Career Warrior Podcast #299) 1 Thing Most People Don’t Include On Their Resumes That They SHOULD

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva 0:00
Include a headline at the very top that makes you stand out and put a little bit of time into thinking about what makes you unique, and put that at the top of your resume. LinkedIn presents. And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. If your goal is to transition to more meaningful work, achieve better pay or reach that flow state at work, this is your podcast. My name is Chris Villanueva and I’m the founder of Let’s Eat, Grandma, the resume service that puts customers first.

Today I’m telling you the one thing most people are not including their resumes that they absolutely should listen, you’re gonna want to listen to this episode if you want your resume to stand out. But before getting started, did you know that Let’s Eat, Grandma has recently been featured by the New York Post among their top resume services, you can check that article out by googling best resume services and finding the New York Post article with us in it, you can also just head on straight over to our website at letseatgrandma.com. If you are interested in any of our services, we’d love to hear from you.

And so, I’ve been doing a lot of resume critiques lately, personally. So it’s been a really nice way for me to get back with my hands dirty. And just to look at a bunch of resumes again, I know I do this podcast, but know that whenever I speak these things that comes from a place of looking at connecting with job seekers, even one on one. And so I was really inspired to do this episode, not only by identifying some common patterns and ways that a lot of job seekers could improve their resume.

But I’ve been spending actually a lot of time in studying marketing and advertising lately. It’s something that I’m so interested in to the point to where if I actually went back to school, I would strongly consider an advanced level marketing degree or something like that. But it’s been something that I’ve practically been obsessed with. Because there’s so much parallel between a strong resume and a marketing campaign or advertisement that just grab someone’s attention and makes you want to click into that ad campaign. And so a lot of the things that I’ve been studying, and even the things that I’ve been doing to get Let’s Eat, Grandma’s name out there, a lot of those can actually be applied to resumes.

And so I was reading a book that I keep coming back to it’s called Resume Magic. It is by this author called Susan Whitcomb. It’s a really solid book, and I’d recommend it for any of those who just if you’re a resume writer, or you’re just somebody who just can geek out about resumes, but Susan also talks about the concept of marketing within your resumes. And one of the chapters she discusses this acronym by an author called Robert Bly, he’s an esteemed author of the Copywriter’s Handbook. This is a huge book in the marketing world and they talk about the concept of AIDA. “AIDA” is an acronym that stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. And so it came back to me that this is one thing that I’ve been seeing in so many resumes that people are not, they’re just not implementing this technique that I think if they did, they would grab attention, which is the first letter in the acronym AIDA, it’s grabbing attention of the recruiters and hiring managers looking at your resume.

And so when we look at these ads online, when we’re scrolling through Facebook, or we’re on Netflix, and we, I guess Netflix doesn’t give you ads, maybe out of the one like Hulu, but if you’re looking through Hulu, or these different ads online, the things that pop out at you the most are the picture in the headline. And this applies for news articles and things like that. It’s the thing that makes you want to read into the ad more because I know a lot of the times we skip over and glaze over at ads and pent recruiters do the same thing with resumes. They skip over most resumes, if they don’t grab attention. And so the headline those first few words that you’re reading, when you just give the ad a glance, those are the words that should be optimized.

So the key tip I’m going to give you here that can make your resume stand out, is to spend time in crafting a compelling headline at the top of your resume, craft a compelling headline at the top of your resume do the same things that these advertising and marketing agencies are also doing and spending so much time on, because no one is going to read your resume if within seconds. They can’t find something that is attractive or attention grabbing. Now I’m not saying that every resume has to have it. This isn’t an inept requirement. This is something to make your resume stand out among the other resumes to make folks continue to read into your resume. But a headline at the very top of your resume can be extremely powerful.

And so what do I mean by headline? Let’s delve into that just a little bit more here. A lot of job seekers have a summary at the very top of their resume. And the summary is titled with just summary, or the summary is just titled with other things like profile or summary of qualifications, or, I don’t know, I saw another person that said, like career overview. Now that stuff isn’t wrong. And I’ve even seen resumes that we put out there have such a thing like that. But there is an opportunity actually, AJ, take out that part of that resumes that we’ve put out, that has a thing like that. But if you want to make your resume stand out, use this piece of valuable real estate. And by that I mean just like the first few words that somebody’s going to read on your resume and use that to stand out. So yes, there are things that you can do with your design and formatting to make these words stand out, you can actually bump the font size up a little bit more, you can underline it, you can make it in all caps, you can bold it, these are all creative choices that you can choose to employ within your resume.

But what I’m talking about is using words that again, almost riffing off the last episode, we did a resume that only you could have, that cannot be transferred over copied and pasted to another job seeker here. So what is an example of a headline you could use, you could say Season Two marketing consultant with three years of driving profits for companies, you can even just say marketing consultants, I think that goes a step above having just a summary. But what you could do is have that position title or wherever you want ahead, wherever you really identify as a brand as a professional brand, like marketing manager, marketing consultant. And underneath that you can include specific keywords that can be used to search for a candidate like you, such as process development, such as high ticket items, or b2b space, or things like that. Anything that goes beyond just having a generic or vanilla summary, at the very top is what I’m trying to get you to go after. So include a headline at the very top that makes you stand out and put a little bit of time into thinking about what makes you unique, and put that at the top of your resume.

A common question you might have is what if I’m within marketing right now, “Chris, I want to move on over to sales”, or “I’m a teacher and I want to transition into healthcare”, things like that, well, it’s not as easy as if you were to have the experience that you just had in your last professional experience, and to apply for a job that is like directly aligned with what you just did. But what I will say is, you could perhaps keep it a little bit more generic. And you can say something along the lines of a health care professional, or teacher looking to make a big change to health care, or something along those lines.

Whatever you do, again, make it to something that grabs the recruiters attention and shows relevance for the types of jobs that you’re applying for a right this wraps it up for today, I enjoyed doing this one because I like to give sort of unconventional advice that a lot of other job seekers or sorry, a lot of other resume services, or podcasters aren’t given here. So it was a little bit of a weird one. But rest assured it is a good sound piece of advice that comes from years of experience, as well as looking at a bunch of resumes. So please connect with me on LinkedIn. If you do have any further questions, I try to get through my LinkedIn in mail as quickly as I can. I can’t always respond quickly. But rest assured if you say you’re a Career Warrior listener, and you have a specific question, I will get to it eventually. And I appreciate all the reach out messages. You can also subscribe to our Career Warrior Newsletter by heading on over to LinkedIn and hopping over to my profile. It should be at the very top but you can join 1100 other subscribers who are reading our newsletters. What it basically does is it augments or it really supplements these podcast episodes and gives you visuals and really things that the audio format can’t deliver 100% So if you’re enjoying these episodes, head on over to my LinkedIn profile and subscribe to the newsletter I post weekly and I would love to engage with you in the comments section as well.

Alright, Career Warriorsm this wraps it up for today. I really enjoyed this episode again and I will see you soon Career Warrior Podcast and before you go remember if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages.

We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai