If your resume is a bit flat, uninspired, or doesn’t fully reflect your skills and experiences as a job candidate, a good first step is to closely look at each of your job descriptions. Possibly you are doing little more than listing job duties. If this is the case, you need to go deeper as you can rest assured that many of your competitors are very likely going beyond the noting of basic responsibilities for their job descriptions.
For any one job, start by revisiting why you were hired. Was there a main task or objective that you were asked to tackle? If so, what was the outcome? Or outcomes? Were you successful in your efforts? If so, how?
To show additional value, you can probe deeper into each of your listed job experiences. For example, what were some of the main expectations for each job month to month and how did you do in meeting these? If any of your employers conducted performance reviews, did you receive positive feedback in your reviews? Also, how about positive informal feedback from supervisors, management, coworkers and/or customers? These can all be starting points for infusing critical outcome-focused details into your resume.
Because we are talking about a resume here, naturally there are limits to what you can include. The trick is to select a manageable number of outcomes that you can turn into succinct, well-crafted statements to increase the perception of value that you have to offer.
By adopting these simple tactics where you can or where they apply, you can immediately breath fresh life into your resume. As somebody once said about customers, they “buy benefits, not features.” Similarly, hiring managers “buy outcomes” – they are attracted to candidates who go beyond merely listing duties by showing how they made a difference in their jobs and created value for their organizations. Simply stated, increase the value in your resume that you are projecting to potential employers, and you will increase the likelihood of receiving interview requests and ultimately job offers.