I want to bury the lead and build some intrigue, but I’ll get to the point: I’m talking about resumes.
When I worked in corporate Canada I connected with a career coach, and one of the first things we did together was review my resume. I was looking for creative positions, so I designed and presented to him a creative resume. On the page, I included the stuff you’d expect: work experience, education, interests, and contact info. But I also included graphics and colour and logos. The coach I was working with…he was appalled. “What’s this? It looks like a marketing document” he said incredulously. We weren’t a good fit for each other.
Make no mistake: your kid’s resume – your resume – this is your marketing, your ad, your appeal to an employer to attract their attention and interest. A resume becomes part of a physical or digital pile, and you want your resume to stand out from your competitors. In marketing, the message must appeal to the audience; a resume must do the same!
Make no mistake: your kid’s resume – your resume – this is your marketing, your ad, your appeal to an employer to attract their attention and interest.
Cheer up! Including the right messaging in a resume is easier than creating an ad from scratch. For a resume, the job posting has told you what they want you to include. It tells you what experience the employer wants, what education, and what kind of person they want to hire. At a minimum, the resume should include these things; consider that a bot might be filtering resumes based on whether or not they meet the basic criteria. From there, the uniqueness of the applicant and the resume will differentiate one contender from the next, leading to a shortlist and then a winner.
Marketers use models and frameworks to understand the steps a customer goes through in the process of purchasing a product. To an employer trying to fill a need in their organization, consider the job applicants as the “product.” One long-used and simple model is AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.
Resume (and cover letter) content and design are intended to attract Attention and generate Interest, an interview builds Desire, and the job offer is the target Action. Consider the AIDA model the next time you’re reviewing or writing a resume. You don’t have to include graphics and colour and logos like I did but do ask yourself what about your document will attract attention, and what will generate interest. What will make this resume worth reading? What will send an employer looking for the “skip” button?
Bonus tip: If you’re submitting digitally, and if the format isn’t stipulated, give your resume an intriguing filename. The one I used was “You haven’t seen a resume like this one_Kimberly Sanderson.” Remember, getting attention is the first step in the process!
Resume (and cover letter) content and design are intended to attract Attention and generate Interest, an interview builds Desire, and the job offer is the target Action. Consider the AIDA model the next time you’re reviewing or writing a resume. You don’t have to include graphics and colour and logos like I did but do ask yourself what about your document will attract attention, and what will generate interest. What will make this resume worth reading? What will send an employer looking for the “skip” button?
Bonus tip: If you’re submitting digitally, and if the format isn’t stipulated, give your resume an intriguing filename. The one I used was “You haven’t seen a resume like this one_Kimberly Sanderson.” Remember, getting attention is the first step in the process!
