If you or your friends have not already taken me up on my offer to CRITIQUE YOUR RESUME FOR FREE, it still stands. Just forward a copy to review@firstimpressionsresumes.biz and I’ll gladly give you my opinion on whether you succeeded in your attempt to establish a personal brand that sizzles and sells. Include your phone number so I can call you and we can talk.
JOB SEEKER/RECRUITER BLUES
Yesterday when I was lost in thought trying to find an appropriate topic for today’s article, the 1960’s Rolling Stones hit song Satisfaction came on the radio. As it played, it hit me right between the eyes how well they articulated my pet peeve about resumes. So I decided to take a few minutes and have some fun and rewrite the lyrics for you to get across a timeless message in marketing and resume writing.
I can’t get no… Satisfaction
All I get is… bad reactions
Still I try and I try & I try and I try
To write a great resume.
When HR’s tryin to fill a job req
And my resume comes across their desk
But its tellin' them more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire their imagination
I won’t get no satisfaction
Cause my rez has no value or attraction! No! No! None!!!!
I’m not getting … Satisfaction
All around me is sad reactions
I’m not getting no … Satisfaction
Cause my resume it has no traction
Still I try and I try & I try and I try
To tweak it for the umpteenth time.
What Mick, Keith and I are trying to tell you is the first rule of marketing (and that is what résumé writing is pure and simple) is to fire up the reader’s imagination.
When someone reads your resume they should say “Wow, I have to meet this person,” or “I hope he or she is as good as this resume, because if they are I’m going to make an offer right on the spot”. This is the reaction you want from your resume!
You can’t get this kind of reaction from mediocrity and babbling on senselessly about useless information that bores the reader or make you look like a drone.
It amazes me how few people do their homework before they begin writing a resume, and how little they know about what an employer wants to know about them.
I have said it before, but as my favorite mentor always tells me, “If it is important enough to tell people once, it’s important enough to repeat to the same people and to new listeners a second and even a third time.
So here are 4 of Perry’s Top 10 Cardinal Rules for successful resume writing
1: Do your homework and do it well. Forget what’s important to YOU – tell the readers want they want to hear!
2: Value, more value and added value is IN – boring facts are OUT.
3: Grab the readers’ imagination; tell them they can meet someone very special if they get to meet you– because YOU ARE VERY SPECIAL.
4: When in doubt - don’t wing it. Get help. The stakes are way too high and submitting a bad or even a mediocre résumé can cost you thousands of $’s and months of unnecessary self-doubt and physical and emotional grief.
Follow these rules and you’ll have a much better chance at getting S-A-T-I-S-F-A-C-T-I-O-N.
Author:
Perry Newman, CPC, is President/CEO of First Impressions Resumes and can be reached for a no cost consultation at 646-894-4101.
