If I were to teach you only one thing about your resume – this would be it:
The ONLY purpose of a resume is to get an employer to contact you. That’s it.
Not to get a job. Not to sell yourself. Not to list your credentials. Not to give an account of your professional experience…
Just to get them to contact you back.
And you cannot do this by writing a resume in the way recruiters tell you to write them.
You do it by writing it in a way they respond to.
Don’t Do What They Say They Want, Do What They Respond To!
Unfortunately, that’s not how most people are taught to write resumes..
In fact, chances are, the way you’ve been taught to write a resume isn’t even designed to get you an interview or a job. It’s meant to save time for employers.
I first figured this out, about ten years ago. It was at my first management job, where I was hiring highly skilled people for a big (i.e. publicly traded, international) tech firm.
The jobs paid really well, and had great career potential. Which meant that I saw and heard everything and anything you can imagine from an endless stream of applicants – both qualified and unqualified.
At the time, because I was spending someone else’s dime to do the hiring, I didn’t appreciate the lesson I’m about to teach you as much as I should have.
But when I started hiring people on my own dime; this lesson became painfully obvious…
Resumes Have Long Been Ruined!
If we take a step back and think about what a resume is, it will become crystal clear.
What exactly is a resume?
Is it a list of what you have done for work?
Is it a document describing your credentials and accomplishments?
Is it a “summing up” of everything you’ve done professionally (that’s what the original French word means)?
Well… Yes, it’s all those things. But above and beyond those things, a resume is a document that can change your life. And this is very important to understand.
One day, you could be working as a part time retail cashier getting paid $10/hour. The next day you could be in an office making $65k a year, which is not only three times more pay, but arguably a career option with a much better future, and a much more pleasant daily rhythm.
That’s a BIG career transformation! And the resume is a key document that can trigger that transformation – IF it can get the employer to respond to you.
Everyone gets this. And so… Everyone tries to do the best with their resumes.
The problem is: Almost everyone does it the wrong way!
To do it the right way, you have to understand how an employer actually reads and responds to resumes.
That’s what hit me like a ton of bricks it at my first management job. I saw that…
You Cannot Trust What You See On Resumes
(Except for *one thing* I’ll tell you about shortly…)
You have to remember, we live in a world where everyone can Google everyone else’s resume, and steal every resume-hack posted on every career website in a matter of minutes.
Which means that EVERYONE uses the same bag of tricks!
That’s exactly what I saw. But moreover, I also saw that everyone postured. Everyone pretended and tried to sound much more important or impressive than they actually were.
Many stretched the truth. Some grossly exaggerated. Some even lied…
And after I spent a few weeks as a hiring manager I realized – like all other hiring managers realize – that the promises on resumes are as reliable as celebrity horoscopes from tabloid magazines.
Sure… Your resume might be more truthful. But the average resume isn’t. And there is no way for anyone to know the difference simply by looking at it!
After enough wasted interviews and disappointment, I came to terms with this fact. And I accepted that I could not rely on the positive claims on a resume to do my selection.
Claims were neither reliable nor differentiating.
But, I also realized that I could rely on the negatives. The glaring mistakes, the copy/paste phrases, and all the outdated verbiage… Those were both reliable and differentiating!
And as a result, I became – just like all other hiring managers become – hyper-sensitive to these negatives.
Understanding this is…
*THE KEY* to Writing A Resume Employers Respond To
You see… We all know that most claims and promises on a resume are false, and if not, they are at least misleading.
But we also know that the blatant red flags and the glaring mistakes are always 100% genuine!
And those mistakes provide you with enough data to navigate your opinion of a candidate from first impression to interview. Most times, it’s more than enough…
This is why no one reads resumes with an eye to pick the best.
No one looks for things that match their criteria, or seeks clues to uncover their ideal candidate, not really. That’s not a sustainable approach to recruiting.
People primarily read resumes, looking for an excuse to throw them out.
And they keep doing that until they are left with the few resumes at hand that may be worth talking to.
In other words…
Resumes Aren’t Read & Picked, They Are Filtered Out
They are scanned with an eye that looks for excuses to throw them away.
But that’s not how candidates are taught to put their resumes together. In fact, they are taught to do the opposite!
Our cultural conditioning about what we put on resumes and how we display that information is literally engineered to make that throwing away as efficient as possible.
For instance, this is why recruiters tell you to use chronological resumes – the list of dates highlights employment gaps, which they treat as a big red flag. (Even though it’s completely irrelevant to your ability to do a job.)
Or this is why they ask you to write your address at the top, right under your name – I’ve talked to recruiters who told me, with no sense of embarrassment, that they would chuck resumes that weren’t from a nearby neighbourhood! (Yes, that’s the same city, just not the right address! They assume that commuting makes less happy employees.)
I could go on and on about these examples…
But the summary is: We’ve been taught to present all the red-flags they are screening for first, because the people who taught us how to write our resumes are the ones doing the screening!
In other words: We’ve been trained to play the game by their rules, which are designed to serve them.
But I don’t want to demonise anyone, that’s not why I’m telling you all this and that’s not productive.
Besides, recruiters and hiring managers are just doing their job – they are not malicious. They are simply trying to minimise the time they spend looking at resumes, which is a painfully dull experience.
I’m telling you all this because you need to understand what’s really going on, and understand what they think and how they read resumes – If you are interested in creating a resume they respond to.
And to do that, you need to take away all their easy excuses for throwing away your resume, so that they actually pay attention to you.
Here’s what you do…
How To Remove Red-Flags From Your Resume
We have to start with the basics: The words you use.
Simply put, some words help you and others harm you.
Of the words that harm you, there are three categories of red flags. These are:
- Over-used words.
- Ambiguous (or meaningless) words.
- Words that diminish your value.
To stop your resume from getting filtered out, we start by replacing all words that are over-used.
Then we look for ambiguous or meaningless words, and either replace them or cut them out.
And finally, we check for any words that diminish your value. You shouldn’t have any, but in case you do – you’ll have some work to do.
Here’s what each of these word-groups look like:
1) Overused Words
Examples: Motivated, Creative, Enthusiastic, Specialized, Track Record, Passionate, Foremost, Cutting-Edge, Bleeding-Edge, World-Class, Successful, Driven, Leadership, Strategic, Extensive experience, etc.
By the way, these words aren’t our opinion. They are what job sites and LinkedIn report as overused words.
Think of these as fads. Or like hot stock tips.
By the time you hear them, they’ll have lost ALL their value. And they’ll hurt you much more than they help you.
Words like “strategic” or even phrases like “brand storytelling” or “thought leader” are great examples of this.
At some point, they were valued by our culture. Successful executives like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos might have used them publicly, maybe even a few times. And they were very fashionable.
But as more and more people piled on them, they lost their lustre.
And when enough low-level headhunters, or college career counsellors, or – worse – resume “experts” got wind of them; they turned into red flags.
Ultimately, these good words got ruined because they got overused.
But underneath the skin of the word… The concept they represent… That still holds value.
That’s why, these words are worth rescuing. And we do that by replacing them.
For instance, you don’t want to use the word “motivated” because far too many people use it.
But instead, you can replace it with words like “driven”, “prompt”, “inspired”, or even “excited”.
Get creative. And if you are not, use a thesaurus. (i.e. Google “thesaurus”.)
2) Ambiguous & Meaningless Words
Examples: Dynamic, Synergy, Excellent, Experienced, Team Player, Professional, Hard Working, Problem Solving Skills, References Available Upon Request, Results Oriented, Microsoft Office, Email Skills, Communication Skills, Computer Skills, Social Media, Multi-tasking, Internet Research, Focused, Capable, Detail Oriented, etc.
These are much worse than overused words, because they imply a lack of awareness regarding the workforce.
And that’s because they make you look like an outsider, AND they waste the reader’s time!
Allow me to elaborate:
Calling yourself “dynamic” is no different than telling someone that you have a variety of emotions. It applies to everyone.
Stating that you have “references available upon request” is the same as saying that you’ve got nothing better to say in your limited space. It’s also assumed, and if you don’t know that it’s assumed, you sound like an outsider who has never worked for a firm that had their act together.
Telling someone that you are “hard working” is like telling your date that you are a good lover. Can’t take your word for it.
And stating the fact that you can “multi-task” is just like taking credit for breathing. You should be able to multi-task!
The analogies can go on and on, but the point is always the same:
By writing these words, you are giving employers an excuse to throw your resume away. And that’s because these words imply a lack of value.
And this is key!
Your resume must imply value by today’s standards. Not by the standards of mainstream books written twenty years ago.
Delete such words. Replace them with something real and tangible.
And if you don’t know what’s “real”, “tangible” or “valuable”, check out The Five Core Skills & Seven High-Value Disciplines.
3) Words That Diminish Your Value
Examples: Unemployed, Looking for Work, Layed off, Laid off, Fired, On Time, Drop-out, Certified, Expert, School of Hard Knocks, Kick-ass, Rockstar, Best, Salary Negotiable, Won’t Do (insert task), Exploring work ethic, Awesome, Get my life back in order, Married, Has Children, etc.
These words and phrases actively lower your value.
They either advertise what employers see as your flaws (i.e. unemployed) or they are the sort of thing someone with a chip on their shoulder might say (i.e. School of Hard Knocks).
Or even worse, they imply a completely clueless professional (i.e. Exploring work ethic – and yes, that’s a real “accomplishment” from a real resume!)
Remember this: Even if that’s not how you meant it, that’s how they will read it.
Now… I won’t judge you if you have something like this on your resume. But I must be honest with you…
If that’s the case, deleting it is not going to be enough. You need to discover where it came from.
This is a symptom of a larger problem. It is a sign that there is a chasm between your perception of reality and an employer’s expectations.
You must fix that perception mismatch before you can write a resume that will work.
Start with asking yourself: What were you actually trying to get them to think? What did you want to convey about yourself in plain, simple English? What was your emotional motive?
Explore these questions honestly. Deal with the underlying emotions. And then… Re-write your entire resume.
You’ll thank me for it.
The Final Step Toward A Compelling Resume That Gets Responses
If you follow the above suggestions, you’ll be able to create a resume free from red flags.
And while that’s a big leg up, it may not be enough – especially if you are going for hyper-competitive jobs or entry level roles.
Yes, it’s great to have a resume that doesn’t get canned within three seconds.
But simply getting moved from the “filter me” pile to the “may call someday” pile isn’t all that useful!
We need more than that…
We want to create a resume, that inspires the reader to stop reading all other resumes, drop whatever else they have planned, and call us right there and then.
And yes, this does happen. And it happens much more than you think…
But it doesn’t happen because of a clever hack or some trick you read on a LinkedIn post.
It happens when you learn to speak the exact language the employer is thinking. (Not just using, but thinking.)
This is not using buzzwords. It’s not deploying some psychological trick.
It’s using what we call The Language of Value, which is a way of communication we uncovered through our research.
It’s about triggering the right thoughts and positioning yourself as a reliable professional in high-demand areas that employers are desperate for.
If you are interested in learning this, join the Career Hacks mailing list or take a look at the Launch Your Career program.
Additional Resources
Hope you enjoyed this article.
If you know anyone who’d find this information helpful, please share it with them.
And if you want to learn more, take a look at the resources linked below:
Learn About The Five Core Skills & Seven High Value Disciplines