Perception is everything when you have 30 seconds to make a sale. Most resumes are deleted in 12 seconds. You don’t even have 30 seconds to sell yourself.
If you were going to hire an audit manager which of these two skill sets sounds better:
- Managed large audit department for 3 years.
- Managed 18 person audit department. As many as 7 audits occurred simultaneously in 9 locations in 3 countries. $18M recovered over a period of 3 years.
Not a hard choice is it?
Grab your 30 second commercial you wrote yesterday and your resume. Look at the first skill set you describe. How deep is the description? Can the hiring manager tell the depth of your experience? Do you give any numbers, sizes, concrete examples or project sizes? Do you mention the number of people involved in a project?
Can you go any deeper? For example both of the following are better than average skill accomplishment descriptions, but one is superior:
- Top two salesperson for the last 3 years.
- Top two salesperson out of 30 for the last 3 years for both highest total sales volume and largest average profit margin.
If you are keeping a job journal, you are tracking detailed information about your accomplishments. For now, look back at what you’ve done and make some best guesses at numbers. The more detailed you are, the more you stand out.
Read those examples above again. Who would you bring in for an interview if you were short of time? Do you need to change your resume and 30 second commercial?
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Something To Do Today
Copy your 30 second commercial and resume to new files. Go over every skill set description and accomplishment and expand it. Add all the details you can. Make every description too long. Save it.
Tomorrow: That pesky resume. Its job is to get you an interview. Is it working?
Coming up: Am I showing up? Are you contacting people about jobs? Sending resumes?
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