Is Your Resume Relevant? Put It To Test With One Simple Question

You can write the most interesting resume under the Sun. You can splash it with fancy graphics. Add catchy buzzwords. Highlight important parts of your experience. Run spell checker 30 times. Do voodoo. In the end, if you think that you have a winning resume, and it is not getting you interviews, it is not a winning resume.

Economy is bad. All job seekers face that. Unemployment is high. Ditto. Employers are very picky. Ok, so it is not the boom years. But people are still finding work. The playing field is just rougher – but it is still an even field. You have just about as many options as the next guy.

Once you acknowledge and understand two basic ideas, the rest is easy. First, there is no reason to blame anyone or anything. Be it your former employer, the state, the government, the economy, the globalization – it all does not matter. You have a task at hand – and it is to find a job. Second, your resume is not generating activity you are hoping for.

As soon as a mental block of “I did not do it” is destroyed, you can make adjustments to your resume, so that it gets you the results you need. But wait, you say, haven’t I gotten a winning resume that…. Nope! Relax – it is not the end of the world. Resume writing is a process of trial and error. You write, you test it out, you analyze the results, and go back to the drawing board.

And here is a little secret that will help you in making the right changes. It is all driven by supply and demand. You supply your resume, which details all the numerous skills you have. But there is no demand. If there was, your resume would be generating interview activity. Employers are looking for something – and your resume is not speaking to their needs. So, without further ado, meet the question of the day: “So What?”. This is the question that needs to be applied to every line in your resume (well, other than your name), and it should be answered with a potential employer in mind.

Imagine that you are applying for a job as a customer service representative, answering phones for a medical insurance company. Your resume says (for one of the jobs you held before): “Responsible for answering telephone calls”. So what?What your resume describes is your job function. It says nothing about what you did once you answered the calls. It shows that you can pick up the receiver. Is this a customer service trait?

Many resume advice sites are filled with calls to fill your resume with action verbs. Quite a few suggest that achievements should be listed, not responsibilities. They all have merit. But the simplest way to describe what should truly be a part of your resume is one word: relevance. If it is relevant to the job, you are in. If it is not, your resume will continue being dismissed. Make it take a strong stand in answering the “So what?” question, and you will see that it just works…