Let’s face it: Your resume is the most valuable document of your professional life. Everyone from recent college graduates to experienced professionals will judged on this one piece of paper.

Interviews, job offers, and thousands of dollars hang on every word of your resume. It is imperative to have a resume that will cut through the noise and demonstrate your ability to perform in an extremely competitive job market.

The following list represents the 4 most important aspects of your resume:

1. Sell Yourself

Humans Resources departments will decide whether or not to give your candidacy a shot in less than 30 seconds. So, it crucial to answer one critical question: WHY SHOULD THEY HIRE YOU?
Your resume is your sales pitch. You have to convince your prospective employer that you are worth their time.

Your resume needs to convey a sense of confidence about your ability to perform. Your resume needs to be a story that uses your skill set to demonstrate your likelihood of success in a new job.

2. Make Your Past Experiences Relevant

Certain skills, such as sales, marketing, and management, can be transferred to different responsibilities. The same techniques that you used to sell steak knives can be used to sell computer equipment.

Your resume must demonstrate that you have the ability to transfer the skills that you have developed in your past experiences into your new career.

For example, if you are a recent college graduate and ran a landscaping company in college with a staff of 5 people, it is imperative to convey the leadership, sales, and management skills that you obtained during that time on your resume.

3. Prioritize Your Resume

This may sound obvious, but it is overlooked in almost every single resume that we work on. You have less than 30 seconds to make an impression.

Ask yourself what you have accomplished in the past that can be appealing to a prospective employer in less than 30 seconds.

Put your most relevant accomplishments at the top of your resume.

4. Keep It to One Page

If your resume passes the “30 second test,” then you have one page to convince your prospective employer that you are worth contacting.

Human resources departments don’t want any “fluff” in your resume. They just want the facts.

Your entire professional career will be judged on one piece of paper. 30 seconds will determine if your resume is worth their time, and then you have one page to make them want to learn more.



Credit: Joe Maddalone

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