Tips to move your resume forward from review to interview

(Photo credit @sctgrhm)

Here are three important resume tips to help your resume tell the right story to a recruiter, so you move forward from review to interview. 

(1) Make a recruiter’s job easier by telling a coherent story with your resume, supported by relevant experiences.

• Your goal with a resume is to get an interview. Full stop. It is NOT to have the recruiter spend more time on it. You want them to scan it, have no questions, and move you forward to an interview. 

• Also, a good tech resume has to tell a story vis-a-vis your experiences because many tech companies are doing away with cover letters. Ask yourself: can someone tell what I want to do by scanning just my resume? 

• Rule of thumb for resume length

  • If you have less than 10 years experience = one page

  • If you have more than 10 years experience = two pages 

  • Never use 1.5 pages! It looks like you forgot to add something - and it’s a strategic misuse of space when you could have explained additional projects!)

• Struggling to fit everything in a one-page resume version? Try thinking about your experience cumulatively. 

  • If you have managed a budget of $25K at job 1, $50K at job 2, and $100K at job 3, only list it for the job with the best example of that experience - or for the most recent job. Recruiters will assume that if you manage a $100K budget now, you’ve either had prior budget experience at other roles or that you are already at the budget management level they require. The only caveat to this advice is that sometimes, it’s useful to show the progression from job 1 to 3 -- but that’s when you ask me (your tech career strategist) for advice! 

(2) Do you have a Master Resume?

• We have all had the experience of working on a resume for days and developing the ‘perfect’ bullet(s). We hit save, and never change that bullet ever again. Not the best move though. 

• I have to tell you: your resume is a living document and needs to be continually updated for new roles/audiences/industries. 

• A Master Resume is a document that contains ALL the bullets and experiences you’ve had over your entire career and can often extend to 10+ pages. Think of it as a repository for everything (classes, certifications, skills, degrees, work and volunteer experiences/projects, awards, failed startups, hackathons, publications, etc). 

• As you get further along in your career, you will struggle to remember pieces of your background or which version of your resume had that perfect set of bullets. Creating a master resume will allow you to have it all in one place and serve as a reference guide when you have to create new versions. It’s especially useful for those pivoting to new industries as you may be able to resurrect now-relevant projects to put on your resume. 

(3) Use a ‘Projects’ section on your resume to help you when pivoting into tech. 

• Tech values informal experiences and a Projects section is a great place to capture and collect these experiences. It can be easily modified to add/subtract new experiences depending on the role you are applying for. 

• This section is also a visual representation of the pivot you are making, so a recruiter or hiring manager doesn’t have to guess about your tech-related skills - they will see it in black and white. Many of my clients only want to put paid experiences in the main Experience section, so this offers them a way to add all the informal experiences. 

• Maybe you and a friend created an app one weekend? Maybe you took a Coursera class to learn SQL? Maybe you did a tech-focused project in a class or for one of your volunteer groups? 

• The Projects section is likely to appear towards the bottom of your resume (right next to Skills or Personal). For some clients, we have put it at the top of the resume (above Experiences) in order to highlight these new skills ‘above the fold.’ 

• Don’t have many informal experiences to add? Consider starting a side hustle/project.

  • Benefits include: builds confidence in your skills; provides a creative outlet; serves as a mini safety net if something happens to your job; helps you when pivoting to a new role as you have evidence to point to of your ability to tackle a new skill set.

  • Reinventing your career in the time of Coronavirus

  • The Passion Economy & the Future of Work

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Is your resume AI proof?

(Photo credit @skabrera)

Make sure your resume is optimized both for a human reader AND an ATS. 

1. Tech companies haven’t developed a perfect AI solution to the tricky process of hiring, so during the resume review process, you’ll likely have humans AND applicant tracking systems reviewing your documents. You have to ensure it will work for BOTH of them. 

2. Here are 5 tips to help you optimize for both types of readers:

   1. Structure: I apologize to the more creative types, but your resume should be in a traditional formatted structure. It’s easier for both computers and humans to scan quickly when your resume is in a consistent format, with headings, company names, and titles organized chronologically. (Save your creativity for your portfolio, where you can really shine!) 

   2. Keywords: ATS systems love to extract all the keywords you feed it, but if you put too many jargon-y words on your resume, the human will get annoyed - or worse, distracted from the story you are trying to tell them about your qualifications for the role. Use the company’s job description to lift the best keywords for the skills they find valuable. Recruiters love it when you use their words! You can also use tools like Jobscan or VMock to help you identify additional keywords to add to your resume - or book some time with me to help you! 

   3. File type: I always recommend that applicants use a pdf. It helps you maintain the formatting you want, and the human reviewer doesn’t need to worry if there are any weird Word macro viruses that hitch a ride on your resume. The only caveat here: when applying to Microsoft, you may want to use a Word doc!

   4. No typos: This should be mega-obvious already, but spelling mistakes or other typos are a big no-no. If your resume is the only way a company is able to get to know you as a candidate, and you are unable to show attention to detail in this one document, it’s an easy way for them to screen you out. You could have many other amazing and relevant skills, but they might not see them if an ATS screens you out because of typos. 

   5. The Resume Secret: You actually want a recruiter to spend less time on your resume. Controversial, I know - but it’s true! The reason you put so much work into your resume is to make the resume screener’s job easy, whether it’s an ATS or a person. You want a recruiter to scan quickly, say Yes to themselves. This will move you forward to an interview -- because they can see instantly you have the right/enough qualifications for the role! 

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WANT A CAREER IN TECH BUT AREN’T SURE WHERE TO START? TAKE A LOOK AT MY COURSE, ‘TECH SEARCH COMPASS’ FOR STEP-BY-STEP SUPPORT

How to interpret resume rejections

(Photo credit @jontyson)

How to interpret resume rejections

I had a call recently with a client who had gotten 5 rejections from his job applications in quick succession. From this limited info, he had decided that he was not going to get a job in tech and that he should now start working on plan B. Since he was still very early in his job search process, we started by discussing how to interpret a few resume rejections before wholly changing your career goals. 

1. First, identify the factors that might be in consideration for why he was rejected. 

   1. As candidates, your first few applications may not be well-targeted as you are starting to learn about your interests. Take an objective look at your application to see where the misalignment was, or consider any external factors that may have had an impact. 

   2. In this case, his candidate profile showed he had fewer years of work experience than some of his peer applicants, he required immigration sponsorship, and his applications weren’t well-targeted towards his actual interests. (He was lured by the ease of submitting LinkedIn Jobs applications.) 

2. Second, what factor(s) can you NOT change?

   1. In the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans, they being by asking whether you’re facing a ‘gravity problem.’ A gravity problem is a problem that is not actionable. They are fixed and the only way to handle them is to accept the situation for what it is or reframe the way you think about it. 

   2. With this client, two of the rejections came from companies that he knew did not provide sponsorship. As he had no control over those immigration policies, it was better to move on as he was only partially interested in these companies anyway. (I’ll discuss how to think about immigration status in a future newsletter.)

3. Third, what CAN you control or change for future applications? 

   1. Resume rejections should give you some information to help you modify your strategy. Here are a variety of options we discussed: select a different set of companies to consider? Re-evaluate which role(s) to apply to? Network with employees who could tell you about ‘hidden’ job requirements? Get referrals to boost your credibility with the recruiter/company? Revise your resume again to be even more targeted? Seek out new projects/experiences & add them to your resume? 

   2. All of these actions (and more!) are within your control to help improve your application outcome. 

Resume rejections can be super frustrating, but it is worth it to take the time to figure out why they happened to the best of your ability. Sometimes there’s no good reason for being rejected (that we know about) -- but in most cases, you have info that can provide insights. Then you can use those insights to make better decisions for the next set of applications. 

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WANT A CAREER IN TECH BUT AREN’T SURE WHERE TO START? TAKE A LOOK AT MY COURSE, ‘TECH SEARCH COMPASS’ FOR STEP-BY-STEP SUPPORT

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