Resume Workshop - Don't Miss The Obvious

Recently, our firm was working with two candidates - one in Quality Assurance Management, and one in Plant Operations / Management. We asked both candidates to make some changes specific for the job and client we were considering presenting them for. Both candidates made changes. The Plant Operations candidate did a full re-work of the resume, and the client made arrangements to interview him upon the first review of the resume.

The Quality Assurance candidate added a couple things, and moved things around, but failed to add some of the core items that we had requested. In the interest of time, this candidate was presented, and received a no interest from our client.

In a review later, it became obvious why our client responded to the written resumes in that way.

One candidate took the time to read the job description and research the client company. He then took everything in his experience that matched the description and the objective, goals and mission of the company, and wrote his resume for that company and job. He dropped much of the other accomplishments, tasks and details in his resume that didn't look like they would be a focus, or of as much importance for the role he was interviewing for.

The other candidate left core, essential items out of his resume. For a professional in Quality, keywords like "ISO" and "audits" and "inspection" were missing. He had all this experience, but chose to focus on recent highlights and accomplishments. This was good, but not relevant to the client company he was trying to interview with. They looked at that, but didn't see any of the "basics" they wanted in an employee for this role, and without further consideration, passed.

The lesson here is not to be so concerned with impressing the unknown reader of your resume that you forget the obvious essentials of your role / discipline. This is especially important since resumes often go through software screening, and a lack of those keywords would result in your resume never getting to human eyes.

Identify the core essentials in your job, write a list, and then check to be sure your resume contains all of them. To help you create a master list, read all the job ads or postings you can for jobs you are interested in securing -- even if those jobs are located in a different geographic location. What are the common terms, or keywords, employers are using? Add those to your list, and every so often in your job search, recheck postings to make sure you're not missing anything.