Give me 11 minutes, and I’ll make your resume 57% better

Most resumes fail because they read like a Wikipedia page, not a sales page. In this video, I'm going to show you the specific shifts that make a resume much better. You'll learn how to quantify any achievement even if you're in a job where there aren't any obvious numbers, how to spot the details that make you look overqualified without realizing it, and the truth about resume scanners and AI recruiter tools so that you don't have to worry about being auto rejected. I have helped thousands of clients with their resumes and literally wrote the book on this, published by a top five publisher, Penguin Random House, as well as have hired thousands of people. Let's get into this.

If your resume is your detailed work history with your best accomplishments, that could be the reason why you're not getting interviews. Here's how you flip your approach. The way we were taught to write our resumes is to write all of the best things about ourselves and make it a comprehensive history of everything we've done. That makes it so that the information is both impressive and and honest. But you actually need to write your resume in the perspective of the job. If you're going into a corporate role, not your career history, I call it writing a sales page, not a Wikipedia page. We want your resume to quickly grab the attention of the recruiter or hiring manager. And here's how you do it. I want you to first put the title of the role you're going for at the top under your name so that anyone reading it but can instantly see they're in the right place. Because you would be surprised at at how many people apply to jobs when they didn't even read the job description. Next, I want you to pay extreme attention to your first bullet points under each section. So this might be your summary section if you have one, and your jobs in your experience section. And put your everything into that first bullet point of each entry. The odds that the recruiter is going to read the first bullet, your summary section, or under each job is so much greater than reading those following bullets. Now people make the mistake and they put their best accomplishment there or the task they did the most at that job. Do not do that. Your criteria for that first bullet point should first above all be what is the most relevant task to the job I am applying to? Okay then, if you have several tasks that are competing for that top spot that are all similarly relevant, choose the accomplishment that is the most impressive. Relevance first Impressive. Second, I am going to hold your hand when I say this, but your Most impressive accomplishments may not even make it onto your resume when you write it this way. What? Because if that accomplishment isn't hyper relevant to the role you're applying for, I know it shows your character and how impressive you are, but maybe you should delete it. Such as that massive business development deal you close for millions of dollars. That's great for a sales and business development role. You're going for project manager roles now. Focus on those things.

Let's address the elf Fanning in the room. AI is becoming more common when sorting through job applications, but everyone is getting it wrong of exactly how it works and how to get more interviews. So here's what you need to do. If you've heard job seekers complain about the Applicant Tracking System or the ats, that's what they're talking about. There is all this fear that none of your resumes are being seen because of these bots. Okay, I have done Deep Dive videos in the past so you can watch those with all of the research, but let me give you the quick version. I have yet to find a company that uses an ATS to automatically reject candidates unless they're using knockout questions. Knockout questions are multiple choice questions like are you legally authorized to work in the US? Are you willing to travel 30% of the time? Do you have a minimum three years of experience in a management role? If you say no to any of those questions, you'll either be immediately rejected or filtered into a separate part of the ats. So if you get rejected right away, it's usually because of a knockout question, not because of something that is or is not on your resume. Increasingly, there are tools being used to sort resumes so that if a company got a lot of applications, they can start with ones that are the most qualified so that they don't get lost in the shuffle of approximately 80% of applications that are clearly and distinctly unqualified for nearly every role out there.

So my clients haven't really had these fears about being filtered out or whatnot, because if you understand the strategies I tell you in this video, you'll already be in the top 20% of candidates. Most companies aren't scanning resumes, but I do feel like that is going to change with the rise of AI. So here's the secret. If your resume is being scanned, it is being scanned for keywords. Keywords are the name of the game, which is the basis of my Glory formula, which I dive into more in my Resume Revamp masterclass, which I will link in the caption the keywords you're looking for are hard skills that are pretty specific to the job you're going for. The test is if I said a keyword that you would be able to narrow down which job the person probably does, such as cross department Collaboration is not a key word, even though it is emphasized in a job description. Because so many jobs require collaboration, it doesn't give us any information. But if I said wireframing, suddenly you think, oh, maybe this person probably has the experience of a product manager. Or if I said learning management system, you could guess, oh maybe I'm talking about a job in talent development. These aren't just keywords for AI to find, but also what actual human hiring managers and recruiters are looking for.

Next, let's talk about the formatting of your resume. If your resume has charts, graphs or skill bars, you're actually making it harder to get hired. I will share with you the best resume format. I remember being on the job search many years ago and seeing another person's very beautiful looking resume and freaking out and thinking oh my gosh, is that the reason why I'm not landing more interviews? My resume doesn't look all snazzy and modern, but once I started working in recruiting I realized that the canva resume template doesn't make you better and in some cases it makes you worse. Recruiters don't like those skill graphs or multiple columns. Keep your resume to one column clear, modern clean resume. You can have a bulleted summary at the top if your experience needs a bit of clarification and then put your experience in reverse chronological order. Not skill skills based and put your education at the bottom. Avoid putting any paragraphs on your resume. Really focus on the ability to scan the resume quickly and use bullet points. I do think a splash of color here and there is perfectly nice addition, but if you are going to do something more aesthetically pleasing, that should really only be if you are in a creative profession like a graphic designer or creative director, where your resume and the way you make it look is actually part of your portfolio. Portfolio make your resume on a document, not like some tool like Photoshop or Canva and then PDF it before you submit it. You might be thinking oh no. Will the Applicant tracking system be able to read my fancy resume? I don't want to get rejected because my file is incompatible. Okay, I have a way that you can know once and for all if that's going to happen to you. PDF your resume and then copy all of the text on the page and then open up a document. Right click click Paste special and paste without formatting. Look at your resume in this plain text format and if it still makes sense and all the information is next to each other in the correct order, then you're golden. If it seems to be in an odd order and things seem to be all mixed up, you probably got too fancy. Iggy Azalea.

Next, let's talk about the number one question I get, which is, Madeline, I don't know how to quantify my achievements on my resume. My job doesn't have data and and it doesn't impact revenue help. I have just the trick. I have a reputation for being able to quantify any job and I'm going to teach you how to do it right now. There are many different ways that you can quantify your work that has nothing to do with money. So let's say you implemented a new system for looking up medical records. Before, you had to type in a patient's 12 digit ID number, which is time consuming and easy to make an error. Now, the new system allows you to quickly find a patient by typing in just a few letters of their name and the results populate. Okay, great, you did a thing. But how do we quantify it? First, what can we count? Number of medical records. You don't remember the exact number of medical records, but it was at least 3,000. Perfecto. Next, let's think about time. Count how many seconds it takes you to type out 12 numbers. For me, it took me about 11 seconds to type out a 12 number code. Just making sure I was typing it in right now. Time yourself typing someone's name to find them in a database and it took me about three seconds. So that was three times faster or 300% faster. Or you could measure it by roughly the number of hours saved per month. See, I'm estimating here, that's all you have to do. So the accomplishment could sound something like implemented a system to look up 3,000 plus medical records, which was 300% faster than the previous method. In my book, reverse a search, there is a chart that helps you quantify any resume bullet so you will never struggle to quantify again. It is so important that I teach you what to put on your resume, but also what to take off. Take these things off your resume. I know it's controversial, but take off additional master's degrees and certifications that don't pertain to the job you're going for. Companies don't want to pay you a higher salary for education. That isn't relevant and it makes you seem overqualified. And if the education or certification is dated that you received it recently, that send signals that you don't want this job that you're applying for. You just want this job until you can actually land something in your chosen field. Next, take off the objective statement. Your objective is to get this job. Next, Seeming overqualified is a real thing. So we're moving earlier job experience from a totally different career that is not relevant is okay, and you may start to get more interviews because of it. Remove your full address, just city and state or Providence, and remove charts and graphs and remove your photo. If you're in the United States, you've got this wi fi high five.