In this episode of Refractive Podcast, host Johnny Guidry shares a treasure trove of my best tips on creating a great, effective resume, gathered from over 16 years of HR, Training, and Talent Sourcing experience. Following this guidance will give you resume that will at least be taken seriously, and at best will get you in the interview chair to share how you can be of value to a new employer. Good luck!
For similarly themed content, try these episodes: Jumpstart (or Refresh) your Job Search or Dr. Karen Barnard- The Courage to Change Careers. The Refractive YouTube page is chock-full of uplifting content. You’ll find it here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6y-HQ1_9-xMnZyq7dhRl4A
Find below the transcript of this episode. Visit http://www.refractivecoaching.com for more info on the Refractive family of services, including resume and LinkedIn services and interview preparation.
Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. This is Johnny G. Welcome to refractive. Today’s episode is about how to elevate your resume. I was an HR director and uh, I spent 16 of my years involved in all aspects of HR from training to recruiting to benefits and compensation. And I have to say I’ve been surprised how mysterious resumes still seem to people. So since this was something that I was an expert in in my last career, I thought I would share with you some tips on how to make your resume friendly to a hiring manager. There are certain types of formatting and content that make a resume difficult to process and when someone is going through a stack of 20 or 30 resumes, anything that makes it less simple to process is going to place you at a disadvantage. So that’s what we’re going to focus on today.
I do want to warn you upfront, the transitions from topic to topic won’t be very smooth because I did sit down and draft out simply a list of the most important aspects to cover. So we will be hopping from topic to topic and I hope you’ll bear with me as we do that. So let’s dive right in. You know I’m going to quickly glance over some things that might be common sense, but they’re important to underlie. First of all, don’t lie. Um, a lot of hiring managers do check references and it’s important that you don’t lie about your length of employment, your title, your responsibilities, or your achievements as well. I also want to encourage you to stick to the common length guideline of one resume page per 10 years of professional experience. If you want to vary from that, it’s up to you. But again, um, it does, it does get noticed if you have an unusually long resume.
I also think it’s a good time to point out that there are certain industries that have their own resume guidelines. If that applies to you, you already know what I’m talking about. So take this with a grain of salt. If you work for the federal government, if you are in visual media or some other type of role where resume formatting and content are a little bit special, you know, I feel that brief employment generally doesn’t have much value to add on a resume. If you work somewhere two, three, or four months, it’s probably not worth putting on your resume. You haven’t even finished your training and onboarding yet and you most likely weren’t fully productive yet. So it doesn’t give me as a hiring manager information as to what you’re capable of. What it does is indicate that you migh...
