During the first round of resume intake the average hiring manager or recruiter takes roughly 6 seconds to look over every individual resume. Go ahead and count to six right now- that is all the time you get to make your impression. This may seem unfair, or ridiculous, and to a large extent it is! But, you can make it work in your favor. Knowing that you only have six seconds to get yourself across gives you a leg up on the competition that might not know this, and also can give you some ideas about how what your resume should look like.
To start, let’s think a little about format. These days you really want to go with a simple and professional format. The worst thing you can do is put all of your relevant information in surprising or difficult to find places. Everything should be where it is expected to be in order to ensure that your hiring manager can find it all in six seconds.
It is not enough to think about where the information is, we also need to talk about what the information is. The trick to showing off in six seconds is numbers- quantify your experience! It is all about being able to quantify your achievements. Let’s say you managed a bar, don’t just say that! Say you managed a bar that did $6,000 in sales a night. If you increased the number of sales for a sales department, let them know percentages. This immediately shows the hiring manager exactly how good of a candidate you are- and also shows them that you know how to get yourself across in a resume.
Next you want to make sure that you are staying relevant. When listing your jobs and skills you need to make sure you are staying on track with what your hiring manger is looking for. Maybe you are applying to a job in HR, but you spent a lot of time in programming. You can list all of the languages you are familiar with, but it is not going to tell the hiring manager anything about what you communication capabilities are- it is irrelevant information. Every skill you list should be pertinent (at least tangentially!) to the job you are applying to get. Every word that does not directly relate is a fraction of a second less for the relevant information!
That being said, if you don’t have directly relevant experience- make your experience relevant! Highlight the aspects of each job that relate to the one you are trying to get! You are a looking for a management position in an office, and you used to work at the top of a team of programmers, talk about the fact that you managed a team. If you were working free-lance, talk about your ability to schedule and manage disparate tasks.
If your resume is clean, the information is relevant, and your work experience is detailed and quantified you should make it past the six second test, and move closer to the job!