How To Make A Standout Resume

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5 years ago

Last week, I did an informational interview for an open position in my organization. Yes, Mrs. Type A may be looking for a new role at my company! I’ve been in my current role for a few years now and, well, it’s time for a change. As I asked the hiring manager a bunch of questions about the position, I realized that I have a lot of work to be ready to apply for this role. The first order of business is to update my resume! It made me realize that my readers may be interested in tips for writing their own standout resume.

And, if you need even more help, I share some resources at the bottom of this post that can help (including my Create a Standout Resume course) with offers a FREE review of your resume.

How To Make A Standout Resume

1. Keep it to 1 Page (ok, maybe 2 pages)

As a hiring manager, my pet peeve is when I get multi-page resumes. You may have had a lot of experience, but I highly suggest you find a way to condense it to 1 page (or maybe 2 pages at most). If it’s any longer, you risk a few things. First, the hiring manager will miss crucial pieces of information; if there is highly relevant experience on your resume, it will likely get lost among all the other information.

If that alone doesn’t convince you to trim down the resume, consider what goes through my mind as a hiring manager looking at a long resume:

Do you really know what is most important for this job?
Can you think critically about what information your audience needs?
If you get this role, will you struggle to communicate key points to me and others?
How much time do you expect me to dedicate to figuring out why you are a good fit for this job?

These are not things you want your future potential manager thinking about you.

I know it’s very difficult to develop a more “right-sized” resume, however, I think it’s well worth the investment of time. Also, when you do have an interview, you will be very focused on your key experiences so condensing your resume should help you prepare for interviews as well.

In summary, for a standout resume, keep it short (1-2 pages).

2. Add an Introduction / Summary at the top

Even if you streamline your resume, it’s still a pretty loaded and dense document. Even if the hiring manager reads your entire resume, he or she may not know what to make of all of your experiences.

To make it a standout resume, consider adding a short (1-3 sentence) Summary at the top explaining your top 3-5 strengths / capabilities that you want a hiring manager to know.

Here is an example:

Accomplished marketing leader who consistently drives positive business impact by fostering innovation, driving change, finding efficiencies and upskilling talent.

(What do you think?? I’m thinking of making this my Summary on my updated standout resume!)

3. Results, results, results

When you talk about your previous work experience, be sure to include the results or impact you had. When possible, quantify that result.

Did you increase sales? Decrease costs? Those are important things to call out and quantify.

Here is an example:

Don’t write: “Responsible for new marketing campaign for Product X”

Do this instead: “Led development of new marketing campaign for Product X that resulted in x% increase in quarter-over-quarter sales”

Certainly demonstrating increased sales, is a gold standard metric. But that is not always a realistic outcome, and — at times — not relevant to the role you have had (or are interested in). There are plenty of other results that you can consider:

Increased sales by x%
Decreased cost by x%
Decreased production time by x%,
Increased customer engagement / satisfaction by x%
Increased customer loyalty by x%

See here for more examples of quantifiable metrics for your resume.

4. Tailor your experiences for the position

Similar to having a resume that is too long, it can be detrimental if your resume isn’t tailored to the role to which you apply. You don’t want to leave it to the hiring manager to connect the dots between your experiences and to the skills required for the job you want. You need to do that for him/her.

So, for example, if you apply to a strategic role, then be sure you include (or at least emphasize) the strategic aspects of the jobs you have had. Examples to include in a standout resume include:

Designed customer programs
Analyzed customer buying patterns and identified how to increase quarterly sales
Assessed how the market will evolve and determined how to change your product design
Conducted competitor benchmarking and identified product improvements

Those are great examples of experiences to focus on for a strategic role. For more operational roles focus on experiences such as:

Implemented a new approach that decreased time to market
Reduced resources required to execute a key business process
Reduced margin of error

5. Proofread, proofread, proofread

Enough said. In many cases, having a typo on your resume will get you automatically discarded into the “no” pile. Even if it doesn’t, it will raise red flags with the hiring manager. This may make your resume stand out in a way you do not want!

So, proofread your resume. And ask a friend to do so as well!

Need more help?

In conclusion, even with these tips, it’s hard to write an effective resume. I must read dozens of resumes a month but I still struggle to update my own resume. So, I do know how hard it can be!