Resume Rehab

Imposter Syndrome. 

You’ve had it. I’ve had it. We’ve basically all experienced some level of Imposter Syndrome at some point in our lives. There’s a reason the phrase ‘fake it til you make it’ exists and that I say it so often.

It’s a horrible reality we all have to figure out how to navigate at some point. 

It can be paralyzing. It stops people from making career changes or applying for jobs. It stops people from shining in their fields. It even stops people from entering the job market at all. Beating back Imposter Syndrome takes time, effort, and a lot of self-growth. 

For those of us flailing through it while trying to enter the market, one place to start is with your application itself. 

I worked with a woman recently who was trying to reenter the job market. She was just about my age and she’d taken about a year or so off. She was an excellent candidate and had a great work history, but what she didn’t have was the confidence to put herself out there. And don’t get me wrong. I totally get it. It can be awful. 

The first step she needed to take was writing…or really re-writing her resume.

She’d been struggling with it for a while when we sat down for a coaching session, so we reformatted it together. We took all that awesome work experience she had and showcased it. We ditched all the parts of her resume that she didn’t need and offloaded all the dead space. 

Voila!

A sparkly new resume, ready and rarin’ to go. She applied for a bunch of jobs at the end of our session and got an interview that same day. Why? Because she was an asset all along. She just didn’t believe it. 

Working her resume into something she was proud of and reminding herself off all the awesome things she could do went a long way toward helping her believe. 

Confidence is a whole process and writing or updating your resume can be an important part of it. 

That seems unlikely, you say? 

Fair. But it’s true. Writing or overhauling your resume can help remind you exactly how good a candidate you actually are. It can help you shine in the application process. It can also help you organize your thoughts on the job market itself and possibly open new avenues for you to pursue. My client realized that she had more options open to her based on the skills that her work history showcased, which was made possible by her resume work. 

It’s an easy way to impress. But it has to be impressive first. So, how do you write a resume to dazzle bosses and outshine your competition?

Here are three easy tips to overhaul your resume and boost your confidence. 

#1 - Focus on your strengths.

There are about a million resume formats to choose from, right? Okay, maybe not an actual million, but you get my drift. With so many options, why not pick the one that shows your best side?

Do you have a wide variety of skills that you want to highlight? Maybe ones that wouldn’t be obvious from your job experience? Pick a format with a skills section near the top. Have trouble articulating your skill set? Leave the skills section out entirely. Is your work history like mine, a little all over the place? Avoid picking a format that includes work explanations or tasks. 

Or maybe you have several certifications or degrees? In which case, go with a format that places education at or near the top instead. Got some amazing skills? Definitely put that section near the top (trying to find out your amazing skills? Try going through a list of skills need by people in your industry and pick out the most important ones that apply to you.)

You’re building your job application, one piece of information at a time.

The resume is a cornerstone of that. So you want to make sure your resume is as strong as possible. You wouldn’t build the foundation of a house out of sand, right? Likewise, you should build your resume in a format that doesn’t bolster you up. 

#2 - Keep it short and sweet. 

An employer should be able to get the important information from your resume in 3 minutes or less. They’re probably reading dozens, if not hundreds, of resumes in their search. Don’t give them a reason to eliminate you from the pile without actually considering you.

To keep things short and sweet, make sure your resume is one page, single sided. The easiest way to do this is to throw out the dead space.

For example, put your contact info all on one line with small symbols dividing the phone, email, and address. That will eliminate all the white space next to your info and free up some extra lines for you to use elsewhere. 

Another possibility? Change your font to something more compact. If you’re using American Typewriter (a favorite of mine), try Times or Baskerville. Something smaller, that gives you more words on a line. 

The resume should be easy to navigate, which means descriptive section headers (ie good signposting) and quick to read. That means keeping it all on the front of one page, so the less dead space, the better. 

#3 - Trim the fat. 

Remove the things that don’t need to be there. Not everything in the universe needs to be on your resume, even if it falls under one of the categories or sections your using.

If you can beatbox better than Rahzel or you’ve memorized Pi out to a hundred digits, those are skills. They do not need to be under the skills section of your resume (unless they directly pertain to the job you’re applying for…). And that job you had in high school that you’d probably like to forget anyway? Yeah. Kick that to the curb.

At the same time, if you’re looking to make your resume a little beefier or you’d like it to fill that single page out better, add those things in. Put the beatbox or the Pi thing under a hobbies section at the bottom or along the side. It’ll fill in some of that dead space that might be stressing you out. 

Another bit of fat to trim? The summary. Don’t include a summary. This is likely a controversial opinion, but I’m sticking by it. The summary is just a waste of space that you can dedicate to something else, like skills or volunteer work or publications or, heck, even hobbies. It’s clunky and gives an unnecessary LinkedIn kind of vibe to your resume. 

One thing that I never considered until recently, and I think you might not have thought about either, is your address.

You don’t need the street part. It might pose a privacy issue and it just doesn’t need to be there. Put your city (town, village, whatever) and state and leave it at that. The fewer opportunities for data breaches and stuff, the better. 

Extra fatty bits on your resume are also extra material for an ATS scan to sift through and might be enough to get your application booted. 

#Bonus - ATS Friendly Optimization

ATS is an Application Tracking System. They are basically a tool that HR and hiring people use as a first line of defense when they post a new job. Not all jobs postings will use on, but why take the chance? Do a little research and see if your industry uses ATSs. Some don’t. If yours doesn’t, you could skip this steps, though it might be an good idea to do it anyway. Just in case. 

The first thing to remove from a resume for ATS scans is graphics. No pictures please. The systems don’t ‘see’ them. Fill in that space instead with skills or keywords from your specific industry. Maybe even keywords from the job listing itself, if you have a specific job in mind. 

Most of the things we talked about today will also help optimize your resume for ATS scans. No to fancy formats, no to second pages, and yes to clearly labeled sections. Anything that makes your resume as simple as possible. The cleaner it is, the easier it is for the program to scan it. 

The Result?

People will tell you that your resume isn’t that important. That this or that other part of your application it more valuable. I disagree. I’ve gotten interviews for jobs that I was probably not qualified for, based on the strength of my resume. I don’t really use it anymore, since I started my web design and copywriting business, but I have it saved and I keep it up-to-date. You never know.

Cleaning up your resume, getting it up-to-date, can seem as daunting as the rest of the application process. Believe me, I know. But it’s not as bad as it seems. What’s the line from that old Christmas Movie? Just put one foot in front of the other?

Start with your resume, use it to help you boost your confidence and remind yourself why you are actually an awesome candidate, and soon you’ll be walking in the door…of your new workplace. 😁

A good resume won’t always get you the job. Even great resume won’t always get you the job, but it can get your foot in the door. And that’s an excellent start.

Disclosure: Any links in this post may be affiliate links. That means, if you click them and buy the recommended product, I make a small commission. It also means that you’re contributing to my vacation fund. Thank you in advance!

And as always…My inbox is always open for suggestions about future topics.