The top 3 things we look for in your resume

Recruiters and HR staff take on average 10 seconds to review a resume to decide if they would like to interview you. If you are missing any of the following – you may just find that your resume is being filed in the circular filing cabinet.

1. Work experience

Your work experience should be summarised in a table which, lists the companies you’ve worked for and a brief description of each role. This should serve as an introduction to your work experience and be listed at the very start of your CV. You’ll have an opportunity todiscuss each job in greater depth (focusing just on the facts of course) on the pages that follow.

2. Key Skills and Qualifications

A clear, concise list of your skills and qualifications will help recruiters easily identify the steps you took to help launch your success. Whether it is your degree or PhD, recruiters will want to spot these instantly and know which institution these were completed at. This also applies for more technical professions where you might require specific licenses and other courses (e.g. licensed aircraft mechanical engineers will require qualifications to prove they can work on specific aircraft types). So whatever skills you may bring, make sure they’re outlined clearly and without ambiguity.

A skills summary table helps here. This table lists your key technical skills, years commercial experience with them and a self-rating such as: “beginner”, “intermediate”, “expert” ratings.

3. Accomplishments

Recruiters are essentially looking to use your key accomplishments as the fundamental reason why an employer should hire you. They demonstrate clearly your qualifications and expertise and most importantly, your ability to value add to any new employer who will take you.

“Specifically, a CV that hiring managers will stop and take notice of lists your commercial achievements to the corresponding position you held.”

It’s quite simple – prove it and increase your chances of getting hired! Bloated language and contrived statements don’t detail the accomplishments you have performed.
Look carefully at this example.
“Proven track record of developing and driving sales teams to deliver increased sales through organisational optimisation, growth and major account expansion”.

The statement above says nothing definite – it’s just puffed up language with empty assertions. Instead, prove your claims by replacing empty claims with specific facts.

Here’s the same statement but now revised:
“Experienced increasing revenue up to $342,500 per year by leading sales teams of 10-35 personnel, while managing/penetrating up to 34 major accounts”