been contacted by a couple of friends looking for work, and they sent me their resumes. Yikes!  Because I thought they needed to head in a more value-based direction, here is the advice I offered (names and positions were changed to protect the innocent).


Here’s a few suggestions to make your resume have more pop and communicate more of the value that you can bring to the job. First, use action verbs to make yourself sound more active and dynamic.

The typical introduction paragraph is a summary of what you have done, but consider writing about the value of what you could do for a company. That will help focus the reader as to what kind of position you are looking for, how you could add value (save them money, increase efficiency, improve their bottom line, etc.).

Think ROI – Important: What is the company going to get for their return on their investment of time and money, by hiring you? You need to tell them, not assume they will figure out what your value is by combing through your resume – they don’t have time to do that! 


Avoid long, run-on sentences – make them short and punchy that communicate your value. Secondly, use action verbs to make yourself sound more active and dynamic.

If you are looking for a management position – I don’t recommend using the words “responsible for” as that sounds like you have just been following directions. Write with active phrasing using key action verbs – like this example:

Typical opening paragraph for a specific company;
Responsible for developing new business and for providing recommendations and launching initiatives to improve the overall management of a leading company in the field of power transmission.

Opening paragraph using action verb phrasing:
Improved the efficiency of the marketing and sales processes to create new business opportunities. Developed and launched initiatives that improved the overall management of the company. During my leadership at ABC Company, it was the number one supplier in the power transmission marketplace. 


(Note the use of action verbs. They may have been the number one supplier before you got there, and may not have been when you left, but during your time at ABC it was the number one supplier, and by stating that you will catch more attention and can go into more detail if required at your job interview).


Also, at many companies resumes are filtered on-line or scanned internally by resume auto readers that sort for key words. Know the system, check out this URL: http://www2.ferrum.edu/career/guide/keywords.htm.


Even if you know your resume will go directly to the hiring person and not through a resume scanner, it will still help to use key words. So remember, incorporate as many different action verbs as you can, and you might get more action on your resume.