All excellent resumes have characteristics in common. Resume writers make personality traits an important part of your profile. This document provides insights that demonstrate common resume mistakes. This article shows how to showcase your achievements through proper formatting for all applicants, including entrepreneurs.
Important Components of a Resume
First, at the top of the page, complete Contact Information. This includes your name, location, phone number, and email address. Next, you will create a Professional Summary that is placed underneath your Contact Information. Summaries should be one to three sentences. Prioritize content that explains what you bring to a company. This is your competitive edge, so make it excellent. Remember to avoid pronouns in order to reinforce your resume writing proficiency.
An important trait for entrepreneurs addresses their ability to make decisions based on quantitative content. They crunch numbers that lead to their unique selling proposition (USP). Entrepreneurs indicate how their USP relates to motivational factors that include taking the initiative – an essential characteristic that positions companies.
The Benefits of Unique Selling Propositions
A USP needs to be specific. Gorilla Glue adheres to all surfaces. Some competitors cannot make this claim. Determine the demand for the product by conducting market research that indicates whether your USP meets the needs of consumers. Is there true demand for this product? If so, be the first to bring your USP to the marketplace.
Business owners create a USP that positions their products. When contemplating positioning, an entrepreneur should be the first person to introduce their USP to the marketplace. First is better than second because this position overcomes the clamor of the crowded marketplace. The initiative shows your ability to take a USP from conception to the marketplace. This is another way of describing the entrepreneur as innovative.
Why is it better to be first than second when bringing a product to the marketplace? When a company is first, they develop strong brand recognition. This leads to customer loyalty. Some customers demonstrate a willingness to pay more for a product due to the perception that the first product has higher quality.
The Battle Between the Beer Titans
The observation of who or what came first really has no explanation other than the first mover demonstrated initiative – an organization had the knowledge and intelligence to create a new product and this characteristic impressed consumers. However, being first in the economy does not secure that position in the future. Take light beer competitors.
Miller Lite entered the marketplace in 1975 and Bud Light emerged in 1982. In 2019, Bud Light shipped 29.4 million lager barrels while Miller Lite shipped 12.6 million lager barrels. This insight allows entrepreneurs to claim that their product will not stagnate simply because it was not the first product to reach the marketplace. Business owners must create marketing campaigns that supplement a USP in order to change positioning.
Why is a Professional Summary Important?
Failure to include motivational factors in your resume will stall your objective to secure the job. Your workplace achievements must be read with a formal and knowledgeable tone of voice. Here is a Professional Summary that shows initiative:
“Dedicated policeman looking for new challenges and opportunities as a Strategic Intelligence Investigator by utilizing effective verbal and written communication.”
Did you see the way that worked? The resume writer branded the policeman with the forceful adjective “dedicated” and he then acknowledged the motivations of the policeman for seeking new employment – he wants to participate in new experiences that allow him to make use of his communication skills within teamwork environments. He is demonstrating his aptitude as a self-starter.
How to Explain Employment Gaps
Beneath your Professional Summary, include your Work History. This is a chronological listing of employment. Remember to include months and dates. As a sidebar, if you have resume gaps, then you must explain the reason for being out of the workplace. Six months is considered the threshold. Give hiring managers honest and transparent reasons in order to build credibility.
One explanation for an employment gap stems from your efforts to successfully start a new company. Have your facts and numbers ready so that you can explain to the hiring manager what worked and what did not work when developing your organization as an entrepreneur. Demonstrate essential takeaways and how these outcomes benefitted your company.
Provide the hiring manager with quantitative and qualitative results that demonstrate the successful policies of your company. Explain key takeaways and demonstrate how your company attained success by using an effective USP that carved out a fairly lucrative niche. You applied for this job as a marketing director because you want to solve new problems that require goal orientation as a motivator – your background as an entrepreneur solidifies you as a prospect.
Use Transferable Skills When Seeking New Employment
Your Work History makes up most of your resume. Remember to include employment that is relevant to the job that you are targeting. When seeking employment in a new field, be sure to include transferable skills. For example, if a waitress wants to work within a department store as a sales representative, she needs to demonstrate the similarities between working as a waitress and working as a sales representative.
Both jobs require employees to greet customers to make them feel welcome. Furthermore, both positions require employees to help customers select the best products for their needs. Waitresses often provide customers with specials that are being promoted that day and sales representatives inform customers of any sales for the day.
In addition, both positions require goal orientation to be successful. Both positions generate positive reviews that will bring more customers into their establishments. The waitress and the sales representative increase the bottom line through goal orientation – this motivational trait will cause new and existing customers to go to their establishments.
Listing Your Educational Background
The final section of your resume includes your Educational Background. If you attended a school of higher learning, you do not need to include your high school information. If you have either a GED or a high school diploma, then include the appropriate accomplishment on your resume.
Concerning collegiate information, be sure to include the name of the school and the type of degree. Remember to include the timeframes that you attended. Finally, if your grade point average is stellar, include this information. This shows goal orientation as a long-term objective. Grade point averages acknowledge your depth and breadth of subject matter.
Hiring managers categorize certifications and advanced degrees as hard skills. If you want to be involved with computer science but do not want to attend a university, then you could get certified in website analytics from a search engine organization or some other digital platform. These certifications generally require three to six months to complete.
Using Creativity to Format Your Resume
So far, the resume writer has established the basic structure of an effective resume – Contact Information, Professional Summary, Work History, and Educational Background. Each applicant has specific needs, so resumes must address those variations. Let us revisit an important section of the resume for a police officer.
He currently does not have the hard skills for the job, so he attends university in order to attain compliance. He will receive his bachelor’s degree before the job starts. How should he handle this situation? Resume writers can be creative when establishing background content, so let us go back to the upper portion of the resume.
Underneath the Professional Summary, he could include a Qualifications Summary with a few vertical bullet points that demonstrate his aptitude for success. These are building blocks. One bullet point would include the following: “Utilized excellent oral communication skills that have been applied in situations that kept conflicts from escalating into serious altercations; used open and closed questions to take control of the communications.”
After he completes these bullet points, he could create a section called Academic Coursework. Each course receives a bullet point. List six relevant academic coursework categories with three classes per line. This type of formatting leads to a resume that is easy to read and looks good.
Beneath this section, the police officer could list his Professional Experience that provides the building blocks for attaining new employment. Beneath that, he chose to include his Educational Background that includes his current enrollment at a university.
How to Ensure that Humans See Your Resume
One thing that could complicate your job search is the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). While this program streamlines cumbersome human resources processes, it could impact your employment search to the point where your application is never seen by a human.
This software filters data and ranks applicants. To be ranked, an ATS compares keywords within your resume against the keywords that are required to move your resume to the next phase in the hiring process. This means that a human will analyze your best resume that addresses your USP and your motivational factors.
For example, if a job requires a bachelor’s degree, ATS will scan resumes to find this information. ATS will also search for soft skills and hard skills described in the job listing. For example, an applicant for a marketing position could require experience with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Here are keywords for a marketing position: digital marketing, social media, vendor management, search engine optimization (SEO), market research, and direct sales.
The ATS searches resume for keywords. If enough keywords cannot be found, the resume goes into the virtual shredder. Applicants must determine the right phrases for the job opening. You can find this information by reading the job description and by being familiar with the market segment. Creativity is essential because you can add a section near the bottom of your resume to demonstrate keywords. What would this look like? You could add two rows of bullet points with three keywords per line.
Use Your USP and ATS Knowledge to Attain the Best Resume
If you search for employment through an online service, you will find the soft skills and hard skills that companies want from applicants. Often, companies require proficiency in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. Include this information to attain ATS benchmarks. Call this section Software Proficiency and place this information near the bottom of your resume.
In summation, this article describes the sections of a resume as well as the formatting of your resume. If you want to complete your professional resume on your own, this article and other online resources are available. Several online sources offer resume services by resume writing professionals. The prices of resume writing services vary widely. Research the marketplace to find the company that best meets your needs and budget.
