Don't judge a book by its cover... Not true for Recruiters.

Of course, we have all heard the line "Don't judge a book by its cover."
The sad part about this statement is that it doesn't apply for the majority of recruiters and job hunters.

Your book cover is your resume and really is the judgement factor of whether or not you will be emailed or called upon by a recruiter. To be brutally honest, if your cover is no good, you are only hurting yourself.

Regardless of whether you have great experience, a wonderful education, and skillsets and real-life scenarios to back it up, it has to be presented properly in your resume for it to stand out. Most recruiting firms are working through tools such as Monster, Yahoo, Talent Bank, etc. The search engines built into these tools are searching out keywords, content, and skillsets. Just as a search engine finds your website.

Take some time to review your resume and clean it up. Put yourself in the position of the recruiter and change the scenario to a bookstore. Make your book stand-out on the shelf and intimidate someone to pick it up.

Here are a few simple tips to help out:

- Summarize yourself in an introduction paragraph for viewers. Like cliffsnotes for your resume. Short, sweet, and to the point.
- Only list relevant professional experience applicable to the career path you are choosing. If you don't have much professional experience to show, obviously, you are limited to what you have to put down.
- Keep your job description and specifics of what your role was neat and to the point. Don't ramble on and repeat yourself. Consider your resume an outline.
- If you have superior education and limited work experience, list your education first.
- While hobbies are useful for an assortment of positions, they are not generally an area that is critiqued when looking for a potential candidate.
- Talk yourself up, but don't be a bragger. Bragging on your resume is the equivalent of bragging to a group of friends. Nobody likes it.

There are numerous other resume tips and suggestions for helping make the cover of your book stand-out.

If you are interested in assistance in revising and re-writing your resume to stand-out, please don't hesitate to contact us at 248.616.9600.