Hi folks. It's great to see you again. If you are new here to this gentleman name is Bill
Benoist. I'm a certified professional career coach in Silicon Valley. In today's video,
it's going be a short one, but I have some takeaways for you when it comes to the resume.
First and foremost, something I think is really super important that you need to understand,
and that is the typical recruiter's only gonna spend about six or seven seconds on the resume.
This was validated by the job board, “The Ladders” several years ago, when they videotaped the eye
movement of recruiters. And they found that the average recruiter, the typical recruiter was
scanning the resume and not really reading it. And since that time, it's been validated over and
over and over again, many different resources on the internet can validate this for you.
But I've also talked with so many different recruiters over the years,
and they've also told me, they said, “Bill, you know, I simply don't read resumes.
I'm scanning them. If it's in an applicant tracking system, I may be doing a
keyword search for particular skill.” So, knowing this, there's a couple of
best practices that you should implement. Number one, keep your resume to no more than two pages.
One page is not enough. In fact, there's been some studies out there that have shown that recruiters
prefer a two-page resume over a one-page resume. But when you get past those two pages, then it
becomes more detrimental, uh, to your success. You could have important information in the
resume just being actually overlooked. So, keep it to one and a half to two pages.
White space is your friend, which means that you should have one-inch margins around each side of
the resume and then keeping the font size, um, no smaller than a size 10, no larger than a size 14.
When I'm actually working with a client, I'll usually make just their name, a size 14,
and then the headings of the resume. I might do this as; you know what I'm talking about.
Professional summary or work experience or additional work experience education.
That's what I mean by headings. I'll keep that at a size 12 and then the content
underneath those headings as a size 11. And if there's a lot of content, then what I might do
is I might go the headings to a size 11 and the content size 10, but anything smaller than 10,
it becomes very difficult to read your bullet points under all of your work experience. No
more than six to eight, bullet six to eight bullet points for the most current position.
And then fewer bullet points below that. And the bullet points is actually what I really wanted
to focus on in today's video, don't make your resume read like a job description. You need to
show those bullet points as actual accomplishment, statements, and numbers,
Metrics, percentages, uh, dollar amounts, symbols, dollar amount, symbols,
all of these things stand out and they bring that person's focus directly to that bullet point. And
that's what you want to do. So let me give you an example here of a job description that I pulled
off the internet just before I did this video. So, look at this lead, the program management
functional areas, ensuring an accountable efficient and consistent project execution
oversee the risk cost and schedule objectives across the group for all projects, primary
point of contact to project stakeholders and contributors providing regular updates. You can
read what I have up here, but the bottom line is this is something that I've pulled directly from
indeed for as a, for a senior project manager, the job description for that position. And yet
so many resumes that come across my email from new clients when they want, you know, to work with me.
And I have them send me the resume will read like this. And what you really need to do is
you need to show the accomplishments, uh, for each one of these areas of responsibility.
And you do that. You're gonna start it with you. You can actually ask yourself some questions out
there, questions like this. Uh, did I meet or surpass standards for speed or accuracy?
And again, you're gonna use actual numbers to back all of these things up. Did I consistently
meet deadlines for key reports? Did I fill in for a supervisor in his or her absence for how long
did you fill in? Did I help reduce turnover? What was the ratio of the turnover before and after?
Did I call intention to a wasteful procedure? Did I suggest a solution?
What kind of, uh, results did that solution provide? This is what you need to ask yourself.
And in the note section below this video,
I do have a free handout that talks about how to write accomplishment statements. So,
make sure that you grab that. I hope you found this video informative and useful again,
as I said, it's gonna be a short one today, but it's one that I think is really super valuable
because I've been seeing so many resumes lately where they're reading like job descriptions
rather than reading as accomplishments to those job descriptions. So, thanks for stopping by
if you haven't already done. So make sure that you subscribe to this channel, hit the bell
notification as I do upload new crew tips and strategies every Tuesday. And I'd hate for you
to miss anything. Thanks for stopping by. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care.