As a small company, in an exciting growth phase, we are always on the hunt for the next amazing team member to who will join us. That said, as a team of six, we take hiring seriously and don’t mess around when it comes to the interview process.
However, we know that in any job search there is a lot of work to do before you even get to the interview. For some, (or let’s be honest, most of us), muttering the two simple words “the resume” induces a full blown panic. It can be exhausting trying to narrow down what to include and then on top of that staying up to date, on the what seems to be the ever-changing application etiquette.
So, today our Founder & CEO, Alice, is here to help keep your resume out of the wastebasket and instead, into that prestigious “interview” pile. Enough with the games, here are five hard and fast rules you should always live by.
On using numbers: “Prove that you are results driven. Include specifics in your descriptions, ‘I worked on this project and grew our customer base by X% or brought in revenue of $X.’ I want to know what you did, and then translate that to what you might be able to do for us.”
On length: “Your resumé is your sales pitch. The key is to give us enough information that we want to set up an interview, but not too much that it’s overwhelming. Keep your descriptions to two or three succinct and specific lines. We don’t expect to learn it all from your resume, your interview is where you really can tell your story and explain in depth what you’ve worked on.”
On moves or breaks: “If you’ve changed jobs a lot in the past few years, or took a year off, don’t ignore that. If you traveled for a year, that’s amazing, share it with us! Your cover letter is a great place to broach this subject and share how it might be a benefit to your job performance. I don’t want to immediately discredit someone because it looks like they can’t keep a job or have been looking for what seems like over a year”.
On word docs: “Take the two seconds to format your resume to a PDF. I often will receive resumes that probably looked picture perfect when they were sent, but because they were word docs, the formatting got screwed up, which then appeared sloppy.”
On spelling and grammar: “This should be your best work. Your potential employer will look at it as an example of your quality of work. If you have spelling mistakes or grammar issues, it could be perceived that you may not improve from this point. Proofread your resume and have others proofread read it too. Then edit again and again. You want your resume stand out for the right reasons.”
