Career Blog: What’s the Purpose of a Resume Anyway?

The answer to this resume question, plain and simple, is: to get you an interview.  Hiring managers may go back to your resume after having interviewed you to double check your qualifications, but for the most part, the goal of a resume is to get enough attention and interest to be invited for an interview.

So how do you do that?  As a career counselor, here are the five things that help your resume achieve its goal: an interview!

1. A resume should show that you can solve the company’s problems and meet their needs.  The reason you have probably heard over and over again that you need to target your resume for each individual job you apply for is because a resume will get a hiring manager’s attention if it shows exactly how you’re the answer to their problems.  In particular, you can do this by writing a personalized and powerful Summary section that specifically calls out how your background and qualifications meet the needs of the job and company in question.

2. A resume should ideally show you’re a fast learner and will require minimum training to get up to speed on the job.  If it will take you six months to be able to do your new job well, that’s six additional months that the company’s needs aren’t filled while they are still in fact paying you.  Try to show on your resume, through your past accomplishments, that you can pick up new skills quickly and that you already have lots of experience doing what the new job would need you to do.

3. A resume should show you’re effective.  This may seem obvious, but a hiring manager wants to know not only that you have done certain things, but that you’ve done them well or better than most!  The way you demonstrate this on a resume is by quantifying your accomplishments whenever possible and by focusing on not only the tasks but how the tasks benefited the company.

4. A resume should show that you proactively work to improve things.  There are a number of people who can perform certain tasks, but a smaller number who can improve the system so that those tasks are more effective or take less time.  Attract a hiring manager’s attention by focusing on places where you’ve taken the initiative and made things better.

5. A resume should show you’re a good writer, and yes, that you have good attention to detail.  This comes up more often than not in the negative form.  If a hiring manager finds that you have misspellings or grammatical mistakes on your resume, or that the wording is awkward, you may be eliminated as a good interview or job candidate.  And if you’re applying for a job that actively requires writing, remember that your resume and cover letter are real examples of your work!  Of course, it’s important to prove you have good attention to detail with your resume, but that does not mean you have to list “attention to detail” on your resume.  In my opinion, listing fluffy skills like this is far inferior to proving them through your writing and experience.