155. Why Isn't Your Resume Getting Interviews? 4 Changes You Can Make

Kendall Berg (0:00)

Your resume, frankly, just isn't very good, and that's why you're not getting interviews. I'm Kendal, that career coach, and I help people find success and progression in their jobs without burning out or working too hard. And today, we're continuing our series on maximizing productivity, but focusing it on tips for the best resume. As somebody who has seen a lot of resumes, we're gonna talk about what can really help you stand out, especially in a competitive job market like the one that we have today, but in a way that's going to still allow you to be as efficient as possible with your job search. So we're gonna start first with the fact that in order to have a successful resume, you need to know what types of jobs you're targeting. A big mistake that I see people make is they're like, oh, I could do this or this or this, and they have seven different titles for different jobs they're going after in five different industries. And it's really difficult to get a resume that's going to hone in all of these different nuances in a successful way without doing a ton of lift and, frankly, customization for every single application. So instead, what you're going to do is you're going to target no more than two titles, right? No more than two. Now, every once in a while, you may find a very nuanced position at a company that calls their jobs odd things, and it's basically the same function as a different job, a different title, but I want you targeting two titles and no more than two industries. All right? A lot of the time, I like to target one industry because once we start splitting a resume for financial services and healthcare and two different titles, it can become really cumbersome, but we want to be kind of honed in on what industry we want to work in, what type of job that we want, so that we can make our resume really successful. So once we know what we're going after, we want our resume to be aesthetic but simple. I've linked in the show notes below my resume template that I use with all of my clients. It also has instructions on how to populate it. I find that it performs very well in the ATS, which is why I recommend it. But you don't want something that has a lot of added on it. Now in 2013, it was cool to have a lot of icons on your resume or to have a headshot. Now, in certain European countries, it's still very popular to put your headshot on your resume. Obviously, please stay within the cultural norms of where you live. There are also countries that require your marital status, or they like your education to be higher up. But I'm going to be talking generally about North America. We want no picture, no icons, education at the bottom, but we're getting there. So you want it to be aesthetic, but you want it to be very, very simple. So if you look at my template, the way that we made it aesthetic is there's a little bit of color, there's a little bit of font, it's very easy to read and it's very simple to digest. The average person looks at a resume for four seconds. Four seconds, that's how much time you're going to have to convince them that they want to interview you. If your resume is too complicated, too busy, or too long, you're going to knock them out before it ever begins. Now for highly technical jobs, I know that there are some rules and some hiring managers that want you to have like three or four pages of experience. This is a personal preference thing. I'm not interviewing you if your resume is longer than a page and a half, no matter how much work experience you have. And the reason for that is something that I highly value in my team is an ability to communicate concisely and with purpose. If you need five pages to describe your work experience to me, you do not know how to communicate concisely. So some of this is going to depend on what type of job you're going for, but a good rule of thumb, and the one that all recruiters will reference, is don't have your resume longer than two pages. Now, I prefer a one-page resume. I think it's just easier to digest. And again, think four seconds. They're going to open it. They're going to look at the aesthetic. They're maybe going to read the first few seconds. They're going to scroll down to see how long it is and they're going to close it. So keep it short, keep it simple, keep it easy to digest. The second thing that you want to do is you want to really catch their attention at the top of your resume. So if you only have four seconds to get that hiring manager to decide to interview you, the top needs to stand out. What that means is a few things. One, we don't want your education and your awards and your publications taking up a bunch of space at the top. It's not super helpful. All right. All that's going to do is bog down that area where they're trying to scan. They're going to lose interest. They're more likely to close out. The second thing is it's become really popular to put an executive summary and if you look at my template, I do have an executive summary and a skill section. What I would tell you is that that executive summary needs to be catchy.