I couldn’t have said it better myself:
“… two things have to happen in every form of marketing communication and sales interaction.
“First, the information has to be targeted to the likely/intended reader. It has to address that person’s concerns, answer their probable questions, and overcome their potential objections. It has to ‘speak to’ things that matter to them.
“But what’s even more important is that it has to be written using terms and phrases that the reader already understands. ‘Horizontally opposed’ will make sense to the mechanics and ‘car guys’ (or gals) … but ‘an engine that saves space and improves handling and power’ will make more sense to the buyer who’s shortlisting or ready to make a choice.”
This great advice came from a post on the BlueSteps blog by Peter Altschuler.
So, when writing your resume, are you saying that you “optimized the process and leveraged the infrastructure to deliver positive ROI to stakeholders,” or—more simply, more clearly, more specifically, and more powerfully—that you “delivered $1M to the bottom line by reorganizing staffing schedules to reduce overlaps”?
Always remember that your resume is designed to interest employers in learning more about you. It is the “marketing brochure” that gets you invited to the “sales call”—the interview.
When you sit down to write, just follow these two guidelines and you can’t go wrong:
- Understand what your readers care about.
- Tell them clearly and plainly how you can help them (with specific examples of what you’ve done in the past).
Simple, right? Maybe not, but it’s certainly effective and worth the effort.