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 this 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 writing 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
in the modern world
how do you stand out on paper
[Music]
it'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
what 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
christie 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 etc
etc but just ditch that it's taking up
real estate on your resume christy 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 i like to see when
someone adds a single line beneath the
organization name that says you know
this is
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 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 and 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 of what you
want to do whether those have to do with
interfacing with the public whether it's
customer service in some way i 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
[Music]
i know one resume is hard enough
but 75 percent of us 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 if 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
[Music]
people talk about bringing their whole
self to work now we're seeing that
people are bringing their whole self to
their resume and 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 lived through collectively
the toughest couple of years in recent
memory and that's a relief
christy 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
[Music]
there will always be people who say that
your resume should be limited to one
page but i i think generally speaking
the more resumes i've seen lately are at
least two pages some are three christie
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 had 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 i 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 um and it
looks pretty like it's it's fancier um
but i do still have to make a lot more
changes to it um 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 little context around how to stand