Your Resume: Top 5 Reasons You’re Not Getting a Response
You and your resume can be best friends or secret enemies. If you are looking for career shift you have already realized that job hunting IS a full time job! Time is precious and so are great career opportunities. You definitely want to get that phone call, but what if your resume is secretly sabotaging your career change aspirations? You can’t afford to waste valuable time and your resume could be contributing to the reasons you’re not getting a response.
Top 5 Reasons You’re Not Getting a Response
When you Google “resume mistakes” you will get the gambit when it comes to opinions about resumes. As a career coach: here’s the top five common mistakes I see qualified, smart professionals make. These common blunders will ensure their resumes are never considered – especially if they apply online (and most job seekers do!).
Contact Info in the Header & Footer
Adding a ‘header’ or a ‘footer’ to your resume seems like a perfectly logical thing to do. The problem is, some ATS (applicant tracking software) systems will not recognize a Word Document format ‘header’ or ‘footer’ and thereby will not translate your contact information into the ATS system. You’re sending a resume with no contact information! If you are submitting a .pdf file it’s not an issue, but not everyone uses (or will accept) a .pdf file. Lose the header and footer on your resume! Simply ignore the fact that you can add one in Microsoft Word and carry on.
TOP TIP: An online-specific resume can increase your chances of being seen by a real person by 45%. The ATS system criteria vary by employer, but there are a few key ingredients to drastically increase your chances of getting the phone call!
Contact me for a FREE online-specific resume template
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Lack of Focus
In order to attract the target employers you want, you must have a target! Resumes that label you as the ‘jack of all trades’ won’t do you any favors. Hiring managers and recruiters are looking for professionals with focus that can clearly communicate what they want out of a career. Without a target you will sound wishy-washy or unsure of what you really want to do. Your resume needs to have a clearly demonstrated focus on where you want to go and why they should hire you – the rest of the document is simply supporting information.
No Value Statement
A resume will hook a hiring manager’s attention when you talk about what you can do for your potential new employer. Why should they hire YOU? Many highly skilled professionals struggle to clearly communicate their value. Their resume is an obituary, only focused on the past with no mention of what they capable of. Ditch the ‘Objective Statement’. It’s usually a place to stuff a ton of keywords and over-used acronyms like: “detail oriented, proficient communicator, multi-tasker”, and the like. Instead of an Objective, have a Sales Pitch about what value you can bring to the table!
Being Too Wordy
Formatting your resume to squeeze every last drop of information into two pages with tiny margins, 10 pt font, and every single fact you could possibly think of will guarantee that it will never be read. Resumes get about 3-5 seconds to make an impact and some HR managers will simply dismiss ‘wordy’ resumes out of hand. A good resume must have a reasonable amount of white space and most importantly: be readable! An experienced professional can go up to, but no more than, three pages in their resume.
Run-on sentences and death by bullet-point kill any desire for HR managers to even give your resume another glance. Keep your statements succinct and efficient. Get to point and make an impact. PLEASE do not list every task you performed in your previous roles! Summarize and discuss what makes you stand out from the crowd.
No Impact Statements
Everyone has accomplishments but not everyone realizes what they are! Accomplishments are key towards highlighting your impact in your professional experience. These statements are hugely important in today’s competitive job market. Your accomplishments are not just awards. Anything you did to improve the business you worked for (even if it was a part of your role) is an IMPACT.
I commonly see statement like this:
Led a cross functional team through a strategic improvement project in warehouse receiving, staging, and material housing.
Nothing in this statement helps the reader understand the impact of what was done. Congratulations on your project, but what difference did it make? Now, compare the statement above with the impact statement below:
Led a cross functional team through a strategic improvement project in warehouse receiving, staging, and material housing that reduced operating cost by 45%, eliminated unwanted scrapping of aged material by 95%, and improved inventory accuracy by 81% as well as saved an estimated $3,000,000 in operational costs annually.
An IMPACT STATEMENT will change the reader’s reaction from “How” to “WOW”.
By demonstrating impact in accomplishment statements for each of your previous positions, the hiring manager will be asking themselves: “Wow, can this person do this for our company??”
I hope these resume tips are helpful! You want your resume to being working hard for you – not slacking off and being ignored. You are an accomplished, smart, experienced professional that deserves to get the response for the career that you desire!
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