Ten Signs Your Resume Isn't Working

If your resume isn't doing its job for you, no one will tell you. No one will contact you to say "We think your experience is great, but your resume stinks. Please rewrite your resume and send it back to us."

They will simply ignore your resume and pretend they never received it.

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Your resume has a big job to do. In ten or twenty seconds it must convey your intelligence, the relevance of your background to the job you want, your accomplishments, your personality and your understanding of the business world — or whatever world you work in.

Your resume can do all that, but it takes some work — and some personal reflection. Most resumes don't do a good job of bringing their owners' talents across on the page.

Why not? It's because most resumes brand their owners too broadly. People are afraid of missing out on any job opportunity at all, so they brand themselves using vague, bland language and try to appeal to too broad an audience.

You need to take a few minutes to emphasize the most relevant parts of your background, every time you apply for a new job opportunity.

Here are ten signs your resume is letting you down:

Ten Signs Your Resume Isn't Working

1. You get inquiries from recruiters, but they are off the mark. You don't get inquiries about jobs you are actually interested in.

2. You submit your resume for job openings that seem like they're well-suited to your area of expertise but when employers reply, they want you to interview for totally different jobs.

3. When you go to a job interview, the interviewer spends the first ten minutes asking you questions about what you do for a living. Your resume must make that clear instantly!

4. You use one resume to apply for all kinds of different jobs. That's a sure way to confuse resume screeners (both human and electronic) and miss out on great opportunities.

5. You apply for jobs that look like the perfect match for your skills, but you don't hear anything back. Maybe you're assuming that resume screeners will see the relevance between your background and the job you want — but they won't see it, unless you point it out.

6. You give your resume to friends and acquaintances and nothing happens — ever. Your friends and acquaintances don't know how to tell you "This resume is confusing. It's hard to tell what you are good at."

7. When you hand your resume to someone new, their first question is usually "What do you do, exactly?"

8. You waste a lot of time on the phone and in email correspondence with recruiters who think your background is different than what it really is.

9. You do not customize your resume for specific job openings. You're wasting your time — because customizing your resume is a must!

10. When someone new looks at your resume, they usually comment "Wow, you've done a lot of different things!" They don't know how to process your background. They don't see the connection between your experience and your next job. That's the connection your resume must convey quickly — and powerfully!

You can have a colorful and varied background. You don't have to be a specialist in one area to get a great job, but you have to make it clear in your resume that you know exactly what kind of jobs you're going after.

You can customize your resume every time you send it out or upload it or hand it to someone new. You have to do that work, because if you don't the person reading your resume is unlikely to understand how you can help them solve their pain.

Focus on the question "What kind of Business Pain do I solve?"

Maybe it's one of these common types of Business Pain:

1. The pain companies experience when their competitors are eating their lunch.

2. The pain organizations feel when their costs spiral out of control.

3. The pain companies undergo when their customer support systems are out of date and customers are frustrated.

4. The pain they feel when their employee training is inadequate and employees make a lot of mistakes.

Once you know what kind of pain you solve, you can brand yourself as a pain-reliever and target the hiring managers who are likely to have the pain you specialize in. Of course, you can have more than one version of your resume. You can have as many as you need.

You only need to capture the breadth of your brand in one LinkedIn profile.

You may be very excited to showcase the tremendous accomplishments you've accumulated throughout your career but if those accomplishments don't speak to a hiring manager's pain, they are unlikely to contact you.

They won't see in your resume how you can relieve their pain, so why would they call you?

It is a branding world. We are all trained to make quick judgments — "Yes! I will order this product right now, because I need it" or "No! I'm not the slightest bit interested in this email message, so I'm going to delete it after reading the first line."

Hiring managers will make snap judgments about your resume the same way we all make snap judgments about things we read. You need some of your target hiring managers to make the snap judgment "I need to meet this person!"

You have to make it clear right away that you understand what kind of job you're applying for — and have thought about the problems that crop up in that type of job, and have solved similar problems before.

Don't let a bland, overly broad resume kill your chances at getting a great job.

Consider the resume sitting on your hard drive as a template, and customize your resume every time you apply for a job. Your task will be much easier if you decide in advance which three or four job titles you are most interested in.

You deserve to get a great job — so make sure your resume is pulling its weight!