Resumes have one sole objective: to illustrate to a recruiter or hiring manager how you’re the best person to serve the company you want to work for. If you’re in the process of writing a professional resume, you should keep the concept of selling yourself to an employer in mind. Think about the desires an employer seeks in a potential employee as you describe yourself and how you are the best person available. Of course, this can be trickier than it sounds. To learn how to do this, we have a few handy pieces of advice for you. Here is some of the best information you can include on your resume to help yourself stand out.
Talk About Your Skills
Including a section that specifically highlights your ‘Core Competencies’ (and is titled as such) will help you bypass the automation that sorts through applicants and gets hiring managers to give you a closer look. Use the job listing you originally found as your guide by paraphrasing some of the requirements listed there. Apply them to your own previous work experiences by discussing how you’ve fulfilled these duties at your old workplaces.
Describe Some of Your Achievements
As the classic writing advice goes, “show, don’t tell.” Rather than talking about how you’re the best, use facts to explain. Talk about what you’ve achieved over the years and how this has helped the companies you’ve previously worked for. You can do this through several means, such as elaborating on awards you’ve won in the past.
We also recommend including a section detailing the highlights of your career when following the best executive resume format. In this section, you can add information about the most notable accomplishments you’ve achieved while working for a company, using numbers and other data to explain this. You should only do this if you’ve been especially successful in the past because this will work to your advantage by catching an employer’s eye and making them curious. As with the rest of your resume, stay concise.
Write a Summary About Yourself
This is just one vital element of the best executive resume format. You should add it underneath your contact details. Lend yourself a title that aligns with what you believe an employer desires. Again, keep this portion of your resume to-the-point. Ideal summaries are short—about only four lines at the most—and talk about how you can be of benefit to the company you want to work for, as well as the attributes you can lend. This will help you stand out.
We hope these tips will serve as a valuable resource for introducing yourself to employers in a meaningful and productive way. However, these are only a few great ways to make writing a professional resume an easier process. For more information and resources, consider contacting executive resume writing services.
This guest post is by Erin Kennedy, MCD, CMRW, CPRW, BS/HR, a Certified Professional & Executive Resume Writer/Career Consultant, and the President of Professional Resume Services, Inc. She has achieved international recognition following nominations and wins of the prestigious T.O.R.I. (Toast of the Resume Industry) Award. Find Erin at http://exclusive-executive-resumes.com.