How to Write a Resume That Shines

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

0:35So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Okay, so you're writing a resume and you want it to be perfect. What does it look like? What does it sound like? I want to look professional, but I want to be myself. But do companies care about who I am? Do I have enough to fill a page? I don't have five years experience. This is an entry-level job.

1:08This looks so old-fashioned. Is this really still how you're supposed to do a resume these days? Do you know it takes hiring managers less than 10 seconds to decide whether your resume lands in the accept or the reject pile? There is a lot riding on this piece of paper, and it's important to know how to catch a recruiter's attention. It's also hard to do and very easy to obsess over. Are you doing too much? Are you doing too little? What if I don't have enough experience? Does this even look good? The rules around what makes a resume great are always changing. So let's unpack how to stand out.

1:48In the modern world, how do you stand out on paper?

2:00It's a shame that recruiters at the moment seem to have the attention span of a goldfish, but it's also a necessity because there are so many roles to fill and so many resumes to read and only so much time. That's Christy DePaul. She's a content creator who writes a lot about career navigation and personal branding. She helps people with resumes, productivity, job interviews and lots of other stuff. So I heard that when a human looks at our resume, they're giving it like 10 seconds of consideration before it lands in the accept or reject pile. Can you tell us like what's happening in those 10 seconds where their eyes go first?

2:37What kind of makes them say yes or no? As someone is scanning your resume, of course, they're going to notice your name. It's at the very top and then moving on down to your most recent experience. And then do they have the requisite skills and education? Christy has a lot of advice for people around how to write resumes. Here's what she had to say. There used to be this trend where you'd write a little mission statement at the top of your resume, like I'm an experienced, thoughtful, ambitious person who's interested in this industry, et cetera, et cetera. But just ditch that. It's taking up real estate on your resume.

3:17Christy says you should just replace this with a simple headline that describes you and your specialty, like content creator, marketing specialist, and this can be really useful if you're trying to switch industries. You do want to hype yourself up on your resume, but not too much where it seems cliche or insincere. Instead, use bullet points to list out your achievements, data, responsibilities, and specialties. And if that is something that mirrors the job description, that's going to be a box that is ticked. One last bit of context to add, unless your company is very recognizable, include a little blurb about what they do.

4:01I like to see when someone adds a single line beneath the organization name that says, you know, this is the premier professional development association for engineers. You've just given me, you know, like a cheat sheet to your resume. If you're early in your career or fresh out of school, it can be really daunting to fill out a blank resume, especially if you feel like you just don't have a lot of experience. But you do have more experience than you think. I would look at your past project experience. I would even look at what you might think are roles that aren't at all applicable. So I had a slew of retail and service roles.

4:43And, you know, way back in the day, I was a Subway sandwich artist. There's a lot of things I learned, you know, folding clothes at American Eagle. There's a lot of transferable skills that you gain from roles that even seem like they're way outside. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together.

5:23Shop now at palmolive.com. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. What you want to do, whether those have to do with interfacing with the public, whether it's customer service in some way.

5:59I would take a hard look at what you've done, whether it's internships, volunteer work. There are a lot of ways that you can position yourself as somebody who has more experience than you really think. I know one resume is hard enough, but 75 % of U.S. employers use AI technologies to filter through resumes. It's mostly used to save recruiters time and narrow down a high volume of candidates. But yeah, robots are analyzing you. It's almost impossible to predict if you're going to do something formatting-wise or if you're going to say something that is going to either downgrade your resume or possibly get it excluded altogether.

6:45If you're giving one to a human being, it could be a lot more elaborately designed. You could create something really beautiful and a little bit more complicated, but if you're submitting something through an applicant tracking system, it should be a standard Microsoft Word document or whatever they're requiring, a PDF, and be free of a lot of ornamentation that could throw the applicant tracking system totally off. This is where having two resumes comes in handy. One for AI and one for people when you're networking in person. People talk about bringing their whole self to work. Now we're seeing that people are bringing their whole self to their resume.

7:29And that is a really interesting shift for 2022. That it's not just about a laundry list of skills and aptitudes and past experience, but it is something that can be all-encompassing and include some of your personal interests, causes, whether you're an activist. It can include past career gaps. They're no longer stigmatized or taboo because we all just live through collectively the toughest couple of years in recent memory. And that's a relief.

8:00Christy says, if you have a great recommendation letter or maybe a note from someone on LinkedIn and it's eye-catching and sincere, go ahead and put it on your resume. Kind of like those little blurbs you see on movie posters. Writing about yourself is tough. Just let other people do it for you.

8:23There will always be people who say that your resume should be limited to one page. But I think generally speaking, the more resumes I've seen lately are at least two pages. Some are three. Christy says not to overstuff your resume. You don't usually need more than one page, but if you have a lot of great experience, own it. Most applications these days are online. And Christy said it's not hard for recruiters to scroll between pages. I would say that this process was challenging. I sort of went into this thinking, you know, I had it figured out. I have a few years of work experience. I've written several resumes, but there were a lot of things that surprised me when I talked to Christy.

9:04I did end up making some changes to my resume. I made it look a lot more boring, added some endorsements, some metrics. I was really surprised by cutting out the line at the beginning and just having a regular title for myself. I also have my old resume, which, you know, I used to be pretty proud of. And it looks pretty, like it's fancier, but I do still have to make a lot more changes to it, even though this is the one for people and not the AI system. There you have it. Writing a resume will never be easy, but at least now that you have a little context around how to stand out today, you'll have an edge over your competitors when applying for a job.

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