Hey Cultivator! Welcome back to my channel. In today's video,
I'm excited to share with you the exact template that I give to so many of my
job searching students and clients who are really trying to figure out how do I
beat this applicant tracking system.
So in this video you want to stick around to the very end to figure out how to
download that. But in this video specifically,
you're going to walk away with a eye-catching,
effective and ATS friendly resume that's going to help you stand out from the
rest of the pile. In this video,
I'm going to walk you specifically through five key sections on the resume that
I see so many people struggle with.
I'm going to teach you exactly what I'm looking for from a recruiters lens and
most importantly, how you can customize this to your own.
So without further ado, let's dive in.
[inaudible] [inaudible]
alright, so in tip number one, we're going to talk about the headline.
This is a section that is often missing from a lot of resumes,
but it's a great way to not only one, get a point for the keyword matching,
but two to just capture your reader's attention and that six seconds or less
that they decide to start skimming to say, wow,
this person has a similar title.
Let's go ahead and read the rest of what they have to say.
So this section here goes actually below the contact information and it's in
this heading right here.
Let's imagine for a moment that I'm applying to a social media director
position,
I may just as simply write down the title that matches here and then think about
two other components or strengths or skills that are super important to
highlight based on this particular job description. For instance, if this job,
we're really asking for a creative strategy and team leadership skills,
I would put that here right off the bat.
This is the first part that people will glance at and I'm essentially stating,
Hey, I'm a social media director just like you asked.
And here's two other main components that I identify as that also matches what
you're looking for. When you can capture their attention like this,
I guarantee you they will read on to the rest of your resume. Alright,
now let's move on to tip number two,
which is to create a professional summary and or a profile summary where you
feel a lot of people get this wrong is that one,
they either leave this off entirely or two,
they have something that's considered more of an objective statement,
meaning they're telling the employer what they're looking for versus what it is
that they can offer.
So a professional summary is really a high level overview of,
before I even read on the rest of your resume,
I should know at a glance what it is that you do that's relevant to what I'm
looking as a recruiter and or hiring manager.
So this is your chance to really summarize your background at again,
a 10,000 foot bird's eye level view of here's the things that I've done that
should really position me well for this position. And so that you can know,
I can immediately contribute from day one. With that said,
let's hop on over to my computer and we'll go through what this looks like.
Here's an example of the professional summary.
Now this could also be written in a paragraph form.
Ideally you want it to be anywhere from three to five sentences,
just a high level overview.
Here's what you need to know about me that gets you excited and again enough to
capture their attention,
to read onto the rest of your professional experience and your education.
So in this example here as a social media director,
perhaps they want to just emphasize the fact that I have 10 years of experience
designing and executing the social media strategy for fortune 500 organizations,
which have resulted in viral videos and posts generating millions of followers.
And perhaps as I was writing this,
I had in mind that this is what the employer is really looking for in this new
position that they have posted, right? So I'm really drawing upon the parallels.
Another important factor of this job description is perhaps that you have to
manage direct reports. And you have to manage a marketing budget.
I've included here perhaps at the peak of my career in terms of a career
highlight.
This is the most I've managed in terms of people and of financial budgets.
As you can see from this example,
I'm really focused on highlighting what's really important and integral to the
job that I'm applying for and I'm connecting the dots for my reader so that they
can see, hey, I am qualified,
I have the expertise and the skill sets that you are looking for and here's
where I'm connecting the dots for you. Remember, this is just a marketing tool.
This isn't a tell all of everything that I've done throughout my career history.
This is just the main bullet points or again,
sentences of what is most important to them.
How can I bring that to the forefront? Okay, so moving on to tip number three,
we're going to move into the skills or the core competencies or the areas of
expertise section. You can name it whatever you want,
but essentially what you're going to do here is pull out anywhere from nine to
12 skillsets that you feel are important to highlight.
Now the key trick here is to make sure that for the applicant tracking system,
you're checking off as many matches as possible.
So this section actually is really easy once you identify the strengths of what
you can do and the job description. If you need some help here,
be sure to check out how to do a SWOT analysis on the job description.
Once you have an understanding of the main skills that they really need in this
particular job, your job is to now put that into the section.
So we're going to go through an example here. In this section,
you're going to highlight all of the keywords that match the job description.
For instance, as you can see,
I wrote staff management perhaps in the job description they mentioned something
along the lines of previous staff management experience required.
Now if they had written team management experience required,
you would want to put team management instead of staff management because you
really want to capture the most matches in the job description.
This section here is a really quick and easy way to customize your resume moving
forward and making sure that you're highlighting as many of the buzz words or
keywords listed and that job description. All right,
now it's time to move onto tip number four,
which is going to be about the experience section itself.
This is going to be the meat of your resume,
but now that you've done all of the three steps before this,
your resume is already looking rock solid,
so now it's time to take it one step further and what we're going to do here is
focus on both your responsibilities and your accomplishments.
Where I see a lot of job seekers make the mistake is that they more or less are
just painting a picture of their roles and responsibilities or duties.
Let me remind you that from your title alone,
I more or less probably know what it is that you're doing.
What I really want to know as a recruiter are what are the accomplishments?
Really paint me a picture of the results of what your main responsibilities and
duties led to.
So let's go over to my computer and I'll walk you through an example. Okay,
so in this example,
let's say that my professional experience starts with my social media director
position at gap in this first paragraph here I'm just going to write a couple of
lines on what it is that I was hired to do and really paint the picture as much
as possible of what I was overseeing as the social media director.
So for instance, I can write,
"hire to oversee entire social media strategy to build brand awareness and year
round product releases and develop brand loyalty amongst global consumers.
Manage the entire content calendar for five social media platforms for organic
and paid reach,
conceptualize and manage all ad campaigns for six global markets." As you can
see, I've quantified as much as possible.
I'm not just stating that I was hired to oversee the entire social media
strategy. That's pretty obvious from my title alone.
But what I'm really sharing with my reader is that I was responsible for all
social media platforms.
I focused on organic and paid reach and I also managed six global markets,
right?
That might not be so apparent or obvious from just seeing that I'm a social
media director at this stage.
Once we have painted a picture of what it is that we are primarily responsible
for, it's time to move on to the accomplishments. In this section here,
I really recommend anywhere from three to five bullets.
If you have a lot more, because you've been with the company for many, many,
many years, you can write a bit more to that, but for the most part, again,
we're focused on accomplishments here,
not to the essential tasks or duties or things that you would see just in the
job description alone. As you can see from my accomplishments,
I'm adding a dollar sign anywhere that I can.
I'm also putting in percentages anywhere that I can as well as numbers.
Numbers are really important.
Anytime you can quantify that really helps boost your resume and please note
that we understand not every achievement is measurable,
so you want to still be able to paint a picture with a really strong power verb
of what was the ultimate result.
Even if you can't measure it in terms of numbers,
what did that ultimately yield or result in?
And as you can see from these last three examples,
this is exactly what we've done here.
We've shared the result or the impact that was made just based off of these
specific actions and tasks that we did throughout this job here.
In the experienced section. It's really important to ask yourself,
where have I made the company any money? Where have I saved the company,
any money? And or where have I improved any of the processes?
And what did that ultimately yield into?
If you can really highlight those three objectives,
those are the key objectives to any business. All right,
let's move on now to the fifth and the final tip I have for you,
which is all about your credibility. So this can be in the form of education,
volunteer work, professional organizations that you're a part of, certificates,
bootcamps, ongoing presentations, lectures, research publications,
whatever it may be in order to stand out from your competition.
What is it that you're doing that really shows and demonstrates you're
continuing to be at the top of your game?
This can look different for each and every one of you,
but if you don't have anything listed here,
I really want to challenge you to find a way to get connected with your people.
Where are the people in your industry or your niche or your department hanging
out in? Because there's so many ways to continuously evolve and learn and grow.
You don't need to be the president of an organization like it says on this
resume here. You could just be an active member or a volunteer, right?
Or You could be continuously educating yourself on Coursera or lynda.com or
anything out there that is allowing you to learn more about the skills that you
really want to cultivate that are again, important to this very position.
So I'm going to bring you into my computer again just to give you a sense of
what this might look like. In This example here,
I bolded the main titles and or certifications that are received and it's
followed by the organization and the location of that organization.
And here you just put in the dates and then this should all be put in
chronological order and there you have it. Congratulations.
You now have an ATS friendly,
easily customizable resume that's also effective. If you enjoyed this video,
please like it,
comment down below and let me know what you found the most helpful.
Be sure to subscribe and smash that notification button to be notified of a new
career advice video I release every Thursday and next week I'm actually going to
be talking about how to create an effective linkedin profile,
so don't miss out on that. If you want the template that I went over today,
you'll just want to go down into the description box and sign up for the free
resource library. It's in there with a bunch of other free resources, workbooks,
worksheets, and goodies. So check that out. And until next time,
continue to cultivate your life and career.
[inaudible].