Whether you are looking for your first job or an experienced career veteran, your resume will have about 20 seconds to catch an employer’s attention. 20 seconds is the amount of time an employer spends reviewing your resume for the first time. Within this 20 second time frame; an employer, human resources department, or career recruiter will decides whether or not you he or she will qualify your professional work experience, education, skills, and qualifications as meeting the job opening requirements. This quick once over glance by the potential employer could determine if they call you in for an interview or not. In many cases, future employers know nothing about you other than what written on that resume.
If you are using a resume objective, which we highly recommend you remove completely from your resume; your goal is to get the employers to read past your objective statement and review the rest of your resume. Your objective needs to be eye catching, clear, concise and specific. After looking at your objective, there should be not question as to which position or experience you can bring to that employer and why you should be a candidate for that company to hire you.
To get your resume to truly standout in these 20 seconds, replace the resume objective with a summary of your skills and qualifications specifically related to the position or industry you are applying for. Tell this potential future employer exactly what you can do for them and how your professional resume experience and formal education can benefit their organization.
Once you have their attention, keep it. Following your professional summary or executive summary statement or resume objective is you still choose to use one; you need to hit them hard and fast with your experience or education. Show them specifically how you benefited your previous employers or your educational accomplishments, projects, or activities. If you have no experience, show them your skills and any informal education that would apply to their industry. Be sure to point out any specific talent that helps your resume standout. Make these 20 seconds work for you.
4 comments
Writing a Resume to Refresh Your Professional Image says:
February 5, 2011 at 12:23 am (UTC -8)
[...] you think your online resume would pass the 20 second test? Remember that 20 seconds is generally the amount of time an employer will spend looking over your [...]
Top 100 – How to Write a Resume Search Terms says:
February 9, 2011 at 7:17 am (UTC -8)
[...] though we started out with a base search phrase, How to Write a Resume; it ranked 8th in our final results. Bringing in 110,000 global monthly searches and 90,500 local [...]
How to Write a Resume says:
July 16, 2011 at 7:17 am (UTC -8)
[...] shows the hiring manager what they can expect if they hire this support professional. You can still write a resume summary if you have no experience; it will just focus more on your natural abilities, education, and [...]
Resume Writing says:
September 17, 2011 at 5:15 am (UTC -8)
[...] under your name and street address, then follow up with a skills summary. You could also write an executive summary that begins by stating your profession, then describes your [...]