The Mind Behind the Eyes: How Someone Sees Your Resume
A fellow who calls himself "Rands," and who works as an "engineering manager of teams that design phenomenal software" wrote an insightful post on what he looks at when reviewing a resume.
I encourage you to read the post in its entirety. It will provide you with a very detailed and frank description of those elements of a resume, in terms of both content and style, that matter to this particular hiring manager. Ideally, his practical suggestions will help you craft, or re-craft, your resume so that it will do what it's supposed to do: get the attention of people who are empowered to hire you and influence them to, at the very least, initiate a conversation with you.
In a nutshell, Rands, decides whether or not to talk to a particular candidate within about 30 seconds and he's basically looking for two things:
Clarity and honesty - Provide a meaningful "glimpse" into the things you've done and can do while avoiding vagueries such as, "Established track record for delivering measurable results under tight schedules." If you feel strangely compelled to include statements like that, be absolutely prepared to give a concise and concrete example when asked. In other words, don't put anything on your resume that you're not prepared to talk about at length.
Differentiation - Rands says that your resume should offer some "hook" that begs further exploration. As he puts it, "The hook will leave me with a question. Maybe it's something from your other interests section? How about an objective so outlandish that I can't help but set up a phone screen? I'm not suggesting that you make anything up, I'm asking you to market yourself in a way that I'm going to remember."
Like I said, this post contains a lot of very practical suggestions. Do yourself a favor and read it!
On a side note: I love how one thing leads to another on the web. Checking out Mike Wagner's blog (Mike has a lot of great ideas about branding and is a contributor to Marketing Profs), he recommended reading David Koopman's blog (David is a marketer down in Melbourne, Australia). I clicked over to David's blog and found this post, which was itself a comment on Rands post, which I otherwise may never have discovered. Thanks Mike, David, and Rands. And thank you, oh wonderful World Wide Web!
