Your Resume Will Never Get You a Job

I used to get asked all the time how to write a resume that will get someone a job. The truth is, I can’t. You can’t. No one can. A resume is not designed to get someone a job; it is designed to get an INTERVIEW.

Okay, so you may be reading this and saying, “Well, yea, I knew that.” However, until you truly understand this concept, your resume won’t bring you the results that you are looking for. Getting an interview just means that you have sparked enough interest with your resume that the interviewer would like to learn more about you. You haven’t given them enough information to make a decision yet. This is KEY to writing a good resume. A resume should be written in such a way that the reader is left feeling like they want to know more.

We’ll look at types of resumes, and lengths, and other key ideas in the days to come, but for now, let’s discuss one more essential point.

On a regular basis, I would have people bring me their resume and ask for my advice on how to make it “better”. My first question would always be, “What job are you applying for?” I would estimate that 80% of the time, the answer was, “I don’t know” or “umm…anything”. At that point, we would sit down to talk about how a resume should be catered to the position be applied for. This means that if you don’t know what job you are looking for, you have no way of writing a great resume. It also means that EVERY time you apply for a new position, you will have to spend some time changing your resume to match the current job opening. Again, we’ll discuss how to do this in the coming days, but it seemed worth mentioning early in our discussion.

Sound like a lot of work? It can be. On the other hand, once you make it a habit, it goes pretty quickly. Like we’ve said before, success is a habit. Work is a habit. If you put the proper time and effort into developing a top notch resume, you’ll be talking to hiring managers in no time.